The growing poverty - 'fundamentalist violence' nexus

by Lynn Ockersz

Hopefully, the recent countrywide bomb blasts in hitherto, comparatively trouble - free Bangladesh, coupled with explosions at two food outlets in Pakistan's commercial hub of Karachi, associated with Western food chains, KFC and Mcdonald's, would stir the Western powers into recognising the need to ensure a better economic deal for the poorer countries of the world, as they meet the rest of the UN membership at the UN summit on Wednesday.

The intellectual challenge facing the world's principal economic and military powers would be to see the link between what is commonly referred to as "religious fundamentalism" and the violence accompanying it and economic deprivation or poverty. Unfortunately, the major powers have apparently forgotten the lessons of history they sought to impress on the rest of the world, in the immediate post - World War II years.

One of these is the Western-sponsored Marshall Plan of the late Forties which enabled war-ravaged Germany to rebuild itself and recoup its material and economic losses. The Plan was a model in post-war international development cooperation, friendship and solidarity which, also, very vitally, enabled Germany to recover from the wounds of war in their many dimensions.

All too soon the lessons from this successful experiment in development cooperation and international solidarity seem to be forgotten, particularly going by the tragic hot spots Western military aggression has opened-up in this part of the world - Iraq and Afghanistan being cases in point.

It is hard to believe that the world's principal political, economic and military powers have already forgotten the potential in economic development cooperation to defuse latent and real international tensions. What was good for Germany decades ago, is good for the developing countries of today - many of which are mired in conflict and war.

The persistence with which the West tends to ignore and gloss over the positive outcomes of robust international development cooperation and solidarity and succumbs to the use of the military option in the Third World to resolve some its disputes with the latter, indicates the application of double standards by the West.

That is, what is appropriate for a First World country - even if it has been an antagonist in war - is inapplicable to the Third World, many of which countries are post - colonial states. Just one issue which is expected to figure prominently in the upcoming UN session would prove the point.

This is the question of the cut off point for official development aid, which was agreed upon by the Western world at the emergence of the post-World War II global economic and political order, but which is yet to be be complied with by a considerable number of Western powers, including the US. The quantum of official development aid agreed upon was just 0.7 per cent of a state's gross national product.

The US is continuing to balk at meeting this vital requirement, 50 or more years after, along with the bulk of the Western bloc, despite the serious implications growing world poverty has for the security of all.

Could it be that global poverty is being cynically winked at by the West with the expectation that poverty-bred conflicts in the developing countries could provide the big powers with the opportunity of militarily intervening in the affairs of these countries, thereby facilitating greater political and military control of the latter by the Western military alliance?

This issue needs to be probed deeply by the Third World and its backers on the world stage. Now as never before the developing countries need to think and act unitedly to achieve their vital interests.

Besides achieving unprecedented solidarity in global fora, such as the UN, the Third World needs to be in a position to impress on the West the close link which exists between world peace and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, for instance.

Continued failure by the West to see these links or deliberate insistence by the West on ignoring them would only make the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan more tragic and bloody. Fundamentalist violence, which usually feeds on poverty and deprivation, now making its presence felt in also Bangladesh and Pakistan, would spread further in chilling, concentric circles.