Socioeconomic grievances, or so some assert, explain (though they do not justify) terrorism in general and Islamic terrorism in particular  the factors Al Gore famously called this February "another axis of evil in the world: poverty and ignorance; disease and environmental disorder; corruption and political oppression", all of which lead to terrorism. But do they?

It is hubris to attempt to explain terrorism in general, let alone in its many different forms across time and place. The following observations are therefore intended only to refocus the debate, not to "explain" terrorism.

The desire to identify "root causes" and so be able to correct them is natural. Root causes "have" to be there  at least in the American mind. There must be an explanation for the inexplicable: Why a teenage Palestinian girl would blow herself up in an attempt to kill as many Jews as possible, or privileged young men of the Arab world plot to kill themselves while murdering thousands of American civilians.

But much as the frequently asked question last fall, "Why do they hate us?", had flawed premises and yielded flawed answers, framing the question as "What are the root causes of terrorism?" leads too easily to looking at the usual suspects: "poverty", "injustice", "exploitation" and "frustration". Like the man in the parable who looks for his lost keys under the streetlight instead of where he lost them because "the light's better", it's easier to look in these familiar areas than to face and address the real problems.

Affluent terrorists

Those who hold to "poverty as the root cause" do so even though the data do not fit their model. Even leaving aside multimillionaire Osama bin Laden, the backgrounds of the Sept 11 killers indicate that they were, without exception, scions of privilege: All were either affluent Saudis and Egyptians, citizens of the wealthy Gulf statelets, or rich sons of Lebanon, trained in and familiar with the ways of the West  not exactly the victims of poverty in Muslim dictatorships. Many poor Egyptians, Moroccans and Palestinians may support terrorists, but they do not  and cannot  provide them with recruits. In fact, al-Qaeda has no use for illiterate peasants. They cannot participate in World Trade Center-like attacks, unable as they are to make themselves inconspicuous in the West and lacking the education and training terrorist operatives need.

Indeed, ever since the Russian intellectuals "invented" modern terrorism in the 19th century, revolutionary violence  terrorism is just one form of it  has been a virtual monopoly of the relatively privileged. Terrorists have been middle-class, often upper-class, and always educated, but never poor.

The South American Tupamaros and Montoneros of the 1970s were all middle-class, starting as cafe Jacobins and graduating into urban terrorism, as were their followers among the German Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Italian Red Brigades, France's Action Directe, the Sandinista leadership in Nicaragua and, before it, Fidel Castro's Cuban revolutionaries.

Considering the composition of many of the anti-globalist groups today, it is a safe bet that middle class, prosperous and self-righteous as they are, they will soon provide the recruits of a new wave of terrorism in the West  as we may already be seeing in the revival of Italy's Red Brigades.

Common enemy

To say that economic conditions are not the root cause of terrorism is not to say that there are no conditions that correlate strongly to political violence and terrorism. There are phenomena we should be concerned about in this regard; it is just that they are far less obvious than poverty and much more complex to address.

Environmentalist extremists, their animal-rights friends, anti-international corporation militants, anti-genetically modified plants fanatics a la France's Jose Bove  the world's best known vandal  none of them poor or underprivileged, have already demonstrated a propensity for violence and should be expected to do so in more deadly and organised manners in the future.

That is where the Osamas of the world meet the Western rejectionists of what the West is all about: rationality, individual as opposed to collective rights and interests, secularism and capitalism.

True enough, there is little common ideological ground among French Trotskyite Arlette Laguiller (who, with colleagues, has reached 10 percent in the polls in the first round of France's presidential elections) and Marxist-cum-separatist groups such as the Turkish PKK, the Basque ETA, the Sri Lankan LTTE and the Irish Republican Army.

But they share a common enemy. That enemy is the Western culture of democracy (which is correctly declared un-Islamic by all ideologues of Islamic terrorism), capitalism (hated in a very ecumenical way by Marxists of all stripes and by Islamists), and individualism (opposed by Marxist totalitarians dreaming of Marx's stateless communist Utopia, as well as by Islamic believers in a new Caliphate to lead the community of Muslims worldwide).

No money, no votes

But, we are told, the Islamic states are poor and undemocratic, which justifies rebellion against their tyrannical rulers. Why is that so, and what can be done about it by Muslims and others?

The apologists of Marxism and Islamism also need to answer another basic question. Did such regimes as, say, Iran, Afghanistan under the Taliban, or the late regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union actually make the life of ordinary citizens better or worse? And why would "democracy" be better in Saudi Arabia morally, ideologically and practically, where the chances of an Islamist getting elected are at least as great as in Algeria? Does it make sense for the European Union to condemn Turkey for proscribing (constitutionally, one might add) Islamist parties? Does Brussels really believe that an Islamic-governed Turkey is better than the current, secular Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) ally?

The poor in Muslim states may be the popular base of terrorist support, but they have neither the money nor the votes (who votes doesn't count, who counts them does, in Stalin's immortal words) the privileged do. Ultimately, Islamic terrorism, just as its Marxist or secessionist version in the West and Latin America was, is a matter of power  who has it and how to get it  not of poverty. Accepting this as a fundamental aspect of terrorism does not suggest any immediate solutions, but can direct further study toward better explanations of terrorism and theories with some potential predictive value.

MICHAEL RADU, PhD, is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, where he directs its Center on Terrorism and Political Violence.