The most telling image from hundreds of hours of news footage shot this week in southern Lebanon is of a walkie-talkie clipped to the hip of a Hezbollah operative. Ostensibly harmless, it identifies him instantly — as part of a formidable networked militia, but also of an organisation that has bought the long-term allegiance of civilians through welfare programmes.
In the same week, security forces have been investigating possible links between a charity active in British mosques and the alleged plot to destroy a dozen transatlantic airliners. Such links may or may not be proved. But it would be naive to suppose that all gifts intended for humanitatian causes in the Middle East ended in peaceful hands; and it would be folly not to recognise that assiduously targeted largesse by terror groups, whether in the form of schools in Gaza or pharmacies in southern Beirut, has played a central role in winning over hearts and minds. The West will not neutralise the terrorism aimed at its cities, its airlines and at Israel until it persuades those minds that goodwill is not the monopoly of the man with the walkie-talkie — and the Katyusha.
This persuasion will take time, resources and a willingness to grapple with complexity. Exposing the abuse of charitable giving must be part of it. Jamaat ud-Dawa, the Kashmir-based charity, insists it has never diverted money intended for earthquake relief to jihadist causes. Interpal, the British charity now being investigated for a third time by the Charities Commission, denies a BBC report that it funnelled donations to Hamas. Both charities may, indeed, be blameless. But definitions of “jihad” are elastic, and the ad hoc handling of collections in many mosques is notoriously vulnerable. To suggest that Britons may be unwittingly supporting Lebanese and Afghan villagers indoctrinated to hate them is not fanciful, but realistic.
Any Western goodwill offensive must also involve traditional humanitarian relief. But heavy-lift helicopters of the kind that the US — and no one else — supplied in numbers after last October’s earthquake in Pakistan can do little to help Kashmiri villagers to learn to identify and shun extremists in their midst. Nor will the Western aid now arriving in Beirut’s reopened airport do much, on its own, to turn the south of the country away from Hezbollah. It would be naive to assume that such positive initiatives are always greeted in the spirit in which they are meant.
From Tyre to Gaza and Kandahar, militant Islam in all its guises is being funded openly by Iran and less openly, despite the imperfect efforts of Saudi reformers, by the corrosive alliance of wealth and fundamentalist Wahhabism. Western agencies have so far failed spectacularly to match the resources flowing from these two poles of Islam, or to counter the proselytising zeal that accompanies them. Yet failure, as Gene Kranz once told Mission Control, is not an option — and, elsewhere in the Islamic world, there are grounds for hope.
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The rock star Bono has identified education as the next battleground for hearts and minds. Where there is a vacuum the extremists will thrive, and yet there is an opportunity for well-aimed aid to sow understanding. Already in Afghanistan, once shackled by medievalist misogyny, girls are now entering the classroom once again. With sufficient funding and commitment, extremism can spread like wildfire — but so can enlightenment.