AIDS, security and the military in Africa: A sober appraisal

This article examines four accepted wisdoms about HIV/AIDS andAfrican armies and in each case concludes that substantial revisionis necessary in the light of emerging evidence. First, it appearsthat military populations do not necessarily have a higher prevalenceof HIV than civilian populations. HIV levels in armies dependon many factors including the demographics of the army, itspattern of deployment, the nature and stage of the epidemicin the country concerned, and the measures taken to controlthe disease by the military authorities. Second, although theepidemic has the potential to undermine the functioning of nationalmilitaries, and may have done so in isolated instances, armiesin general are well placed to withstand the threat. Third, evidencethat war contributes to the spread of the virus is meagre andsuggests that we should be concerned primarily with specificrisks that conflict may entail including population mobilityand changing sexual networks. Lastly, the hypothesis that AIDShas the potential to disrupt national, regional, and internationalsecurity remains speculative. ^1. Roger Yeager, Craig Hendrix, and Stuart Kingma, ‘Internationalmilitary Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiencysyndrome policies and programs: strengths and limitations incurrent practice’, Military Medicine 165, 2 (2000), pp.87–92. ^2. S. Kingma, ‘AIDS prevention in military populations: learningthe lessons of history’, International AIDS Society Newsletter,4, March 1996, pp. 9–11. ^3. UNAIDS, ‘AIDS and the military: UNAIDS point of view’,UNAIDS Best Practice Collection, May 1998 (http://www.unaids.org/html/pub/publications/irc-pub05/militarypv_en_pdf.pdf,9 January, 2005). ^4. A.E. Pettifor, H.V. Rees, A. Steffenson, L. Hlongwa-Madikizela,C. MacPhail, K. Vermaak, and I. Kleinschmidt, HIV and SexualBehaviour Among Young South Africans: A national survey of 15–24year olds (Reproductive Health Research Unit, University ofWitwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2004). ^5. According to a South African AIDS Law Project press releaseof 23 October 2003, ‘the SANDF has however excluded andcontinues to exclude job applicants with HIV from employmentin the SANDF’ (http://www.alp.org.za/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=229,16 April, 2005). ^6. Yigeremu Abebe, Ab Schaap, Girmatchew Mamo, Asheber Negussie,Birke Darimo, Dawit Wolday, and Eduard J. Sanders, ‘HIVprevalence in 72,000 urban and rural army recruits, Ethiopia’,AIDS 17, 12 (2003), pp. 1835–40. ^7. Taddesse Berhe, Hagos Gemechu, and Alex de Waal, ‘Warand HIV prevalence: evidence from Tigray, Ethiopia’, AfricanSecurity Review 14, 3 (2005), pp. 107–14. ^8. Olive Shisana, Leickness Simbayi, and E. Dorkenoo, ‘SouthAfrica’s first national population-based HIV/AIDS behaviouralrisks, sero-status and media impact survey (SABSSM) researchproject’ (Third Quarterly Progress Report, Household Survey2002, Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria, 2002). ^9. UNAIDS, ‘AIDS and the military’, UNAIDS TechnicalUpdate, 1998 (http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/aidsleadership/dls_AIDS_military_may14.pdf,July 21, 2004); ‘Military populations’ AIDS Briefs(http://www.heard.org.za/publications/AidsBriefs/sec/military.pdf,December 22, 2005). ^10. Tsadkan Gebre Tensae, ‘HIV/AIDS in the Ethiopian military:perceptions, strategies and impacts’ (unpublished paper,2002). ^11. A. Adefalolu, ‘HIV/AIDS as an occupational hazard to soldiers– ECOMOG experience’ (Paper presented at the 3rdAll Africa Congress of Armed Forces and Police Medical Services,Pretoria, 1999), pp. 4–11. ^12. M. Fleshman, ‘AIDS prevention in the ranks – UNtarget peacekeepers, combatants in war against the disease’,African Recovery 15, 1–2 (2004), pp. 9–10. ^13. The same was true in Thailand, where the army responded in advanceof the government. ^14. ‘HIV/AIDS and Uniformed Services: Analysing the Evidence’.Expert Meeting, Cape Town, December 6–7, 2004 called byUNAIDS and attended by Alan Whiteside. ^15. Edward Hooper, Slim (Bodley Head, London, 1990); Edward Hooper,The River: A journey to the source of HIV and AIDS (Penguin,London, 2000), pp. 42–9. ^16. Robert Shell, ‘The silent revolution: HIV/AIDS and militarybases in Sub-Saharan Africa’ in Consolidating Democracy,Seminar Report Series (Konrad Adenauer Foundation, East London,2000), pp. 29–41. ^17. Reinhard Kaiser, Paul Spiegel, Peter Salama, William Brady,Elizabeth Bell, Kyle Bond, and Marie Downer, ‘HIV/AIDSseroprevalence and behavioral risk factor survey in Sierra Leone,April 2002’ (Center for Disease Control and Prevention,Atlanta, GA, 2002). ^18. C. Mulanga, S. Bazepeo, J. Mwamba, C. Butel, J.-W. Tshimpaka,M. Kashi, F. Lepira, M. Carael, M. Peeters, and E. Delaporte,‘Political and socio-economic instability: how does itaffect HIV? A case study in the Democratic Republic of Congo’,AIDS 18, 5 (2004), pp. 832–4. ^19. Taddesse Berhe, Hagos Gemechu, and Alex de Waal, ‘Warand HIV prevalence: evidence from Tigray, Ethiopia’, AfricanSecurity Review 14, 3 (2005), pp. 107–14. ^20. Tim Allen, ‘AIDS, security and democratic governance’,The Hague, 2–4 May 2005. Presentation at expert seminar. ^21. Paul Spiegel, ‘HIV/AIDS among conflict-affected and displacedpopulations: dispelling myths and taking action’, Disasters28, 4 (2004), pp. 322–39. ^22. African Rights, Rwanda: Broken bodies, torn spirits; livingwith genocide, rape and HIV/AIDS (African Rights, Kigali, 2004);V. Randell, ‘Sexual violence and genocide against Tutsiwomen. Propaganda and sexual violence in the Rwandan genocide:an argument for intersectionality in international law’,Columbia Human Rights Law Review 33, 3 (2002), pp. 733–55. ^23. Kaiser et al., ‘HIV/AIDS seroprevalence’. ^24. P. Fourie and M. Schönteich, ‘Africa’s newsecurity threat: HIV/AIDS and human security in southern Africa’,African Security Review 10, 4 (2001), pp. 29–44; M. Schönteich,‘AIDS and age: SA’s crime time bomb’, AIDSAnalysis Africa 10, 2 (1999), pp. 1–4. ^25. Rachel Bray, ‘Predicting the social consequences of orphanhoodin South Africa’ (Working Paper No. 29, Centre for SocialScience Research, University of Cape Town, 2003).     

The Social Policies Presidents Make: Pre-Emptive Leadership Under Nixon and Clinton

Grounded in Stephen Skowronek's typology of presidential leadership, this paper furthers our understanding of 'pre-emptive leadership' through a comparative analysis of the welfare and Social Security reforms pursued by US presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Although not identical, their experience in these areas provides valuable insight into the difficulty of wielding power in an inhospitable political environment. The paper starts with a brief presentation of Skowronek's typology before discussing the electoral strategies employed by both presidents as they attempted to frame political identities that would allow them to compete successfully in unfavourable ideological and political circumstances. The paper then specifically focuses on the politics of welfare and Social Security reform as the two presidents used these issues as part of their efforts to craft distinctive political images and attract wider electoral support. This comparative analysis reinforces the concept of 'pre-emption' as a valuable tool in understanding presidential behaviour. However, it also underlines the limits of pre-emptive leadership. Pre-emptive strategies can be effective at election time, but they are less likely to succeed in the legislative arena. This reality complicates the presidential search for genuine policy legacies.     

Citizenship and the Politics of Nature: The Case of Chile's Alto Bío Bío

To date, most treatments of ecological citizenship have been concerned with identifying the ways in which particular approaches to citizenship might provide political tools for working toward more sustainable futures. The present analysis builds on an alternate perspective, which instead treats nature and citizenship as dynamic interconnected sites of power relations. While not dismissive of the existing literature, this approach is partly informed by a concern for promoting a more democratic politics of nature, rather than simply “greener” practices of citizenship. Furthermore, it calls for a more empirically-based analysis of the way in which nature is politicized by different social actors. By way of putting this perspective into practice, the essay examines the case of a conflict over hydroelectric development on the Bío Bío River, in southern Chile, seeking to document the way that nature is constructed vis-à-vis the country's dominant citizenship regime, and also to identify the insurgent voices of alternate ecological citizenships. This is achieved by comparing the discourses of nature and citizenship employed by various actors in the conflict, including proponents of the dams, environmentalists, and the Pehuenche indigenous people, whose lands were at the centre of the struggle. While environmentalists and the Pehuenche can be seen to have advanced significant challenges to the market-based citizenship of Chile's post-dictatorship liberal democracy, the failure of the resistance ultimately led to a re-consolidation of the central ideological components of the existing eco-political order.     

Filtration based DNA preparation for sexual assault cases

Police departments in the United States currently have as many as 500,000 unprocessed swabs taken from rape victims. The standard method for purifying sperm from these swabs is to resuspend first all cells and to digest selectively the excess of the victim's epithelial cells. The intact sperm are then separated from the contaminating solubilized DNA by centrifugation, careful removal of supernatant, and extensive washing of the sperm pellet, all steps that are difficult to automate. Vacuum driven filtration is an alternative method for separating sperm from digested epithelial cells that requires only pipetting steps and can be readily automated in a 96 well format. Sperm DNA is enriched 45-fold using this process and the yield of PCR ready DNA is roughly 20% of the amount originally present on the swab.     

Review

Richard Abraham, Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1987, xxii + 503 pp. £20.00.

R. F. Miller et al. eds. Gorbachev at the Helm: A New Era in Soviet Politics? London: Croom Helm, 1987, viii + 251 pp., £30.00.

Mervyn Matthews, Poverty in the Soviet Union: The Life‐Styles of the Underprivileged in Recent Years. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986, xv + 227 pp., £22.40 h/b £7.95 p/b.

Angus Roxburgh, PRAVDA: Inside the Soviet News Machine. London: Gollancz, 1987, 285 pp., £16.95.

Cynthia S. Kaplan, The Party and Agricultural Crisis Management in the USSR, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987, xvi + 203 pp., $30.75.