The Mark 2010

Suicide bombing is more a symptom than a cause of deeply rooted insecurity and underdevelopment.

The news this week of suicide bombings at hotels in Indonesia was unsettling. The knowledge that places where you have stayed have become the targets gives rise to a strange, uncomfortable sensation. Scenes of death and destruction in Jakarta and Islamabad, even though they are on the other side of the world, hit disturbingly close to home.

One of those people on a stretcher could easily have been me.

Or, perhaps, you.

These incidents were not the first, and are unlikely to be the last of their kind. In the short term, it is difficult, if not impossible, to secure or defend every potential target against the type of attack in which the perpetrator is prepared to give his or her own life to carry out the mission.

Even if authorities could suppress such action, the option would hold little appeal. The economic and political costs – something akin to totalitarianism – would be horrendous, the cure worse than the disease.

A better response, at least in the immediate aftermath, is to use careful police and intelligence work to apprehend those responsible, while maintaining the rights, liberties, and freedoms which can make life, at least for some, rich and fulfilling.

This is not necessarily the most attractive option for decision-makers. It is certainly less newsworthy than immediate retaliation – a Hellfire-missile-equipped predator drone sent to annhilate some distant compound. But it will almost always produce better results, without the risk of counter-productive collateral damage or inflicting suffering upon the innocent.

Over the long term, the situation could brighten. But that will require major changes to the way in which the global political economy is organized and functions. It is poverty and inequality that drive those unable to benefit from globalization towards radical alternatives. A small minority, bereft of viable alternatives through which to express their convictions, turn to political violence or religious extremism.

There is now a large corpus of research that indicates that the vast majority of those recruited to become human bombs are not insane, but rather alienated, angry, and resentful. Such bitterness and desperation may turn street vendors or agricultural labourers into true believers, even zealots, but very few are actually insane. Most elect to blow themselves up on the basis of rational choice – compensation for the surviving family members, the promise of martyrdom, the belief that they will be rewarded with a better life in heaven.

Suicide bombing is more a symptom than a cause of deeply rooted insecurity and underdevelopment. It is that underdevelopment that needs to be addressed.

Aid alone – the quintessential, donor-interest-serving, bandaid solution – won’t bring genuine development. When advanced countries use aid to generate employment for their own contractors, to dispose of surplus commodities, or to dump uncompetitive or dangerous industrial products, the recipient countries end up with road graders rusting in jungles, sacks of wheat rotting in rat-infested wartehouses and skim milk powder used to whitewash mud walls in places where most of the population is lactose intolerant.

Whether or not these outcomes represent the exception or the rule, they serve to give international cooperation a bad name. Such practices are the antithesis of sustainable, human-centred, long-term development. That kind of development is characterized by broad access to representative political institutions, economic opportunities, and social services. It gives recipients control of their own destiny.

The literature on globalization is rife with references to “interdependence,” but the reality is a complex, multi-layered pattern of dominance and dependence.

As long as this kind of world order exists, human security will remain elusive, aid inevitable, and development difficult, if not impossible.