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The Deadlier Legacy Of Aids

Paris, 18/09/2003 - (SA) - Already a human disaster of almost unimaginable proportions, Africa's Aids pandemic is also fast emerging as a security concern, with fears it will breed regional wars, civil strife and terrorism.

Experts speaking ahead of a major conference on Africa's Aids crisis opening in Nairobi on Sunday said the disease is inflicting such grim costs that more countries may join Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo on the list of sick, war-ravaged states.

South of the Sahara, about 30 million people have Aids or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes it, according to the UN agency UNAids. Last year alone, 2.2 million Africans died of the disease.

In seven southern African countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe) at least a fifth of the adult population has the virus.

A whole generation

In these worst-hit countries, a whole generation of human capital is being wiped out by Aids.

The economic and social cost is such that their stability is at threat, the experts say.

Fields are lacking labourers to sow and harvest. Schools are going without teachers. Hospitals are losing their doctors and nurses. Business is losing entrepreneurs who bring dynamism and investment.

The decimation of the rural workforce creates a vicious circle, for it adds to the food shortages in famine-stricken countries, UNAids chief advisor for Africa, Michel de Groulard, said. People with HIV, who are the least resistant to malnutrition, are often the first to die.

Army of orphans

They leave behind a ragged army of Aids orphans, whose numbers are set to reach some 20 million by the end of this decade.

These children, uneducated and shunned, are easy targets for criminals and militias, de Groulard said.

"These children fall prey to all kinds of organisations and manipulators, who can turn them into child soldiers or eventually terrorists. It's a genuine risk," he said.

Put together, these ingredients are a potent formula for dislocation and civil violence, de Groulard said.
"This especially concerns southern Africa - Mozambique, Zimbabwe and to a lesser degree Botswana. All of this zone is very vulnerable in that respect," he said in an interview.

Meanwhile, the security forces which underpin stability in many African countries are getting progressively weaker.

A military conference in Gaborone, the Botswanan capital, was told last week that in southern African countries as many as 60 percent of troops have HIV.

The pandemic "could be a source for intra- and interstate conflict," Botswanan Major General Bakwena Oitsile said.

"If the security forces become weaker due to ill health, the countries' constitutions could be easily challenged. The political structures that ensure democratic governance could be threatened."

Terrorist havens

Devastated, turmoil-ridden countries, where law and order have broken down and the economy amounts to little more than a black market, are ripe for becoming terrorist havens, as was the case in Somalia, US analyst Patrick Garrett said.

"If an economy implodes as a result of massive Aids prevalence, then certainly terrorism can take root," Garrett, an associate at Washington thinktank Globalsecurity.org, said.

Such worries clearly figure in the thinking behind the five-year, $15bn US initiative to help African and Caribbean countries against Aids.

In February, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief George Tenet branded the pandemic a threat to US national security for its ability to "further weaken already beleaguered states."

"It's not just a health crisis, it's a crisis of nation states. Nations will collapse if they don't fix this problem," US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned in May.

The six-day Nairobi forum, the International Conference on Aids and STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections) in Africa, known as Icasa, is the biggest regional forum on the continent's Aids problems. It is held every two years, alternating with the International Aids Conference.

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