2008. Abeche, Chad

I can’t stop thinking about what it must take to believe that killing scores of innocent people is any way to justice. About San Bernardino, Brussels, Beirut, Paris, Orlando, Nice, Normandy; the hinterlands of Cameroon and Nigeria; floods of refugees barely making it across the Sahel, the prospect for their future and how far humans will go, and, the prospects for my own children: will they feel safe raising families or have to be soldiers, rebels or survivalists.

For 20 years pretty much the entire world has concentrated on defeating something called global terrorism, spending $1.6 trillion and killing 101 terrorist chieftains. Security and surveillance states have taken us in; there are drones, tech has boomed while poverty and privacy have chipped away.

Yet, there’s been a 10x increase in deaths from violent extremism and terrorism from 3,329 in 2000 to 32,685 in 2014. Last year conflict, terrorism and political instability cost the global economy $13.6 trillion. Practically 50% of ISIS attacks on the West were successful in 2016 according to a US government report. In the US 54% of all discretionary pubic spending goes to defense ($20,000/family/year).

Something’s not working.

Governments have failed to resolve this epic challenge for decades and now we have the next generation terrorist to deal with, those who make their case for how the world ought to be by killing the poor and disenfranchised…

Boko Harme is a Hausa-language term meaning roughly “Western education is forbidden”. This group has killed over 17,000 innocent people and destroyed over 1,100 schools in Africa since 2009. Schools because in Sharia girls are possessions and boys are militants and education is power. Much of the carnage is in Cameroon where 1/3 of the people are food insecure.

Throughout the Great Rift Valley especially in Eastern Congo up through Burundi, in the light of day you can see uranium being trafficked, illicit trade of charcoal and minerals; illegal and destructive agricultural, forestry and water practices in crucial bio diverse areas. You see rebel groups co-existing, set up along the massive steppes surrounding Lake Tanganyika intimidating and controlling communities below. Running through it all are influxes of refugees and internally displaced.

Or Burundi, one of the poorest, most unhappy countries in the world; with the highest level of hunger (2012 Global Hunger Index); with almost 2/3 of all children under 5 chronically malnourished; where kids are recruited for militias on their way to school. What can’t be measured in Burundi are the negative impacts of malnutrition and malaria on a developing brain, and stunting, or what such a viscous cycle of hopelessness does to individual and societal self-esteem.

The number of militant Islamist attacks/fatalities across Africa has increased by more than 750% since 2009 (IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre). Islamic extremists kill and rape innocent Africans, destroy decades of development gains but because it’s not technically ‘genocide’, and doesn’t ‘impact’ national security we leave it alone.

60 million people mostly in Africa are fleeing violence. Just around Lake Chad which straddles Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad, thousands have been killed or injured by extremists deliberately targeting civilians, 2.7 million forced to leave homes, 9 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.

A study by International Alert shows that for many young Syrians, “vulnerability to radicalization” is driven by extreme poverty, trauma, loss and displacement; occurring when one can’t make a living, or when social collapse creates seeking revenge behavior.

Through this lens, we see that for a life under great stress, radicalization is an opportunity – what men without work will do to find their place in the world.

Caught between military and development budgets, these places have become both breeding, and training, grounds for extremists like jihadists, militants and fundamentalists.

Yet, donors divest as a matter of course in these areas, deepening vacuums.

In D.R.C. Burundi. Chad, Sudan, Libya, Cameroon, Niger, Yemen, Tunisia, CAR, Somalia…sure we ‘do development’; but, development to the poorest countries continues to fall. Global poverty has reduced; but the World Bank says more African people are poor today than in 1990. Sub-Saharan Africa’s share of the world’s poor increased dramatically from 10.7 per cent in 1981 to around 41 per cent in 2012.

The conversation we dance around is the eradication of extreme poverty. It must happen for anything else to be eradicated, from hate and violence to disease and corruption. 58% malnutrition rates will continue to radicalize desperate youngsters, the very poorest, born into guaranteed conditions for epidemics, lawlessness, corruption and stress.

Money will not change poverty without dignity and opportunity. Finding ways to provide livelihoods for young people especially across Central Africa is what leaders, organizations and industries should be working on together to slow the tide of future terrorists.

In 2015, 19 percent of the world’s youth population (226 million people ages 15 to 24), lived in Africa. By 2030, that number will have risen by 42 percent. These alarming changes make the future of African youth an urgent global concern in every dimension.

 

/ / Kevin J Starace, 9/21/16 (788)