Americans who were dismayed and disgusted by the sight of young men in the Middle East cheering the attack on the United States may not realize they were looking at an embodiment of the economic underpinnings of terrorism.
Those mostly unemployed young men are part of the economic underdevelopment that plagues most countries in the Middle East, providing a breeding ground for terrorist groups and for virulent hatred of America.
The long campaign of military and diplomatic action that the U.S. is mounting against terrorism will focus on countries of the Middle East and on Afghanistan.
"But if there isn't an economic leg to that effort, it won't succeed," says Steven Spiegel, a professor of Middle East studies at UCLA.
European investors, while pledging support for the United States last week, stressed the need to address the Middle East's economic ills, which they saw as "root causes" of political unrest and terrorism.
What is the problem, what realistically can be done about it, and what should we understand about the Middle East as a new crusade begins?
The problem is that a vast region containing some 250 million people, which is strategic to the global economy because of its energy resources, is not a participant in the promise and development of the global economy.
The difficulty is made acute by surging population in most countries of the Middle East, where more than half the people are younger than 20.
Elsewhere, over recent decades, countries such as South Korea have developed industrial economies with rising living standards for their people.
But the Middle East, even the countries with oil riches, has stagnated. Iran, for example, with 62 million people, has annual economic output only one-fourth that of South Korea, which has 47 million people.
The story is similar for Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Algeria and others--some with natural resources, some without, but all with low living standards and a lack of investment and development.
The saddest case of all is Iraq, where dictatorial rule by Saddam Hussein and global sanctions following the 1991 Persian Gulf War have reduced a once-prospering country of educated men and women to abject poverty. Iraq's annual economic output has shrunk to only $496 per person.
Iraq has become not only a breeding ground for but also a participant in terrorism, according to U.S. officials identifying the hijackers in last week's attack.
