Combating World Terrorism Starts With Population Stabilization by Georgie Anne Geyer

COMBATING WORLD TERRORISM STARTS WITH POPULATION STABILIZATION

Georgie Anne Geyer

The odd thing was not that Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking to young people on MTV, came out for condom use for preventing AIDS. The odd thing was not even that he repeated his statement a day or so later, and it was not surprising that he was then duly attacked by the right for his ideas.

No, the strange thing was that, in a world where AIDS is ravaging whole societies and destroying cultural norms, such commonsensical words should need to be spoken at all. In the dangerous, disintegrating world that we face, such basic ideas should simply be a given to rational and sensitive people.

But let us look first to what he said, in answer to a question: “I believe condoms are part of the solution to the HIV/AIDS crisis, and I encourage their use by young people who are sexually active. You've got to protect yourself ... It's important that the whole international community come together, speak candidly about it, forget about taboos, forget about conservative ideas with respect to what you should tell young people about it.”

One would have thought he was declaring a black mass at midnight or suggesting that President Bush and his family go to Baghdad on spring vacation, such was the fuss from anti-abortion groups such as the Family Research Council. “Reckless and irresponsible,” the council averred of the secretary's performance, and a “slap in the face” to the president's core constituency.

But what these complaints showed was that these constituents on the far right are not only against abortion, the big bugaboo, but against family planning and birth control as well (even though one can only imagine that they themselves practice birth control, since we've seen few of them with 15 or 16 children in their families).

In fact, we already have an example of their influence: In January, The White House put on hold millions in family planning funding, $34 million of it to the United Nations Population Fund, until President Bush, whose main push is on abstinence, decides whether to set aside the money altogether. One of the major purposes was to signal his opposition to population control methods in China.

The importance of this dispute within the administration over such social policy concerns as condoms—whether for AIDS prevention or for family planning or for women's emancipation—looms far beyond the purely social. In fact, this discussion alerts us to a dangerous schism yawning within the administration in its impassioned war against terrorism.

On the one side is the war, fought militarily and with intelligence-gathering, and largely by special forces of various kinds. On the other side is, well ... nothing.

There are no policies that any of us can uncover that address the multiple causes of terrorism, led by societies that are overpopulated (Egypt with 60 million, Saudi Arabia with 24 million, Indonesia with at least 200 million) and underfinanced.

There is no nation-building; almost no foreign aid; no real consensus with our allies; and, above all, no help with family planning. It is as if there is a whole layer of evolutionary human development policies—exactly those most important to the countries that have
“made it” —that is simply missing.

Watching the administration these last weeks, as it focused with an almost frightening intensity upon only the military option, I was reminded of a visit to the Roman coliseum of El Djem in central Tunisia several years ago. The third-century A.D. ruins, blood red in color, stand alone, incongruous in the otherwise gentle white and blue of the country. This is where the Romans, who built such impressive roads and aqueducts, ended their limited political and moral story: setting lions upon human beings in that great, lifeless construct. Even though it was high summer, I shivered in the implacable, historical coldness of the place.

In a sense, the administration's terrorism policy, as it is revealing itself, is similarly unbalanced.

There is no question that overpopulation is the major factor in creating young and deliberately suicidal terrorists—yet we refuse to embrace the long-range policy of helping the world contain its population. (Use as examples Iran in the 1970s and '80s, when its population bulge led directly to the savage Iranian revolution, or Algeria, even today, when its bulge has led to a seemingly endless civil war between Islamicists and the military.)

There is no question that no country can rise beyond endless poverty and develop without, at the very least, controlling its population so it will not outstrip its economic capacity and so it can be correlated to economic changes. At least, no country has. Just look at the countries that are working—Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Tunisia, to name a few—and you will find that every one began with active and tough-minded family planning policies.

And if you carry the discussion back to where it started—with the prevention of and the fight against AIDS—you find similar developments.

Two of the countries that stand at the top of the list on fighting AIDS, Uganda and Thailand, both have dramatically cut back on infections through public birth control, and particularly condom, programs. (When I was in Thailand last spring, I interviewed the head of the family planning program, a charming man with the single name of Pichai. He was also known from his television performances as “Mr. Condom.” One had to be interested in meeting such a man!)

Our administration is actually working against itself. The lines of correlation in policy between fighting terrorism today and winning in the long run, and between the military and the social, are just not connecting. On some days, it seems that we are like the Romans, with only one thing in mind, oblivious to the real tenets of the civilization we control. And I shiver in this cold new day.

For more than 30 years, GG Geyer has delivered distinctive foreign commentary from an impressive variety of foreign fronts. She is also the author of books on Latin America, Russia, and the Middle East and winner of numerous awards for distinguished journalism. Geyer focuses beyond the surface of events to examine root causes of revolution and political upheaval. © 2002 Universal Press Syndicate. Originally published on February 19, 2002.