Pentagon Pushes For Middle Eastern "Marshall Plan"

By Noah Shachtman
January 04, 2008 4:00:00 PM
Courtesy Of: Wired

Slowly, quietly, some in the Pentagon are pushing for a Middle Eastern version of the Marshall Plan, to change the economic realities that fuel Islamic extremism.

Without such an initiative “the radicalization will continue, because there’s always going to be people that are unhappy,” U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Mark Schissler tells Inside the Pentagon.

“You just can’t ignore things like jobs,” particularly given the high birth rate of the region’s Muslim population, he added.

“I think we’re in the beginning stages of drafting that kind of a plan,” said Schissler.

The concept for a Middle East Marshall Plan sketched out in one page of the Joint Staff briefing on fighting terrorism mentions managing migration, providing effective governance, inhibiting radicalization, mitigating the appeal of terrorism, offering employment and curbing drug traffic.

The original Marshall Plan was an effort to grant economic aid and technical assistance to some 16 European countries following World War II. By 1952, the United States had channeled about $13 billion in economic aid and technical assistance to the region, according to the State Department.

During the program’s four years, participating countries saw their aggregate gross national product rise more than 30 percent and industrial production increase by 40 percent over prewar levels, the department states. A joint European-American venture, the plan complemented American money and assistance with local resources.

“You can’t walk away anymore than we [could] walk away from Japan, Korea, Germany,” said Schissler, referring to the importance of a renewed economic plan for the Middle East. “We helped build them back up...”

Imposing a plan like this in Afghanistan would “get a lot of bang out of the buck,” said Jim Phillips, a Middle East analyst with the Washington-based Heritage Foundation. The Taliban have successfully recruited unemployed Afghans and many times the lucrative pay, not the extremist ideology, attracts young, unemployed Afghan men, he said...

Kickstarting development in certain corners of the Muslim world through an economic assistance plan will be “no cheaper” than the roughly $130 billion being spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he predicted.