Sunday, November 13, 2005
Outside view: Middle East trends
By Anthony H. Cordesman
UPI Outside View Commentator
Published November 12, 2005
WASHINGTON -- This article is extracted from testimony given to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on Nov. 8, 2005 and is reprinted by permission.
There is no single cause for Islamist extremism, and no easy correlation between any given set of the region's problems and support for violence and terrorism. Once again, some of the factors at work are shown in the graphs and tables at the end of this testimony. More broadly, virtually every expert would agree that the problems that face this region include:
-- Weak secular regimes and political parties have pushed the peoples of the region back towards Islam and made them seek to redefine the role of religion in their lives.
-- Massive population increases: The Middle East and North Africa had a population of 112 million in 1950. The population is well over 415 million today, and approaching a fourfold increase. It will more than double again, to at least 833 million, by 2050.
-- A "youth explosion," where age 20-24s -- the key age group entering the job market and political society -- has grown steadily from 10 million in 1950 to 36 million today, and will grow steadily to at least 56 million by 2050.
-- Some 36 percent of the total regional population is under 15 years of age versus 21 percent in the United States and 16 percent in the European Union. The ratio of dependents to each working age man and woman is three times that in a developed region like the European Union.
-- A failure to achieve global competitiveness, diversify economies, and create jobs that is only partially disguised by the present boom in oil revenues. Direct and disguised unemployment range from 12-20 percent in many countries, and the World Bank projects the labor force as growing by at least 3 percent per year for the next decade.
-- A region-wide average per capita income of around $2,200 versus $26,000 in the high-income countries in the West.
-- A steady decline in non-petroleum exports as a percentage of world trade over a period of nearly half a century, and an equal pattern of decline in regional GDP as a share of global GDP.
-- Hyperurbanization and a half-century decline in agricultural and traditional trades impose high levels of stress on traditional social safety nets and extended families. The urban population seems to have been under 15 million in 1950. It has since more than doubled from 84 million in 1980 to 173 million today, and some 25 percent of the population will soon live in cities of one million or more.
-- Broad problems in integrating women effectively and productively into the work force. Female employment in the region has grown from 24 percent of the labor in 1980 to 28 percent today, but that total is 15% lower than in a high growth area like East Asia.
-- Growing pressures on young men and women in the Middle East and North Africa to immigrate to Europe and the United States to find jobs and economic opportunities that inevitably create new tensions and adjustment problems.
-- Almost all nations in the region have nations outside the region as their major trading partners, and increased intraregional trade offers little or no comparative advantage.
-- Much of the region cannot afford to provide more water for agriculture at market prices, and in the face of human demand; much has become a "permanent" food importer. Regional manufacturers and light industry have grown steadily in volume, but not in global competitiveness.
-- Global and regional satellite communications, the Internet, and other media, have shattered censorship and extremists readily exploit these tools.
-- A failed or inadequate growth in every aspect of infrastructure, and in key areas like housing and education.
-- Growing internal security problems that often are far more serious than the external threat that terrorism and extremism pose to the West.
-- A failure to modernize conventional military forces and to recapitalize them. This failure is forcing regional states to radically reshape their security structures, and is pushing some toward proliferation.
-- Strong pressures for young men and women to immigrate to Europe and the United States to find jobs and economic opportunities that inevitably create new tensions and adjustment problems.
Unlike today's crises and conflicts, these forces will play out over decades. They cannot be dealt with simply by attacking today's terrorists and extremists; they cannot be dealt with by pretending religion is not an issue, and that tolerance can be based on indifference or ignorance.
We can only win the "war on terrorism" if we accept the need to work systematically and consistently with friendly regimes, and moderates and reformers in the region, for evolutionary change. If we posture for our own domestic political purposes, call on other faiths and cultures to become our mirror image, or demand the impossible -- we will further undercut our influence and breed more anger and resentment.
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(Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.)