ABSTRACT
DURING A UNITED NATIONS (UN) CONFERENCE ON POVERTY IN MARCH 2002, President George W. Bush said that the United States was ready to challenge “the poverty and hopelessness and lack of education and failed governments that too often allow conditions that terrorists can seize and try to turn to their advantage.”1 A few months later, however, in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the president suggested otherwise when he stated that there was no direct link between poverty and terrorism, “Poverty is a tool for recruitment amongst these global terrorists,” Bush said. “It’s a way for them to recruit-perhaps. But poverty doesn’t cause killers to exist, and it’s an important distinction to make.”2 No doubt, the president had the kind of terrorism in mind that had led to the attacks on 9/11, but in expressing different assessments of the roots of terrorism, he reflected the different viewpoints in the long-running expert debate on this issue. There is no doubt that terrorism cannot be understood without exploring the real and perceived grievances of groups and individuals who resort to political violence. Grievances of this nature are of a domestic or international nature-or both. But although the same or similar conditions breed terrorists in some countries and not in others, scholars have put forth a multitude of explanations.
