Month: October 2014
Ebola, the Secret Service, Ukraine, Syria and Hong Kong
Ebola, the Secret Service, Ukraine and Syria have something in common: each in its own way betrays symptoms of institutional failure. The social structures governing behavior have broken down under strain, leading to problems that would not occur at all or would be manageable without extraordinary measures if social norms and the mechanisms that enforce them were performing effectively.
This is obvious in the case of Ebola, which has spread in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia because the health systems there are weak. As Centers for Disease Control (CDC) official Stephan Monroe put it:
“If we ever needed a reminder that we all live in a connected world, this horrible Ebola outbreak is it,” Monroe said.
That means the U.S. and other countries have a stake in investing in developing countries, whose needs may seem to be far from U.S. domestic priorities.
“We need to build systems to find cases quickly before they spread,” Monroe said. “This means strong health systems throughout the region.”
Easily said. Hard to do. Decent surveillance is one of the reasons Ebola has not spread in Nigeria. Inadequate surveillance systems in West Africa are one of the main reasons the disease is now spreading there. Their inadequacy is a reflection of more general state weakness. Sierra Leone and Liberia suffered decades of war. Guinea suffered decades of coups. The health systems in all three countries are devastated. State weakness has consequences.
We are about to see our own institutions challenged. The first Ebola case has now entered the US, ironically in Texas. Ironically because its governor, Rick Perry, has been a vocal critic of Federal institutions like the CDC that are vital to America’s defenses against infectious disease. But it was a private hospital in his own state that failed to recognize Ebola symptoms in a traveler from Liberia, allowing him to circulate for two days and potentially infect a couple of dozen people. Someone should tell Rick Perry to eat his Fed Up tirade.
One of our most august institutions, the Secret Service, has already failed to meet its challenge: ensuring that the President is not exposed to danger. It failed to prevent a fence-hopper from entering and exploring the White House. It also allowed a gun-toting felon into an elevator with the President, on his recent visit to CDC. The Secret Service director has resigned, but there is precious little reason to believe that the laxity and incompetence have been fixed. Once your institutions run down that far, it takes real reform, not just a few firings, to fix them.
The Ukraine and Syria crises are also due to failed institutions. Ukraine has been badly governed since it emerged from the Soviet Union 23 years ago. Successive administrations have plundered its institutions, culminating in former President Yanukovych’s lavish palace. There is no merit in Moscow’s claim that Fascists conducted a coup in Ukraine and chased Yanukovych from office. He abandoned his position when confronted with a popular rebellion, one that admittedly was supported by the Ukrainian nationalist right, including some anti-Semites. But Ukrainians of all political perspectives and ethnicities are right to have doubts about the ability of their weak state to protect their security and rights.
That is even more true in Syria, where even his Alawite supporters are now doubting whether Bashar al Asad has their best interests at heart. His looks like a strong state: it has killed a lot of Syrians and laid waste to a large part of the country. But in doing so he has ensured that the state has little popular support in many parts of the country. The reemergence of polio in Syria is a tell-tale sign of state weakness. A state does not become strong by exerting itself against its own citizens. It becomes strong by giving them good reason to regard its authority as legitimate.
The authorities in Hong Kong have so far avoided Bashar al Asad’s mistakes. They have permitted massive demonstrations in favor of a democratic election to decide the city-state’s future leader in 2017. The demonstrators have also been wise. They have displayed extraordinary non-violent discipline in pursuing their “umbrella” revolution. It looks this morning as if both sides may be prepared to talk. That is a good idea. A crackdown now would be risky not just for the Hong Kong authorities but also for Beijing. There may be no exit apparent, but things could still get much worse for both the demonstrators and the authorities. Even dictatorships like China’s depend on legitimacy.
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Syrians helping Syrians
More than 350 airstrikes have been carried out against the Islamic State in Syria by the US and its allies since September 23. However, the recent focus on IS has kept the Assad regime, and its crimes, out of the spotlight. In opposition held areas, barrel bombings are a routine occurrence, and snipers target civilians indiscriminately. There is evidence for continuing use of chemical weapons – repeatedly challenging the “red line” laid out by President Obama two years ago. The destruction has left little infrastructure remaining.
For civilians living in the conflict zones, the result is a humanitarian disaster. In order to mitigate the suffering, local communities have begun to form volunteer-run organizations to perform basic civil functions and relief work. The United States Institute of Peace held a discussion on Wednesday with members of one such organization. Meet Syria’s Rescue Workers: Saving Lives, Building Peace, brought together two members of the Syrian Civil Defense Units: Raed Salah, Head of the Idlib branch, and Khaled Harah, member of Aleppo city branch, along with Samer Attar of the Syrian American Medical Society, and medical volunteer in Aleppo. Hind Kabawat, Senior Program Officer at USIP, moderated.
Opening the discussion with his experiences working as a doctor in opposition held areas, Attar outlined the difficulties faced by Syrian medical workers. Attar listed the major shortcomings of medicine in Syria as a lack of experienced personnel, of basic supplies, and capacity at treatment centers. With no end to the fighting in sight, these shortcomings will only to intensify.
Across Syria, many doctors have fled. Assad’s forces have targeted medical workers in rebel-held areas. Hospitals are regularly hit by barrel bombs, to the point that makeshift field hospitals are now codenamed and hidden. As resources have been used up or destroyed, the lack of supplies has become more acute. One effect of this is that Syrians no longer seek or receive medical attention for anything other than war wounds. Chronic conditions and routine health problems among those unable or unwilling to leave are not treated. This adds an unseen element to the suffering of Syrian civilians.
Raed Salah and Khaled Harah both spoke of their experiences in the “White Helmets,” volunteer Syrian Civil Defense Units. Salah also discussed the development and spread of the organisation.
The Civil Defense Units comprise localized groups acting as rescue workers to their own communities. The groups originated in refugee camps in Turkey, where refugees received training during relief projects undertaken there. This highlights the importance of continued training and education in the camps. Following Free Syrian Army gains in the north of the country, some refugees moved back, taking with them skills and organizational abilities they had learned. The Civil Defense Units have since grown and attracted numerous volunteers, leading to the formation of more regional units. Salah cites the number of volunteers as over 1000.
The community driven nature of these units has been important to their success. People who sign up work at their local center and undertake rescue work within fixed areas. Both Salah and Harah claimed that this provides a psychological boost and motivation, as they feel they are directly aiding their own community.
The neutrality of the Civil Defense Units was also stressed. Though their first members were Muslim, the first center was opened in a predominantly Christian area. The recruitment policy allows volunteers of all backgrounds. Salah stressed rescue workers do not discriminate politically or religiously when attempting to save people. This has meant that even in areas where conflict between the moderate opposition and jihadist groups, the Civil Defense Units have been allowed access to carry out their work.
Salah and Harah’s organization represents just one example of volunteers performing vital civil roles in the Syrian conflict. These organizations are vital for alleviating the humanitarian crisis, supplementing the work of foreign aid workers. Such groups may also have a role to play when it comes to rebuilding the country. Both men stressed the need for international support and funding for civilian projects like theirs. Though they cautiously supported the recent airstrikes on IS, they felt that by not putting more pressure on the Assad government the US has unintentionally aided the regime’s forces.
Concluding, Hind Kabawat called for the imposition of a no-fly zone to end the continuing bombings by the regime in civilian areas. She also noted that groups like the Syrian Civil Defense Units demonstrate that there is hope for Syria’s future.
A video of the event is embedded below.
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