By Matt Frei

BBC News, Washington

The hijackers of Flight 93 came from affluent backgrounds The Virginia Five, currently imprisoned in Pakistan, the Nigerian "underpants bomber" whose name everyone - including President Obama - is stumbling over; the Jordanian doctor who turned out to be a double agent with a suicide vest in a CIA compound in Afghanistan; what do they all have in common apart from a profound hatred of America and its allies? They are all the products of relative prosperity and higher education. After all, Osama Bin Laden and his deputy also came from a privileged background. None of the recent suspects are high school drop-outs or desperate refugees who have nurtured hatred of the West in the frayed lining of an empty stomach. None have had to watch relatives die in stray American bomb attacks. They have all had a lot to lose and yet they were prepared to lose their own lives for a cause. So, what makes the 23-year-old son of a prominent Nigerian banker pack his underpants with explosives in pursuit of martyrdom? Soon a trip on a plane may involve a full confession of one's private life and the kind of body scans usually reserved for serious medical conditions

Much of the reporting has been focussed on his sojourn in Yemen, the mosque he attended there, the al-Quaeda contacts he made in Sanaa. We have all, understandably, combed through the security breaches from Lagos to Amsterdam to Detroit. In Washington, hawks are circling around Yemen, calling it the next failed state in possible receipt of US military attention. The debate is heating up over which is more effective. And then there are the latest joys of air travel: full body scanners, religious profiling, departure lounge interrogations courtesy of El Al-trained heavies. All this may well become necessary and soon a trip on a plane to New York or Washington may involve a full confession of one's private life and the kind of body scans usually reserved for serious medical conditions. Soon we may all just want to stay at home. Or take the car. Or use Skype. But the journey that I find fascinating is the suspect's from prosperity to desperation, from self-awareness to self-annihilation. I first came across this phenomenon when I went to visit the family of one of the 9/11 hijackers a few days after the attack. Hamburg with its drizzly weather and frigid hospitality is not an easy place for an outsider. But surely that doesn't explain the road to suicide.

Ziad Jarrah was the 26-year-old Lebanese student who is thought to have flown the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. His family lived a short drive from Beirut in the Bekaa valley. I was expecting a modest home or even a slum. Instead, we were greeted by his parents under a large chandelier in the reception room of a sumptuous villa surrounded by BMWs and Mercedes. His father, a softly-spoken man who was in charge of social services in the area wept quietly as he told me how Ziad had called up on the night of 10 September to tell his father he was intending to return to Beirut to introduce the family to his Turkish fiancee with whom he had been living in Hamburg. "There will be a BMW waiting for you at the airport", the father told the son. "It will have a set of keys in it. They are yours!" Ziad was clever, good-looking and popular. He was studying aviation engineering in Hamburg. Ziad Jarrah: Searching for an ideology? What had turned his mind to murder and suicide? Did Mohammed Atta, the ringleader in the Hamburg cell who recruited him have such an hypnotic effect on his clever disciple? Was it the deliberate, grinding process of peer pressure from his new friends? Hamburg with its drizzly weather and frigid hospitality is not an easy place for an outsider. But surely that doesn't explain the road to suicide. Who knows what the quirks and twists of each individual mind hold in store? But part of the answer may lie in the fact that al-Qaeda offers something that the home environment of its recruits has failed to provide: a cause, however questionable, and even more importantly a sense of belonging. A friend of mine in British intelligence called it "an alternative family". He was talking about the small number of British citizens of Pakistani origin who took part in the 7/7 attacks in London in 2005 or planning future attacks. "They have been caressed by Britain but not embraced by it. "They feel like misfits here in the UK. And when they return to the tribal culture of their ancestral villages in Pakistan they feel equally unwelcome. They have become nomads and al-Quaeda offers them a tent and a cause." Michael Chertoff, the former head of Homeland Security under George Bush wasn't at all surprised when I spoke to him about the connection between higher education and terrorism. "What these people find attractive is that al-Qaeda offers them a coherent world view, an ideology." Unfortunately, this is one battle of ideas which cannot be solved with conversation. Matt Frei is the presenter of BBC World News America which airs every weekday on BBC News, BBC World News and BBC America (for viewers outside the UK only). And you can hear Matt present Americana on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service every week. Send us your comments in reaction to Matt Frei's diary using the link below: Send your comments



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