September | 2014 | securityissues

On March 15, 2011 an armed conflict began between forces loyal to the government of Syria’s leader, President Bashar Al-Assad, and those seeking to oust him. This conflict, which is still ongoing, started as part of a group of demonstrations in the Middle East in 2011 known as the Arab Spring. The demonstrations in Syria have grown into a crisis and ultimately into civil war that has led to over 191,000 casualties since August 2014[1]. Out of this difficult and complex war with many groups inter-fighting, rose ISIS.

ISIS is a Sunni extremist group, which seeks to unify parts of Iraq and Syria under an Islamic state, referred to as a Sunni Caliphate. Its acronym, therefore, stands for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In June 2014, the group surprised the West when it announced itself as a formal Islamic State and proclaimed its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi[2]. As of August 2014, ISIS is believed to control between 13,000 and 35,000 square miles of land, 1,922 people have been killed and 2,610 injured in one month. They have between 30,000 to 50,000 militants fighting for them as many former Iraqi soldiers have been forced to join. How might they finance all of this? ISIS currently has $2,000,000,000 USD in cash and assets, which they acquired through looting from the Iraqi state back and military, and they make a daily revenue of $3,000,000[3].

World leaders have deemed ISIS a terrorist organization, even al-Qaida, a terrorist group famous for the 9/11 attacks, has deemed ISIS too radical [4]. In an attempt to halt ISIS, Obama made an announcement on September 10, 2014, which stated, “the United States will join with our friends and allies to degrade, and ultimately destroy the terrorist group”. The main tactic of international cooperation against ISIS has been air strikes[5].

Headlines broke on September 25, 2014 when it became known that a female pilot, Maj Mariam Al Mansouri, form the United Arab Emirates led the airstrikes against ISIS. Why is this so significant? In the last few months of ISIS violence, women have been a special target group of the organization. At least 300 Yazidi women have been taken as slaves, and many prominent woman activists have been executed by ISIS, such as Sameera Ali al-Nuiaimy, who is an Iraqi lawyer promoting women’s rights, and three female candidates running for election in the Nineveh providence [6]. ISIS regards woman as trophies and has a policy of violence and kidnapping them. It has even considered the idea of female genital mutilation[7]. Not only are ISIS’ views abhorrent towards woman, but it is also an insult to the Islamic law they claim to represent.

Why then is Major Mariam Al Mansouri’s leadership in international airstrikes so important? I believe that the fact that a woman is leading air attacks on an organization that actively aims to reduce the status and value of women is significant. Mansouri’s leadership does not make up for all the lost lives and all the women who have been abused and humiliated, but it is a strong symbolic stance. Not only for women, but for Islam as well. Yousef Al Otabia, the current United Arab Emirate Ambassador to the United States said, “she is a fully qualified, highly trained, combat ready pilot, and she led the mission. It is important for us—moderate Arabs, moderate Muslims—to step up and say this (ISIS) is a threat against us. This is more than just a threat against us than it is against you. This is not just a threat to our countries. This is a threat to our way of life”[8].

The conducting of air strikes by a woman is symbolically significant as ISIS is being weakened by a group it is oppressing: women.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/world/middleeast/un-raises-estimate-of-dead-in-syrian-conflict-to-191000.html

[2] http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/08/the-rise-of-isis/

[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/11/isis-iraq-numbers_n_5659239.html

[4] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/11/isis-too-extreme-al-qaida-terror-jihadi

[5] http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/lawmakers-weigh-giving-obama-authority-to-wage-war-against-islamic-state/2014/09/10/59f057b0-38fd-11e4-8601-97ba88884ffd_story.html

[6] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/11/isis-iraq-numbers_n_5659239.html, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/26/world/middleeast/womens-rights-activist-executed-by-islamic-state-in-iraq.html?ref=world&_r=0

[7] http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/barbarians_isis_mortal_threat_women_1.pdf

[8] http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/25/world/meast/uae-female-fighter-pilot/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

A Viral Threat to Security

On December 6, 2014, in a small town in Southeastern Guinea, a two-year-old girl passed away. In March 2014, hospital staff alerted Guinea’s Ministry of Health of a mysterious disease in the Southeast of Guinea. The World Health Organization later identified this mysterious disease as Ebola and that two-year-old girl was Ebola’s first victim in this new outbreak[1]. The United Nations has since called this Ebola outbreak an “international public health emergency”, Medecins Sans Frontieres has called it “out of control”, and United States President Obama has gone so far as to call it a “global security threat”[2].

How can a disease such as Ebola be deemed a security threat?

When trying to define the term “security”, Mohammed Ayooh wrote “security-insecurity is defined in relation to vulnerabilities- both internal and external- that threaten to have the potential to bring down or weaken state structures, both territorial and institutional and regimes”[3].

Ebola, therefore, can be understood as a security threat because state structures of affected nations in West Africa are weakening as effective containment strategies are failing and national economies are suffering.

Since March 2014, there have been 2,630 victims of Ebola in Western Africa. This outbreak has killed more than all former outbreaks in history combined. The World Health Organization warns that there could be 20,000 cases of Ebola before the disease can be brought under control[4]. So how can this virus be contained? Since Ebola is only infectious after patients have started showing symptoms, isolation of infected patients, and contact tracing and surveillance of all people who the patients came in contact with in the last week should, in theory, stop the transmission. Some of the reasons why this process of containment has been so difficult to achieve in Western Africa is because many healthcare facilities have no or limited supplies, several cases have been misidentified, many local people are choosing not to go to healthcare facilities and some cultural practices increase infection risk. Distrust for authorities is a key reason why affected people might refuse to seek help. Another reason might be lack in education surrounding the spreading of viruses. A difficult issue is how to navigate certain cultural practices that are increasing the risk of infection. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, for instance, preparing a body for burial services involves washing of the body, touching and kissing by the family and community. [5]. How can national governments step in and ask people not to honor their dead and follow their traditions? How can international organizations ask such as thing?

Besides the difficulties of containment, Ebola has also had a disastrous effect on the economies of affected nations in Western Africa. On August 20, 2014, Sierra Leone’s Agriculture Minister Joseph Sam Sesay said, “The economy has been deflated by 30 % because of Ebola”. Due to many roadblocks and quarantined sections by the United Nations, Sierra Leone is having difficulty producing food. Sesay explains that “ We are now coming into the planting season which means a lot of agriculture is not happening, so down the line that will create food shortages and pressures on food prices. We are starting to see a rise in inflation and pressure on the national currency as well as a shortage of foreign exchange”[6]. The World Bank stated, “Billions of dollars could be drained from West African countries.” This loss comes out of every aspect of the nations’ economy from agriculture to travel and tourism bans[7]. This economic loss will take much time to rebuild, and for already weak economies, this setback is difficult.

The Ebola outbreak is a complex issue. This brief explanation does not do justice to the individual stories and the efforts that have been made by national and international bodies. It simply aims to illustrate why a virus outbreak can and should, in this case, be considered an issue of security. Affected nations in Western Africa are having tremendous difficulty containing Ebola, even with the help of international institutions, and the effects that this outbreak are having and will continue to have on the Western African economies are catastrophic.