John Kerry will be surprised, but no sane person should be. The idea that poverty causes terrorism, and that showering Muslim countries with money will end it, has been shown to be false again and again — although it is still a core assumption of U.S. foreign policy.
The New York Times reported in March 2016 that “not long after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001…Alan B. Krueger, the Princeton economist, tested the widespread assumption that poverty was a key factor in the making of a terrorist. Mr. Krueger’s analysis of economic figures, polls, and data on suicide bombers and hate groups found no link between economic distress and terrorism.”
CNS News noted in September 2013 that “according to a Rand Corporation report on counterterrorism, prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2009, ‘Terrorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated, or afflicted by mental disease. Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds.’ One of the authors of the RAND report, Darcy Noricks, also found that according to a number of academic studies, ‘Terrorists turn out to be more rather than less educated than the general population.’”
“Dhaka attack: One of the terrorists was educated boy from rich family, who once met Shraddha Kapoor,” by Bijaya Kumar Das, IndiaToday, July 3, 2016:
Even as Bangladesh tries to come to grips with the deadly terror attack in Dhaka, it has been revealed that one of the slain terrorists, Nibras Islam, was an educated young boy who came from an affluent family.
Nibras was allegedly brainwashed and radicalized by terrorists to carry out the heinous attack in the name of Islam.
Videos and photos from his profile show a well-spoken, pleasant young boy.