Targeting the Poor: How Al-Qaida Would Recruit from Latin America
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Freddy A. Paniagua
The U.S. Department of State and experts on terrorism have suggested that the poor are a potential source of recruits for political and Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations. This observation is particularly applicable to the poor in Latin American nations (that is, the Caribbean and Central and South American regions). Focusing on al-Qaida, this paper uses Bayat's (2000) classification of the passive, surviving, political and resisting poor to argue that al-Qaida's recruitment efforts would target the surviving poor residing in Latin American nations because, relative to the other categories of the poor, the surviving poor demonstrate more activities in common with al-Qaida: for example, theft, kidnapping for ransom, narco-trafficking, and illegal immigrant smuggling. Such activities relate both to efforts by the surviving poor to escape poverty and to the planning and execution of terrorist acts by al-Qaida.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Research Article
- A Critical Evaluation of the Incident Command System and NIMS
- A Risk Assessment Methodology for Intentional Chemical and Biological Contamination of Distribution Systems
- Homeland Security Administration and Finance: A Survey of Texas County Officials
- Navigating the Maze of Disaster Mental Health: The Journey of the Palo Alto Medical Reserve Corps
- Estimating the Economic Consequences of Terrorist Disruptions in the National Capital Region: An Application of Input-Output Analysis
- Communication/News
- Targeting the Poor: How Al-Qaida Would Recruit from Latin America
- Strengthening the Public Safety Response to Terrorism
- Upcoming Conferences of Interest
- Book Review
- Review of The Economic Impacts of Terrorist Attacks
- Management of Dead Bodies after Disasters: A Field Manual for First Responders
- Review of In the Wake of Disaster: Religious Responses to Terrorism and Catastrophe
- A Review of Introduction to Emergency Management
