Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Unemployment is a recruiting sergeant for Daesh


Earlier this year, a defector from Daesh (ISIS) produced a database of Daesh recruits in the year 2013-4.


Typically, they are young (mean age 27), single, relatively well-educated, with average understanding of Islam - and *unemployed*. 19% had significant experience of unemployment, and in Arab countries, no employment means no prospects - and therefore no wife. To be unemployed is to be without hope, and therefore it is a fairly easy step from there to joining Daesh, with its promise of a different life as a soldier of the victorious Caliphate.

Also, Daesh is having a recruitment drive in Bosnia, where unemployment is high.

This is not saying that unemployment causes terrorism. But it looks as if it is one factor in people's decision to join Daesh, and therefore politicians should look again at unemployment, not just as an unfortunate side effect of the market economy, but as a dangerous and unacceptable insult to all people of working age,HVDC especially young people. Politicians should understand that there is much good work to be done, and find ways of making sure that unemployed people are helped to do that work. The task in the Middle East must be to capture solar energy and turn it into usable electricity, erect HVDC lines to distribute the energy, to harvest every drop of rain that falls on a roof, to grow food and recycle waste. And that's just for starters.

Green Wage Subsidy is a simple way of turning unemployment into good work.

Unemployment is bad for people, bad for communities, bad for peace and bad for the planet.

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