PHA-Exchange> HIV and War

[Satya]

HIV, War & Sexuality
Satya Sagar

Five days of non-stop jaw, jaw, jaw at the recently
concluded International AIDS Conference in Bangkok and
my head was buzzing with the terminology of war, war,
war. There is a ‘battle’ being waged against HIV/AIDS,
there are people ‘combating’ the pandemic, bureaucrats
are turning into ‘warriors’ and preparing ‘strategies’
for ‘campaigns’. 

And yet for all this jingoist prattle, there was
little discussion there of the real armed conflicts
going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine or anywhere
and their impact on the global HIV/AIDS crisis. Pray,
what is the connection some may ask?

The answer is plenty and ranges from the way war
devastates health systems  thus accelerating the HIV
pandemic to how social prejudices on gender and
sexuality issues exacerbate both violent conflict and
the problems of those living with HIV. 

At the very outset one can look at the role war and
conflict have historically played in the spread of
HIV/AIDS, particularly on the African continent. 

Last year in a study of the HIV epidemic in
Guinea-Bissau , the putative epicenter of the
disease-a team of Belgium researchers concluded that
it remained a low-level infection for many years,
spreading widely only in the 1960s - a period which
coincided with the country's war to gain independence
from Portugal. 

According to their analysis a number of factors
prevalent in wartime - such as mass immunizations with
unsterilised needles - could have helped the virus
spread rapidly. One can safely add that the breakdown
of healthcare systems, the forced migration of
populations, the breakdown of community support
structures during times of conflict are clearly other
reasons for the spread of HIV. 

What holds for Guinea-Bissau is also true for much of
sub-Saharan Africa, which currently has the highest
prevalence of HIV in the world (70 percent of 42
million global cases), thanks to decades of poverty-
both caused by and also the cause of conflict. The
1990s, which saw a major surge of HIV/AIDS, also
witnessed a steady climb in violence across
sub-Saharan Africa, with the number of states at war
or with significant lethal conflicts doubling from 11
in 1989 to 22 in 2000.
 
One can deduce the other obvious link between HIV and
conflict by simply looking at the way militarization
around the globe gobbles up scarce resources that
would be much better spent on healthcare and providing
the poor with access to basic services. 

In 2003 global military spending touched an all-time
high of over 956 billion dollars, while the United
Nations estimates that just 11 billion dollars are
necessary to provide water and sanitation for the
people in developing countries, annually.

The discrepancy between such spending on armaments and
militarization is glaringly evident when one looks at
the comparatively small sum of money required to carry
out prevention, care and treatment for the millions of
people living with HIV/AIDS.

According to a series of recent studies carried out by
UNAIDS, in 2003 the countries of Asia-Pacific required
one billion dollars to finance a comprehensive
response to the pandemic in the region but only 200
million dollars was available from all sources
combined, including the public sector. All of which is
of course peanuts compared to the staggering 125
billion dollars spent by the United States in its
occupation of Iraq alone since March last year. 

But going beyond all such macro-level links between
HIV and war there are still more connections that go
the level of individual/group behaviour and have to do
with the dynamics of gender relations in our societies
and above all with the way sexuality is defined,
understood or tolerated. 

In the case of the HIV/AIDS pandemic the role played
in spreading the disease by the subjugation of women,
the deep rooted prejudices against people exercising
alternative sexual choices and the false linkage of
‘morality’ with issues of sexuality are well known.
Again, while the pandemic, has evoked some sterling
responses of public compassion and community
cooperation, the sad fact is that in most societies it
has also brought out the worst forms of intolerance
and discrimination against those living with HIV,
particularly women. 

My argument is that it is the same kind of intolerance
and paranoia that is at work in the emergence of
violent and virulent forms of nationalism and
religious fundamentalism around the globe today. 
Fundamentalists of all kinds- Christian, Hindu, Muslim
and Buddhist- who usually advocate quasi-fascist
solutions to social and political problems also
typically happen to have the same super-conservative
approach to HIV/AIDS, gender and sexuality. 

Is it for example a mere coincidence that both Bush Jr
and Bin Laden, the chief antagonists in the violent
‘clash of barbarisms’ that we are witnessing globally
now, share similar views on everything from the rights
of women, gays and lesbians to their position on how
best to tackle the HIV/AIDS crisis? And do their
prejudices on these issues have something to do with
the levels of bloodlust and aggression they have shown
as being amply capable of? You bet they do.

Sure, I have never heard Little Bush demanding that
women be put behind the veil. But look closer at his
position on abortion and there you have- in the
context of his own society- the equivalent of the
Taleban whipping women for accidentally showing their
ankles.

Bush Jr’s position on sexual and reproductive rights
of women has been dubbed as nothing less than a ‘war
on women’ by the International Planned Parenthood
Federation (IPPF), the world’s largest voluntary
organization working in182 countries on these issues. 


Back in 2001, in one of his first actions on taking
office, President Bush reinstated the Global Gag Rule
- which cut off U.S. international aid money from any
family planning organization that engaged, directly or
indirectly, in abortion-related activities.  According
to the IPPF since then, Bush has formulated a strategy
to stifle reproductive rights and access to
reproductive health care services. They include
sinking large sums of money into medically unproven
abstinence-only sexuality education and nominating
religious ideologues to important scientific posts and
decrying the use of condoms. 

Now, don’t ask me how someone so vocally ‘caring’
about the unborn can be so callously responsible for
the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocent
civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. For Bush Jr –like
for all necrophilic fundamentalists everywhere- the
motto seems to be ‘worship the dead and crucify the
living’.

Similarly, I have not heard Bin Laden utter anything
on gay and lesbian rights either in his routine
broadcasts from the caves.  But his response is easy
to imagine- ‘behead the blasphemous lot’! A command,
which translated into American English, sounds very
similar to the fundamentalist vehemence of Bush Jr. on
the subject! Well, what else was it when earlier this
year the US President endorsed a constitutional
amendment to ban gay marriages? 

But what exactly is it about allowing people the right
to choice of sexual partners that raises the hackles
of fundamentalists of all religious hues everywhere?
Why is having a ‘tough’ position on issues of
sexuality so central to the construction of an image
of ‘morality’ or ‘piety’? 

I am not a scholar on the subject (or any other for
that matter) but I can take a guess that it is
probably because ‘moral’ hegemony over sexuality and
sexual behavior is so integrally connected to the
ability of elites in any society to control the
populations under them. And it is here that relation
between HIV, war and sexuality goes to a much deeper
level. 

In the case of HIV/AIDS we know how the disease is
linked to things going wrong with two of the most
intimate actions possible between any two human
beings- sexual relations and the exchange of blood. In
many ways militarism (and fascism) are also about sex
and blood, arising in societies which are unwilling to
deal with the diversity of sexual relations in a sane
and tolerant manner and which harbor racist notions of
the ‘purity’ or ‘impurity’ of blood.

Let me give the example of Indian society and its
politics over the past decade or more. There is no
doubt to anyone who has followed the rise of rightwing
religious fundamentalism and jingoist nationalism in
my country that, at very individual levels, it is
related to the inability of a section of my countrymen
to deal with issues of sexuality (them being a unique
mix of the Brahmin and the British Victorian) or shake
off their truly Nazi notions of ‘foreign blood’ (read
minority Muslims and Christians) ‘polluting’ the
national ‘bloodstream’. 

So together with sparking off the nuclear arms race
with Pakistan, carrying out pogroms against minorities
and institutionalizing religious violence in general-
Hindu fundamentalists are marked by their medieval
attitudes towards women and sexuality. Over the past
decade they have:
Glorified the practice of ‘sati’ or self-immolation by
Hindu widows forced to jump into the funeral pyre of
their dead husbands (while not advocating the same for
men who lose their wives)
Talebanised Hindu society (imposing ‘dress codes’ for
Hindu women), 
Intolerantly stifled any discussions on alternative
sexual behaviour (attacking movie halls showing a film
on lesbianism)
Used rape of minority women in religious sectarian
riots as a ‘weapon of war’ (including videotaping the
rape in several such riots)

With all this is it really surprising that today if
there is any one country in Asia that faces the
prospect of a sub-Saharan Africa type explosion of
HIV/AIDS that is India. With over 5 million cases, it
is second only to South Africa in terms of the numbers
of people living with HIV/AIDS anywhere in the world. 

Throw into this volatile mix yet another statistic
that shows India becoming the second largest importer
of arms in the world after China last year and you get
an idea of what the priorities of the country’s elites
really are. Anyone who wants to understand the
connection between HIV, war and various issues
surrounding sexuality, I suggest, should immediately
board a flight to New Delhi. 

The message is simple, and not just for India but
everywhere: the ‘war’ against HIV/AIDS and the
‘battle’ for the rights of women and sexual minorities
are closely linked to the ending of all wars and
battles and the movement for global peace. Militarism
is the ultimate expression of human intolerance and
often arises at a personal level from an inability to
deal with sexual and racial diversity. It is the most
intimate enemy of humankind and the greatest threat to
every freedom we have ever fought for or aspire to win
in the future.

Satya Sagar is a writer, journalist and videomaker
based in Thailand. He can be contacted at
sagarnama at yahoo.com