UN Seeks More Than $100 Million to Counter Terrorism through "Development" - Despite No Definition of Terrorism

"Ever since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, U.N. relief agencies have sought to distance themselves from the U.S.-led war on terror, fearing a hit to their reputations and more risks of retaliation for peacekeepers and aid workers in the field.

But the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) is now seeking to carve out a big role for itself in preventing terrorism from taking root, requesting $108 million over the next four years to fund what would be the U.N.'s largest global push to limit the spread of violent extremism, according to a confidential UNDP draft strategy paper obtained by Foreign Policy...

The U.N. push into the counterterrorism field may face strong head wind from Washington, where President Donald Trump's administration is questioning the value of preventative strategies aimed at the root causes of terrorism, like those favored by former President Barack Obama's administration.

'Saying we need jobs for jihadis - [that] it's about root causes and upstream factors - is wholly fallacious,' Sebastian Gorka, an advisor to Trump, told NPR this month. If 'poverty and lack of education' were the causes of terrorism, 'then half of India would be terrorists. And they're not.'...

Some observers say the UNDP is simply slapping a counterterrorism label on traditional development work - like promoting jobs for women and youth - in the hope of stemming its own steady decline in funding over the past decade... One reason the U.N. has been leery of jumping into counterterrorism is the difficulty of determining just who a terrorist is..."