But what was once seen as a humanitarian catastrophe is viewed increasingly as a security threat—an important reason behind the $15 billion Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that President Bush announced in January 2003. A study of 112 countries by Susan Peterson, a political scientist at the College of William and Mary, and Stephen Shellman, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, found that countries with severe AIDS epidemics had correspondingly high levels of human-rights abuse and civil conflict. “Does AIDS make war or civil strife more likely?” asks Peterson. “The answer is yes.”
Even in countries that don’t collapse, AIDS deaths can threaten security in the form of AIDS orphans, who are desperate, disenfranchised, vulnerable to radicalization, and projected to reach 25 million worldwide by 2010. “Where do you think the breeding ground for terrorism will be?” asks General Charles Wald, the former operational head of European Command, which also oversees U.S. military operations in most of Africa. At a recent conference, Wald listed the biggest threats to U.S. security. After terrorism and weapons of mass destruction came AIDS.
High on the list of the Pentagon’s concerns about AIDS is its impact on African militaries; for many, it has become the biggest killer. Young, often far from home, and with cash in their pockets, soldiers who must live under fire cultivate a sense of invulnerability that can kill them when they come back to the barracks. The epidemic accounts for seven out of ten military deaths in South Africa and kills more Ugandan soldiers than any other cause, including a brutal twenty-year insurgency and two wars in Congo. AIDS deaths have reduced Malawi’s forces by 40 percent. Mozambique can’t train police officers fast enough to replace those dying of the disease. “As we fight the enemy, the HIV is also fighting us,” John Amosa, a forty-five-year-old AIDS-afflicted Ugandan sergeant, told me. “We have two front lines.”
AIDS as a Security Threat
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