by David Nuttle

Created on: January 20, 2009

For several decades, terrorists (including narcoterrorists and insurgents) have promoted poverty, worldwide, as a means to sustain the high levels of frustration and anger needed to motivate poor populations to support their acts of terrorism by contibuting food, supplies, shelter, safe areas, intelligence, and new recruits. In the case of narcoterrorists, impoverished populations also grow most of their illegal drug crops.

Terrorists, worldwide, have long sustained hostile activities at a high enough level to effectively isolate 2.9 billion people and prolong their conditions of extreme poverty. Hostile actions by the terrorists have been the primary means of holding these poor populations "hostage" in social, economic, and political isolation in those nations in which they reside. In many cases, the rural and tribal poor are forced (by terrorists) to grow illegal drug crops such as opium poppy to produce the income needed to buy weapons and bribe local officials to ignore their illegal activity. (United Nnations' data confirms the above stated facts.)

During five decades of relief work, in 42 developing nations, I was a personal witness on how terrorist groups operate to promote poverty for the purpose of sustaining "target" population frustration and anger. The terrorists are well aware that they must have support from local populations to sustain terrorist operations, and from experience terrorist leaders know that the required population support will not be freely provided unless the populations around them have very high levels of frustration and anger. The terrorists engage in extensive propaganda efforts in an attempt to keep population anger directed at the governments they seek to destroy, as well as the U.S. (in most cases).

At the time I served in Vietnam (1959-62), the Viet Cong (communist) terrorists were engaged in an active campaign to kill teachers, health workers, and development personnel working to improve the lives of Vietnamese and Montagnard (tribal) villagers living in extreme poverty. In some cases, development personnel were shot in planned ambuses undertaken by Viet Cong units. However, there were many cases where development personnel were captured and given what the Viet Cong called a public trial (in a local village) before being quickly executed. One of the malaria control teams I knew (four Vietnamese) were caputed by the Viet Cong, given a public trial where they were accused of spraying poison to kill villagers, and then executed

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