The Security Implications of AIDS.

Allen R. Gibson
July 2004

In the 1990’s, AIDS was widely acknowledged to be the preeminent threat to health and security on the planet Particularly in the world’s underdeveloped countries, and most particularly in Africa, where an entire generation is threatened by the rampant spread of the disease.

Then 9-11 happened. Suddenly, the “War on Terror” took all the headlines, and most of the money and resources the US was prepared to commit to making the world a safer place.

What got obscured in the first three years of the War on Terror is that AIDS is a much greater source of terror, for far more people, than any religious fundamentalism, and America ignores this truth at her own peril.

Speaking at a NATO summit recently in Turkey, President Bush declared: "We face the challenge of corruption and poverty and disease, which throw whole nations into chaos and despair. These are the conditions in which terrorism can survive." 

The conditions, unfortunately, are present in an alarming number of countries, and the years spent by many governments denying that the disease was a problem only in someone else’s backyard have contributed to huge increases in the number of victims, and a vast increase in the social destabilization that often produces terrorism.

Michel Sidibe, of the UN's AIDS agency, sounds the alarm for southern and eastern Africa, warning that the AIDS crisis "…is influencing the whole capacity of the state to continue to play its normal function. Schooling is collapsing. The security foundation is completely undermined.” Failed states, as we now know, are prime places for terrorist recruitment efforts.

Not only is Africa affected. Projections paint a scary picture of the spread of the disease on the Indian subcontinent – which already has more than five million cases, and one of the highest rates of new infections anywhere. This is not a region noted for its avoidance of violence and terrorism. What will an AIDS epidemic do to the security situation in a country with The Bomb, and neighbors it mistrusts? 
China, too, is finally admitting not only that the disease exists, but that it’s already a crisis within the country’s rural hinterland – the regions least prepared to cope with it. China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao admitted as much at he world’s largest AIDS conference, held in Thailand this July, and demanded that everyone in his government stop denying the threat, and start fighting it.

Despite the fact that the US pays far more than any other country to fight the disease, many are critical of the ‘abstinence-first’ message the US promotes in programs it funds. Health care workers insist condoms are the best defense, and accuse the US of religious dogmatism in its approach. At the Thai conference, the US came under the usual fire, with critics contending we should do more, and take a less domineering approach in relations with poor countries afflicted by the disease. One of the most contentious issues is the US preference for using brand-name drugs in the AIDS fight. Poor countries argue that cheaper knock-off drugs are far more practical in places where the annual income of most people is far less than the cost of the needed drugs. Which is obviously true. Yet it is the very expensive technology, drugs, and Research and Development that the West has invested in and paid for that has made AIDS a treatable disease in the first place.

While the debate continues, new drug resistant strains of the AIDS virus continue to evolve, and the hope of a vaccine against HIV has greatly diminished. Companies like Aethlon Medical, who is developing a viral filtration device to filter all strains of HIV from infected blood, must navigate the geopolitical issues related to AIDS in addition to creating potentially relevant treatments. Ironically, the use of Aethlon's technology to treat HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis-C, has recently been expanded to defend against bioterror agents. It's just one example of how, in many ways, the ‘War on Terror’ and the ‘War on AIDS’ are the same war.

“AIDS is a disease rooted in poverty. The ability to receive medication and prevention information is directly connected to economic status. Wherever AIDS and extreme poverty co-exist, America's national security is threatened,” says Pastor Byron Williams.
In fact, AIDS can be used as a weapon. Individuals have threatened, and used, infection with the disease to pull bank robberies and to exact revenge on lovers. A March report by the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies says Palestinian bombers planned to include AIDS-tainted blood in a bomb with the hope of infecting victims injured by the blast. 

And on the psychological front, for the millions of AIDS victims who know they face nothing but a slow death, how hard would it be to tempt them into becoming suicide terrorists with the promise of a better future for the families they leave behind? Such a mindset has already been perfected among the Palestinian population. How difficult could it be to infect the displaced Muslims of the Sudan with a similar mindset, when they face nothing but starvation and ethnic cleansing in their former homes?

To this extent, at least, AIDS is likely to provide fertile ground for the terrorist recruiter. Outgoing CIA Director George J. Tenet, asked last year about AIDS, replied, “Is this a security issue? You bet it is."

Allen R. Gibson

Allen R. Gibson has over twenty-five years experience in media and corporate communications. His background includes radio, television, and print communications for public companies in both the US and Canada.

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