February 2004Issue 364



Modern Jihad - Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks

The widespread phenomenon of Islamist terror groups and suicide bombers that comprise the Modern Jihad is largely a mess of our own making. The anti-Soviet Jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s that was masterminded by the US is still having repercussions today. The subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union brought poverty and a political vacuum which provided a ripe recruiting ground for Islamists as veterans of the Afghan jihad have moved from one conflict to the next.

In parallel, the West’s oil-led foreign policy has stripped people of control over their natural resources, impoverishing them while buoying up deeply undemocratic and unrepresentative regimes. Through its short-term manipulation of Islamist groups the US has created a monster which is now turning on its creator.

In a book that aims to give a dispassionate, economics-led survey of global terror, Napoleoni lays out this and a whole lot more in a densely woven jigsaw rich with detail. One of the chief obstacles to enforcing post-September 11 banking legislation, she notes, is the disincentive arising from the fact that much of the estimated $1.5 trillion (million million) annual economy of terror flows into the US economy. Ultimately nothing but a radical rethink in foreign policy will avoid compounding an already deeply troubling situation. Napoleoni doesn’t mention it, but we now have a twin driver for change – the urgent need to reduce our dependence on oil if we are to have any hope of avoiding dangerous levels of climate change.

Product information
by Loretta Napoleoni
Star rating
***
Publisher
Pluto Press
Product number
ISBN 0 7453 2117 8




Language Tools
Powered by Ultralingua

Join over 30,000 people just like you. Get e-mail updates about new content, action alerts, contests, and more!

other articles
FROM THIS ISSUE

You get proud by practising
A poem by Laura Hershey, poet and disability activist.

Strong & smart
Teacher Chris Sarra is turning upside-down ideas about what Aboriginal kids can and can’t do.

I was born white
Mark Minchinton undertakes a journey back to his – and his country’s – Aboriginal roots.

Equality Watch: Race & Ethnicity

Betrayal
Two years after the liberation of Afghanistan, are its women really free? Report from Mariam Rawi.

recently
IN THIS COLUMN

Natural Selection
Szperling's short, punchy novel paints a vivid pen-portrait of the savage and amoral nature of this stratum of Argentinean society.

Thursday Night Widows
Nominally a thriller, Thursday Night Widows is less concerned with the 'whodunnit' aspects of plotting than with a psychological dissection of a social class obsessed with bickering and petty jealousies as the pillars of their world dissolve.

2666
It takes a singular talent to make a book of 1,000 pages that is as hard to put down as it is to pick up. Despite its size, 2666 retains the agility of a thriller.

Working
A graphic adaptation of the book by Studs Terkel by Harvey Pekar and Paul Buhle.

Murder In The Name Of Honour
A grim but compelling reading – a fitting testament to all the women killed who had sex outside marriage.






Voices from the margins:

Multimedia: video, podcasts, and more.


Subscribe to NI now!