The Best Antidote to Extremism? A Girl with a Book
By Nicholas Kristof
October 2, 2014
As we fight the
Islamic State and other extremists, there's something President Barack Obama
and all of us can learn from them.
For, in one sense, the
terrorists are fighting smarter than we are. These extremists use arms to fight
their battles in the short term, but, to hold ground in the long run, they also
fight Western education and women's empowerment.
When she was 15, Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban because she had campaigned for education for girls. Photo: Reuters
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They know that
illiteracy, ignorance and oppression of women create the petri dish in which
extremism can flourish. That’s why the Islamic State kidnapped Samira Salih
al-Nuaimi, a brave Iraqi woman and human rights lawyer in Mosul, tortured her
and publicly executed her last week.
That's why the Taliban
shot Malala Yousafzai, then 15 years old, after she campaigned for educating
girls. And that's why Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls in northern
Nigeria and announced it would turn them into slaves.
In each case, the
extremists recognised a basic truth: Their greatest strategic threat comes not
from a drone but from a girl with a book. We need to recognise, and act on,
that truth as well.
For similar reasons,
the financiers of extremism have invested heavily in fundamentalist
indoctrination. They have built Wahhabi madrasas in poor Muslim countries such
as Pakistan, Niger and Mali, offering free meals, as well as scholarships for
the best students to study in the Gulf.
Shouldn't we try to
compete? Shouldn't we use weapons in the short run, but try to gain strategic
advantage by focusing on education and on empowering women to build stable
societies less vulnerable to extremist manipulation?
The United States air
strikes have slowed the advance of the Islamic State and averted a genocide
against the Yazidi population in Iraq, but it's very difficult to win a war
from the air. That's why the Taliban still thrives in Afghanistan after 13
years of US air attacks.
Unfortunately, we're
not playing the long game, as the extremists are. We are vastly over relying on
the military toolbox and under employing the education toolbox, the women's
empowerment toolbox, the communications toolbox. We're tacticians; alas, the
extremists may be better strategists.
It's not a question of
resources, because bombs are more expensive than books. The US military
campaign against the Islamic State will cost at least $US2.4 billion a year and
perhaps many times that, according to an estimate from the Centre for Strategic
and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.
In contrast, Obama
seems to have dropped his 2008 campaign promise to establish a $US2 billion
global fund for education. And the United States gives the Global Partnership
for Education, a big multilateral effort, less in a year than what we spend
weekly in Syria and Iraq.
This is an area in
which Congress seems more forward-looking than the president because Congress
regularly appropriates substantially more for basic education overseas than
Obama requests. Bipartisan legislation, the Education for All Act, would
elevate the matter; let's hope Obama gets behind it.
No one is naive enough
to think education is a panacea. Al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden
and Ayman al-Zawahiri, have been university educated. Iraq, Syria and Lebanon
were all reasonably well-educated and supportive of gender equality by regional
standards, yet all have been torn apart by civil wars.
Still, the historical
record of the past half-century is that education tends to nurture a more
cosmopolitan middle class and gives people a stake in the system. In Hong Kong
today, we're seeing how educated youth often behave. They are demanding
democracy, but peacefully.
Girls' education seems
to have more effect than boys' education, partly because educated women have
markedly fewer children. The result is lower birthrates and less of a youth
bulge in the population, which highly correlates to civil conflict.
I support judicious
air strikes in the short term against the Islamic State, but that should be
only one part of a policy combating extremism. And a starting point should be
to ensure that the 3 million Syrian refugees mostly in Turkey, Jordan and
Lebanon - especially girls - can get schooling.
Right now, many are
getting none, and one study published last month found Syria had the worst
reversal in educational attainment in recent history, with enrolment rates for
Syrian children in Lebanon less than half of those in sub-Saharan Africa.
Yet the UNICEF request
for education funding for Syrians was only 40 per cent financed as of
mid-August. If we miss this opportunity, those children will be tinder for
future wars and extremism, and we'll be stuck dropping bombs for generations to
come.
So let's learn from
the extremists - and from those brave girls themselves who are willing to risk
their lives in order to get an education. They all understand the power of
education, and we should, too.
Source: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-best-antidote-to-extremism-a-girl-with-a-book-20141002-10pk08.html#ixzz3FXOkklO5