Aids, Security and the Military in Africa: a Sober Appraisal

This article examines four accepted wisdoms about HIV/AIDS and African armies and in each case concludes that substantial revision is necessary in the light of emerging evidence. First, it appears that military populations do not necessarily have a higher prevalence of HIV than civilian populations. HIV levels in armies depend on many factors including the demographics of the army, its pattern of deployment, the nature and stage of the epidemic in the country concerned, and the measures taken to control the disease by the military authorities. Second, although the epidemic has the potential to undermine the functioning of national militaries, and may have done so in isolated instances, armies in general are well placed to withstand the threat. Third, evidence that war contributes to the spread of the virus is meagre and suggests that we should be concerned primarily with specific risks that conflict may entail including population mobility and changing sexual networks. Lastly, the hypothesis that AIDS has the potential to disrupt national, regional, and international security remains speculative. THERE ARE MANY ACCEPTED WISDOMS ABOUT AIDS, its impact on security and on militaries and other uniformed forces. These include the following: 1. Military populations have a higher prevalence of HIV than civilian populations, and this is assumed to be due to the culture and behaviour of soldiers. 2. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is endangering the functioning of national militaries. 3. War and conflict contribute to the spread of the virus, in part because of sexual violence during war. 4. AIDS has the potential to disrupt national, regional and international security. This article takes a hard look at these four shibboleths. We base our discussion on some new evidence contained in many recent papers, our own Alex de Waal is a director of Justice Africa, Research Fellow, Global Equity Initiative, Harvard University, and program director at the Social Science Research Council. Alan Whiteside is the director of the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Lt-Gen (retd) Tsadkan Gebre-Tensae is director of the Centre for Policy Research and Dialogue, Addis Ababa.