IRIN has a story on the risk of HIV amongst former child soldiers through sex or drug abuse, particularly in Uganda. This phenomena, well studied in public health research literature, finds that both the ability of an individual to adapt (strong social connections, etc…) and the rate of change in their environment (social, economic, etc…) are powerful determinants of health. But, as far as I know, this research has not been extended into the developing world.
“We have found that in places like Sierra Leone, large numbers of demobilised child soldiers are increasingly injecting illegal drugs,” said Dr Josef Decosas, senior HIV policy adviser at Plan International, a development agency working for and with children. “And we know that as soon as HIV comes into a network of drug users it spreads like wildfire.”
He said recent research had shown that conflict tended to curb the spread of HIV by limiting movement and social interactions, but when wars ended these communities returned to normal and mobility increased, so HIV became a real issue.
“In Uganda, the HIV prevalence in the LRA [rebel Lord's Resistance Army] is thought to be quite low, but in northern Uganda’s local population it is quite high, so demobilised children need to be prepared to avoid HIV,” he said.
The Long War Journal has a gallery of photos from the Sayafiyah Combined Medical Engagement (CME) clinic.
The CME was set up as an outreach program to provide needed medical care and help establish Coalition forces as an agent of goodwill amongst the people in Sayafiyah and Al Sur. The 5/7 Cav has conducted numerous CMEs during its time in Iraq, which helped the CME in Sayafiyah to come together smoothly.
The key to hearts and minds is jobs and health care. If the US is serious about rebuilding its image in the world, these medical operations must be more than token photo-ops and be placed at the core of US global strategy.
Five years after Congo’s devastating war “ended”, the country’s death rate remains the same. These are the findings of a survey released in mid January. The study estimates 45,000 die every month in the Congo, the same numbers as revealed by a wartime survey in 2004.
Still, improvements in security since 2004, when the last survey was completed, meant that researchers were able to visit many areas that were off limits last time, and as a result, its authors said, the current survey provides the most complete picture yet of the toll of Congo’s slide into despair.
That picture is not encouraging. The survey found that the mortality rate in Congo is 57 percent higher than in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. Particularly hard hit were young children, who are especially susceptible to diseases like malaria, measles, dysentery and typhoid, serious killers in the absence of medicine. In one village in North Kivu Province, a hot spot of continued fighting, three women of the 20 households surveyed had lost two children each in the 16 months covered by the survey period, Dr. Brennan said.
Less than half a percentage point of the deaths were caused by violence, illustrating how the aftermath of war can be more deadly than combat itself. Much of the emergency aid is focused on the eastern part of the country, where militia battles with Congolese troops have chased nearly half a million people from their homes in the last year. A peace agreement to end that conflict was reached Monday.
Hat Tip: PCR Project
Chris Blattman offers up a great list of videos on rebels and their leaders available on Youtube. What is so telling about the list is that it exploits smart mobs to gather data (in this case videos) relevant to political science research. Each Youtube uploader had a unilateral incentive to upload one or more videos but was never aware that this aggregated out to create a valuable and unique collection.
The Economist reports on the overpopulation of young, unemployed men in both Gaza and Kenya. In both regions, economic development has lagged behind gains in health and education, creating a generation of poor and disgruntled young people. These generations can be a major source of insecurity and they are prime recruits for insurgencies and criminal organizations.
This phenomena reminds me of research finding the best predictor of lynchings in the American South was the price of cotton. That is, the gap between economic expectations and reality created a behavioral proclivity towards violence. I will see if I am can dig up the specific article and let you know.
Hat Tip: New Security Beat.
The always enjoyable blog, New Security Beat, reports on a growing poaching problem in Tanzania. Interestingly, the poachers are not criminals after Ivory, but refugees after protein. Refugees in Tanzania have started eating local wildlife as a source of protein, sorely lacking in their UN provided food. The problem is that the refugees’ free protein often comes from chimpanzees and other endangered species.
In response to the report’s assertions, Christiane Berthiaume of the UN World Food Programme, which feeds 215,000 refugees in Tanzania, said that meat spoils quickly, and substituting canned meat for the cheaper beans that currently supply the refugees with protein would cost an additional $46 million over the estimated $60 million currently dedicated to feeding refugees in Tanzania during 2007 and 2008.
The study of genocide rarely brings up connotations of R-code and heteroskedasiticity, but it should. Jina Moore at the Christian Science Monitor has a story on Patrick Ball, a statistician and expert on the quantitative study of genocide.
Like all statisticians, Ball began with the most basic hypothesis: In looking for a common cause, he is already wrong. Statistics begins with an original assumption – that everything is random – and discards it only when the data suggest otherwise. In Ball’s case, they did: He found patterns in the mass movement of refugees strong enough to suggest that more than ordinary wartime chaos was at work. At the same time, the relationship between migration and NATO or KLA actions was so weak that he knew neither was the cause.
Statisticians have a language for description without interpretation. When the analysis showed the movements were neither random nor likely to follow NATO or KLA activities, Ball wrote: "The migration patterns of Kosovar Albanians are consistent with the hypothesis that there was a coordinated and organized effort to drive them from their homes." In layman’s terms, the data suggested ethnic cleansing. In fact, the migration patterns matched killing patterns "so unbelievably perfectly" that he concluded that the two situations might be explained by the same external influence.
The quantitative study of conflict fills an important role in both research and policy. The statistical analysis of data, while lacking the glamour of other approaches, can reveal patterns otherwise concealed. In recent years quantitative methodology has grown in popularity in political science. This trend has lead to numerous heated exchanges between qualitative and quantitative researchers. Regarding the role of statistics in conflict studies, I think Ball has the right attitude:
But even so devoted a numbers guy knows graphs don’t tell the whole story. "Statistics define the limits of what’s plausible and what’s not plausible," he says. "Statistics do not tell us how it felt to be there."
In 2000, just after a Kosovo newspaper published his conclusions about migration, Ball was on a radio show. "Someone called in and said, ‘I’m in your graph,’" he recalls. "The peak, right there, that’s where I was. I could feel that wave.’ "
Link Love: Chris Blattman
LTC Robert Bateman has a great, short bibliography on combat trauma. While the bibliography understandably focuses on psychological trauma in soldiers, I am interested in how the concepts apply to civilians.
The history of combat trauma is one which draws fire every time. It is a topic wrapped in politics, both conventional and those internal to both the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and history. I hope this brief annotated bibliography will help some come to understand the foundations, the arguments, and the various issues in play on this topic. This list is rank-ordered in what I believe is their utility to those interested in the study of war, particularly my fellow historians and journalists, but also my peers in the military.
Always a sucker for a good war and health related graphic, I can’t help but post about Nightingale’s Rose. The Rose is a graphical representation of William Farr’s mortality data on the Crimean War, drawn by the one and only Florence Nightingale. The chart visualizes infectious disease (in blue), battle casualties (in red), and other deaths (in black) .
While interesting, the Nightingale Rose is, for three reasons, far from my favorite visualization of casualty data. First, the wedges are measured from the center (and therefore overlap), however this is not intuitively derived from the graphic itself and thus can easily lead to misinterpretation. Second, as with pie charts, I find it difficult to accurately compare wedges of similar size. Take, for example, the August 1984 and November 1984 blue wedges. Which is larger? Third, the area of each wedge represents its numerical value, however, since this is accomplished by increases the radius of the wedge, the representation takes on an exponential property. For instance, a wedge representing twice as many deaths as another wedge would not have twice the radius. Again, this takes away from the intuitive interpretation of the graphic. Not to say it isn’t still very cool.
This graphic is republished with permission from its creator, Hugh Small.
While at the Naval Postgraduate School, a smart US Army civil affairs officer pointed out that Afghans’ animals are their prized possessions. The wealth of villages is easily determined by looking at the health of their livestock. Given this, the military has been running veterinary programs in Afghanistan to help win over hearts and minds. Not a bad idea at all. Recently, I stumbled upon a program which hints at an expansion of this practice into Africa:
US military forces have launched a veterinary project in Gulu and Amuru displaced persons’ camps that aims to vaccinate 12,000 cattle and 130,000 goats over the next month. The US team, working with the Ugandan Ministry of Agriculture, will be treating the livestock free of charge.
This is the type of program I love to see. Winning hearts and minds through applying US power to health, even if it is for animals. The operations are low cost (relative to combat), cause positive “collateral damage”, and attack the social networks which breed political / religious radicalism.