The Muslim Marshall Plan

Today, we need a Marshall Plan for the Middle East and South Asia, especially for the non-oil producing nations which do not have the resources of their richer oil producing counterparts. Primary targets should be Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan. It's time to divert the money that we give to the dictators of these nations and target these nations' populace with it.

After WWII, in order to keep Communism in check and to aid European recovery, Democrats Harry Truman and Dean Acheson pumped billions of dollar of reconstruction into Europe. By the time the plan expired in a few years every economy but the German was at pre-war levels and the plan had set in motion the pan-Europeanism from which the EU has emerged (because the plan eliminated many trade barriers). The intended effect of the plan was to reduce poverty, empower European civil society, and reward entrepreneurship. Doing so created an environment which was focused on economic competition, on educational opportunities, and positive interaction with the United States.

The architect of the Marshall Plan, George Marshall observed:

"It is logical, that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health to the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is not directed against any country, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos."

Without economic health, there is no political stability and no assured peace. Hmm. Sounds almost common sense.The elimination of hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos? There's an idea! These should be the goals of the next administration, whether Republican or Democrat. In Iraq we have been able to see first hand how successful forced democratization is. The next administration has to try something new. It should try a Muslim Marshall Plan.

Is there anyone who doubts that a vast majority of the anti-American violence, and terrorism coming from the Middle East and South Asia feeds on -- feeds on -- hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos? I do not necessarily think that if the United States begins a Muslim Marshall Plan that it will make the terrorists or the Islamists go away in a whiff of smoke. It won't, I assure you. The issue of separation of mosque and state will keep popping up, and fundamentalist demagogues will keep raising their heads, and Islamists will become more sophisticated making themselves legitimate seeming in order to benefit from our aid and then divert it to their own ends. However, these are issues that can be dealt with through monitoring, creating effective grants procedures, and building inroads with the extant civil society and intellectual groups (of which there are many which we often catalogue at Eteraz.Org). Most importantly, such a plan will be able to go to one of the root problems in the Muslim world -- horrendous public schooling -- and therefore empower those who do want a separation of mosque and state, who do want to keep the fundamentalists from gaining power.

I have attended public school in rural Pakistan. The days when high school was not getting canceled due to riots, students just left because the school doesn't have walls or security; or classes went two or three periods without teachers. When teachers did arrive, they had to deal with the basic issues: students had no books (many couldn't afford them); students had no writing utensils, no notebooks, no desks, often not even actual physical classrooms. During exams there were not enough proctors so cheating was rampant such that the intelligent and advanced children were intimidated into sharing their answers, creating a false impression of performance in the class. There was no lunch period, thus no reason to feel any desire to stay at school. To eat, many students simply went home, and often didn't return, getting caught up in chores. Want to know one reason why madrassas always seem to retain their students while secular schools do not? Lunch. Madrassas have free food three times a day. Feeding students in school will keep them at school. If they stay at school, they will not form gangs. If they stay at school they will not have to attend the madrassa where recruiters from Afghanistan (and these days Iraq) are profligate. If students are fed at school, parents with no money will want to send their children to school instead of forcing them to go to work and earn their lunch.

A Muslim Marshall plan. The Democratic Presidential candidate with the most foreign policy experience believes in it. In a recent speech about new realism, Governor Richardson laid down the argument:

Most importantly, America should spearhead a multilateral Marshall Plan for the Middle East and North Africa. For a small fraction of the cost of the Iraq war, which has made us so many enemies, we could make many friends. A crucial effort in fighting terrorism must be support for public education in the Muslim world, which is the best way to mitigate the role of madrasas that foment extremism.

Development alleviates the injustice and lack of opportunity that proponents of violence and terrorism exploit. To those who say we cannot afford an aid program to build pro-American sentiment in the developing world, I say we cannot afford not to.

Education and social services are the bread and butter of each and every extremist Muslim organization. Hamas, Hizbollah and Taliban all excel at providing these services, and that is why less fortunate Muslims the world over support them. The word "Taliban" literally means "students." How can we with all our think tanks and so called experts not realize the simple point that if you want to secure the future you have to secure the students? A Muslim Marshall Plan would create ambulance services that actually work. A Muslim Marshall Plan would work closely with the micro-credit programs that just won the Nobel Peace Prize: it would empower women in the most patriarchal and misogynist parts of the world (and also protect them if they are intimidated) and it would round up the hundreds of lawyers loafing around in these countries and create a deed-recording program so that extra-legal property can be included in the nation's GDP.

A Muslim Marshall Plan will be as effective and as successful as our experts can make it. However, first we need the political will to make it a reality, and then we need to hire some new experts, because the current set is lazy, intellectually bankrupt, and complicit; these experts are focused on giving hand outs to dictators (and upon not seeing results agitating for invasion). That is the extent of their plan.

A Muslim Marshall Plan for the non oil-producing Muslim nations. That is the direction we must go.