THE Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) in Kampala is holding a Ugandan-born Briton, Jamal Kiyemba, previously one of the 500 prisoners held by the US on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on terroris
Feb 16, 2006
THE Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) in Kampala is holding a Ugandan-born Briton, Jamal Kiyemba, previously one of the 500 prisoners held by the US on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on terrorism charges.
By Patrick Asea
THE Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) in Kampala is holding a Ugandan-born Briton, Jamal Kiyemba, previously one of the 500 prisoners held by the US on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on terrorism charges.
I know that Ugandans have excelled in all sorts of esoteric and exotic jobs abroad. But a foot soldier for the dreaded Osama Bin Laden? How did that happen? Was he on kyeyo in Kabul and just got swept up in the fervour of the Jihad? Apparently not. The 25-year-old man is from Ilford, UK, whose parents moved to Britain from Uganda.
Amazingly, he was interviewed by the The Sunday Times of London before he was captured. In the 2001 interview he declared that he was going to travel to Afghanistan to fight with Taliban forces against American and British soldiers.
The Sunday Times writes that Jamal’s mother, formerly of Uganda but now living in Britain, was initially reluctant, “but then the more she saw of the situation, the more she understood.â€
Could it be poverty that drove Kiyemba to join the Jihadis? Apparently not. He is a telecommunications engineer. So that rules out the poverty excuse for terrorism.
It wasn’t religion either.
The Sunday Times reports that he was only a recent convert to Islam though his mother’s father was Pakistani. The good news is that Kiyemba seems to be an aberration and not a home-grown terrorist. It appears his mother must have gone to London for Kyeyo, stayed behind and raised the little terrorist right in the middle of UK.
How would an Economist explain Kiyemba’s bizarre choices? In Economics, involvement in terrorism is viewed as a rational decision, depending on the benefits, costs and risks involved in terrorism compared to other activities. This view asserts that participation in terrorism is just like participation in ordinary crime.
Economics Nobel Laureate Gary Becker of University of Chicago says individuals should choose to allocate their time between working in the legal job market or working in criminal activities in such a way that maximizes their utility.
After accounting for the risk of being caught and penalized, the size of the penalty and any stigma or moral distress associated with involvement in crime, those who receive higher income from criminal activities would choose involvement in crime. According to this model, crime increases as one’s market wage falls relative to rewards associated with crime and decreases if the risk of being apprehended after committing a crime or the penalty for being convicted of a crime increases. The beautiful logic of this model fails to explain Kiyemba’s choices or the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty.
A recent paper by Harvard economist Alberto Abadie also casts doubt on the poverty-terrorism link. Abadie examined data on terrorism and variables such as wealth, political freedom, geography and ethnic fractionalization for nations that have been targets of terrorist attacks.
He finds a strong connection in the data between terrorism and geographic factors, such as elevation or tropical weather. This is intuitive. Failure to eradicate terrorism has often been attributed to geographic barriers, like mountainous terrain in Afghanistan, tropical jungles in Colombia or the remote hills of Northern Uganda. Areas of difficult access offer safe haven to terrorist groups and facilitate training.
What lessons can we draw from Kiyemba’s adventures in the Hindu-Kush mountains of Afghanistan and the accumulating body of academic evidence for LRA terrorism? One lesson is that while poverty may not be associated with terrorism at the individual level, it may nonetheless matter at the national level. Poverty prevents governments from controlling their borders, policing their territories and enforcing their laws.
Another lesson is that terrorism is best viewed as a response to political conditions and long-standing feelings of indignity and frustration (perceived or real). Bottom line: defeating Kony and winning the global war on terrorism will require lots of guns and butter.
The writer has been Senior Economic Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq and a professor of Economics at the University of California
THE Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) in Kampala is holding a Ugandan-born Briton, Jamal Kiyemba, previously one of the 500 prisoners held by the US on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on terrorism charges.
I know that Ugandans have excelled in all sorts of esoteric and exotic jobs abroad. But a foot soldier for the dreaded Osama Bin Laden? How did that happen? Was he on kyeyo in Kabul and just got swept up in the fervour of the Jihad? Apparently not. The 25-year-old man is from Ilford, UK, whose parents moved to Britain from Uganda.
Amazingly, he was interviewed by the The Sunday Times of London before he was captured. In the 2001 interview he declared that he was going to travel to Afghanistan to fight with Taliban forces against American and British soldiers.
The Sunday Times writes that Jamal’s mother, formerly of Uganda but now living in Britain, was initially reluctant, “but then the more she saw of the situation, the more she understood.â€
Could it be poverty that drove Kiyemba to join the Jihadis? Apparently not. He is a telecommunications engineer. So that rules out the poverty excuse for terrorism.
It wasn’t religion either.
The Sunday Times reports that he was only a recent convert to Islam though his mother’s father was Pakistani. The good news is that Kiyemba seems to be an aberration and not a home-grown terrorist. It appears his mother must have gone to London for Kyeyo, stayed behind and raised the little terrorist right in the middle of UK.
How would an Economist explain Kiyemba’s bizarre choices? In Economics, involvement in terrorism is viewed as a rational decision, depending on the benefits, costs and risks involved in terrorism compared to other activities. This view asserts that participation in terrorism is just like participation in ordinary crime.
Economics Nobel Laureate Gary Becker of University of Chicago says individuals should choose to allocate their time between working in the legal job market or working in criminal activities in such a way that maximizes their utility.
After accounting for the risk of being caught and penalized, the size of the penalty and any stigma or moral distress associated with involvement in crime, those who receive higher income from criminal activities would choose involvement in crime. According to this model, crime increases as one’s market wage falls relative to rewards associated with crime and decreases if the risk of being apprehended after committing a crime or the penalty for being convicted of a crime increases. The beautiful logic of this model fails to explain Kiyemba’s choices or the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty.
A recent paper by Harvard economist Alberto Abadie also casts doubt on the poverty-terrorism link. Abadie examined data on terrorism and variables such as wealth, political freedom, geography and ethnic fractionalization for nations that have been targets of terrorist attacks.
He finds a strong connection in the data between terrorism and geographic factors, such as elevation or tropical weather. This is intuitive. Failure to eradicate terrorism has often been attributed to geographic barriers, like mountainous terrain in Afghanistan, tropical jungles in Colombia or the remote hills of Northern Uganda. Areas of difficult access offer safe haven to terrorist groups and facilitate training.
What lessons can we draw from Kiyemba’s adventures in the Hindu-Kush mountains of Afghanistan and the accumulating body of academic evidence for LRA terrorism? One lesson is that while poverty may not be associated with terrorism at the individual level, it may nonetheless matter at the national level. Poverty prevents governments from controlling their borders, policing their territories and enforcing their laws.
Another lesson is that terrorism is best viewed as a response to political conditions and long-standing feelings of indignity and frustration (perceived or real). Bottom line: defeating Kony and winning the global war on terrorism will require lots of guns and butter.
The writer has been Senior Economic Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq and a professor of Economics at the University of California