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Genocide and its Relevance Today (Part III) - A Quarter Century after Dayton: Reconciliation in the Western Balkans?

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by Karla Drpić

Stari Most, the ‘Old Bridge’ in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina was destroyed during the Croat-Bosniak War of the 1990s and rebuilt in 2004 (Image credit: Omer Tarik Koc)

November of 2020 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Dayton and Erdut Agreements that respectively ended the Bosnian and Croatian wars. Since the end of the Kosovo War in 1999, the former Yugoslav region has enjoyed two decades of relative peace, stability, and political rapprochement between the regional states. With these developments in mind, the region is seemingly headed in the right direction. However, as in most post-conflict societies, this progress has been uneven and at times contradictory.

Over the last two and a half decades, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in particular has become the ideal case study for researchers writing on a variety of aspects found in post-conflict societies. One such aspect is ‘thin reconciliation’, a term that describes superficial, top-down reconciliation without a deep bearing on people’s interpersonal relationships in post-conflict societies. This issue is also pertinent to the other two protagonists of the Yugoslav Wars: Croatia and Serbia. Now more than twenty years since the end of the wars, what progress has been made in these three countries concerning reconciliation, transitional justice, and the establishment of truth?

The recent history of BiH, Croatia, and Serbia puts forward a unique case for the study of reconciliation and transitional justice. Unlike Argentina, South Africa, and Sierra Leone, countries which eventually established truth and reconciliation committees; BiH, Croatia, and Serbia no longer constitute a unified political entity. As three sovereign states that achieved durable independence after the Yugoslav Wars, each one of them has engaged in mutually exclusive history-building projects. There are no immediate political incentives to harmonise these histories through agreement on an ‘acceptable’ account of the wars, as could be seen in Rwanda, for instance. Establishing a similar ‘harmonisation’ project in the former Yugoslav region could potentially result in stronger cross-border dialogues about the war, especially regarding emotionally charged wartime events.

The Srebrenica genocide and Operation Storm provide some of the most pertinent examples of this dissonance. In 2017, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted the former Commander of the Main Staff of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS), Ratko Mladić, of genocide in Srebrenica, eastern BiH. Yet, the Serbian leadership has criticised the severity of this verdict. Similarly, Operation Storm – a Croatian offensive against internationally unrecognised and rebel Serb-held Krajina region in Croatia– is seen by many Serbs as ethnic cleansing. On the other hand, in Croatia, this is celebrated as a liberation of national territories.

The importance of ICTY’s work in this context was paramount, not only for delivering justice but for establishing facts regarding individual criminal responsibility. However, the underfunded ICTY Outreach Programme has failed to effectively correct the misconceptions surrounding its purpose and commitment to the wider population in the region, and so is yet to establish grassroots truth or facilitate reconciliation efforts. The ICTY has never managed to change the media-fuelled misconceptions and misunderstandings about its work; its verdicts, caseload, mixed jurisdiction, and investigation methods were never systematically discussed with ‘common people’ across the region and in their own language.

Furthermore, the ICTY was never intended to be a victim-oriented court the way that the Gacaca courts were in Rwanda. Its location in The Hague also meant that it was far removed from the day-to-day lives of victims of the wars. Yet, a universally accepted truth and reconciliation commission has never been established to fill this gap, leaving many victims to initiate bottom-to-top reconciliation processes.

Other barriers to reconciliation persist. One-sided accounts of the war continue to be passed on from parent to child, while hard-line politicians like convicted war criminal Vojislav Šešelj propagate sectarian rhetoric. EU-led regional rapprochement will remain difficult so long as the issue of missing persons is not resolved and recent events, such as the Srebrenica verdict or the Bosnian Croat Slobodan Praljak who killed himself in court, have done little to resolve matters. In fact, both events have been met with denial in parts of Serbian and Croatian communities. Ethnicity-motivated incidents still occur, such as the Day of Republika Srpska celebrations in BiH – ruled as unconstitutional by BiH’s Constitutional Court and considered by many Bosniaks as an act of political provocation that glorifies war and fuels ethnic tensions. BiH itself is still divided by ‘Inter-Entity Boundary Line’ – a boundary set up in the Dayton era that separates the majority Serb Republika Srpska from the majority Muslim Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – and national allegiances towards BiH’s state symbols vary widely. Top Serbian politicians range from Boris Tadić, former Serbian President who previously apologised for Vukovar [1] and Srebrenica, to Aleksandar Vučić, former Minister of Information for Slobodan Milošević, whose wartime speeches included statements such as ‘for every Serb killed, we will kill 100 Muslims’.

Despite the very real obstacles that BiH, Croatia, and Serbia face, signs of progress do exist. Most Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs in BiH believe that they can live together peacefully without international supervision. The highest number of tourists in Belgrade in 2019 were Croats and the number of Serbs moving to or vacationing in Croatia has been rising steadily since 2014. Moreover, some grassroots regional reconciliation initiatives, such as RECOM, have actively operated since the early 2000s despite a lack of broad political support.

‘Live and let live’ seems to be the best way to describe the current situation in the Western Balkans. While people from different communities seem to be putting their differences aside, ‘thick reconciliation’ is distant and conversations about the war remain conditioned by contradictory national narratives. Furthermore, a solution for the reconciliation efforts remains unclear: should people in the Balkans be given more time to digest their past; should the younger generations be encouraged to foster more neighbourly relations; or should there be a push for profound political change? The most likely answer is a combination of the three. However, after twenty-five years of peace, asking for more time could raise eyebrows. Following the EU’s renewed interest in the Balkans perhaps it is high time to restart these conversations.

[1] The Vukovar massacre was the largest massacre committed by Serbian forces during the war in Croatia: more than 200 people were removed from the city hospital and murdered on a nearby farm. Vukovar’s wartime history still deeply divides the Croatian and Serbian communities living in the city. For more information, see: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/11/vukovar-divided-war-croatia-serbia-massacre-151120090853383.html

Karla Drpić is an MA War Studies student at King’s College London. In 2019, she completed her BA degree in International Relations and Modern Languages at the University of Essex. Her academic interests include geopolitics, international organisations, civil wars, and separatist/secessionist movements. You can Karla on Twitter @drpicka

War’s Invisible Killer: We Must Not Forget Populations Affected by Conflict during COVID-19

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by Charlotte Hooker

A Syrian boy poses for a picture during an awareness workshop on coronavirus at a camp for displaced people in Atme town in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province (Image Credit: Aaref Watad/AFP)

 

Governments across the globe are acting on the informed assumption that deaths related to COVID-19 will rise so long as the number of cases exceeds the capacity of domestic healthcare services. The necessary response is compulsory social isolation and strict hygiene measures. In China, Europe, and the US, public places have been closed, mass gatherings banned, and public awareness campaigns have been initiated to offer guidance on how to wash one’s hands effectively. But in war-torn countries, where governments and healthcare systems have collapsed, running water is scarce, and soap is an unaffordable luxury, these measures are near impossible to implement. COVID-19, just like the countless diseases before it, will “ruthlessly exploit the conditions created by war.” Without a collective global response that accounts for the needs of conflict states and its displaced populations, the consequences of COVID-19 could be catastrophic.

The connection between war and disease is well documented in history. Before the 20th Century, combatants were more likely to die from disease than they were from battle wounds. In the Crimean War, for example, British soldiers died from sickness almost eight times more than they did from conflict-induced injuries (Pennington, 2019). As medicine advanced and basic hygiene practices improved, the emergence and spread of infectious disease amongst combatants was curbed considerably. However, this did little to contain the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919. The pandemic coincided with the mass migration of soldiers back to their home countries and resulted in the death of between 20 million–100 million people worldwide. This highlighted the burden that war placed on the health of civilian populations, which has only worsened as densely populated urban settings have become the primary hosts of major hostilities (Haraoui, 2018).

In Syria, healthcare services became an integrated part of the conflict. Between 2011 and 2014 alone, 57% of public hospitals were damaged and 160 doctors were jailed or killed. Vaccination coverage fell from 91% in 2010 to 45% in 2013 contributing to the re-emergence of polio, measles, and cutaneous leishmaniasis in Syria and neighbouring countries, particularly amongst displaced populations. COVID-19 presents the greatest threat to these people.

According to the UN High Commission on Refugees, there are currently 70.8 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, most of whom live in deplorable living conditions. On the Greek island of Lesbos, the Moria refugee camp “has one water point for every 1,300 people and one toilet for every 200 people,” says Apostolos Veizis, Director of Medical Operational Unit at Doctors Beyond Borders for Greece. In Idlib, refugee camps in north-western Syria, there are 1.4 doctors per 10,000 people, only 100 adult ventilators and fewer than 200 intensive care unit beds. Fatima Um Ali, a Syrian refugee, and her family have avoided death on multiple occasions since fleeing the Syrian conflict, “but what now,” she says, “we are going to be afraid of [COVID-19].” Without running water and soap, and no chance of isolating her family of 16 in the crowded settlements of Idlib, it will be difficult for Fatima’s family to dodge death once more.

Displaced populations are often dependent upon humanitarian assistance for survival. This is because healthcare services in conflict zones have long since collapsed, and any remaining government regime usually lacks funds or geographic reach to mobilise the necessary health, food, or economic resources. Bangladesh, for example, relies upon youth activists to educate Rohingya refugees from Myanmar on the importance of proper hygiene. Even in camps that are better off, conditions are ripe for COVID-19 to run rampant. According to Muriel Tschopp, Jordan Country Director at the Norwegian Refugee Council, the quasi-lockdown in Jordan in response to COVID-19 has grounded all Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), preventing them from providing daily service assistance, and reducing cash opportunities for refugees as local organisations are forced to halt business.

That is not to say that action has stopped entirely. In a recent interview, Muriel Tschopp explains that they have been using existing mechanisms, such as their database of refugee contact details, to contact those living in temporary settlements to provide guidance on how to limit the spread of disease. Similar action has to be taken by other NGOs. Doctors Beyond Borders representatives explain that they have been working with displaced peoples living in the camps to ensure the populations have access to information that will prevent disease spread and reduce panic. But this is not enough.

What is required is an international commitment to the protection of basic needs and care of conflict-affected populations. In a virtual press conference on March 23, 2020, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for “an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world.” Warring parties in some states, including Yemen and Cameroon, have agreed to the ceasefire in order to allow focus on the fight against COVID-19. This is a good start. Now, states across the world must mobilise funds to support the provision of basic resources such as water sanitation systems, hygiene kits, and food over the coming months, with immediate effect—if there is one lesson the world can learn from the 1918 flu, it is that early and sustained action saves lives.

Some believe that it is the duty of the government to prioritise its own citizens. The Trump Administration is proposing a USD$3 billion cut in funding for global health programmes, including halving its funding for the World Health Organisation who currently leads the fight against COVID-19. But if we turn our focus inward, and let fear be used as ammunition to stigmatise those who are not ‘one of us,’ we will have failed the test of humanity. A failure to address the basic needs of conflict-affected populations will mean thousands of needless deaths and this will not be contained to displaced populations. Disease knows no borders, so the only way to prevent the spread across temporary settlements, neighbouring states, and beyond is to ensure universal preparedness. A collective global response that accounts for all human life is crucial in the fight against COVID-19. The world has come together in the past to fight common evils. We can do it again.

Charlotte is studying for a MA in International Relations at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Prior to postgraduate study, Charlotte studied Politics and Economics BSc at the University of Southampton where she was awarded the highest dissertation mark in the discipline. During her undergraduate studies, she completed a Year in Employment at Ofgem, supporting work on domestic energy policy. Her research interests include space security, cybersecurity, energy security and the role of industry in the fight against climate change, and the international political economy and security implications of a rising China.

The Maoist Way of Guerilla Warfare and the Broader Challenge Presented by China

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by Tom Harper

Long Live Chairman Mao! Long, Long Live! (Image credit: Chineseposter.net)

In the eyes of the modern world, Maoism is a relic of a more ideologically divided world and of a China that no longer exists. Nevertheless, the ideas and strategies of Mao continue to have a direct and indirect influence upon a diverse array of actors, ranging from the insurgent movements of the post-colonial world to post-Cold War Chinese foreign policy strategies. Here, followers of the strategies devised by Mao and his German-educated strategist, Zhu De, are inspired by their combination of Marxist ideology and the maxims from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. They applied these strategies to a China described by Mao as ‘half colonial, half feudal’[1], far removed from Marx’s original prognosis.

Prior to Mao’s leadership, China’s communist movement followed a strategy more in keeping with those of the Russian Bolsheviks, with cadres going to the Soviet Union for study. The most prominent of these were known as the ‘Twenty-Eight Bolsheviks’, who were guided by advisors from the Soviet Comintern. As a result of several strategic blunders in their rebellion against the nationalist KMT under Chiang Kai shek, which concluded in the Long March to Yan’an, Mao and Zhu were in a position to apply these strategies.

Mao and Zhu’s strategies were characterised by three main phases. The first phase involved sending party cadres to the rural, isolated areas of China, which were often ignored by the KMT, which drew its support from the smaller urban class. Unlike the Bolsheviks’ focus on the industrial proletariat, Mao saw the Chinese peasantry, which made up around eighty per cent of China’s population, as the driving force of communism in China. To do so, these cadres sought to mobilise popular support through measures such as land reforms. These proved to be succesfull with a Chinese peasantry that had long been exploited by the feudal land-owning classes[2]. Over time, the communists were increasingly viewed as more capable administrators than the KMT, with the Chinese peasantry seeing the latter as corrupt and inefficient[3].

Through these measures, the Chinese communists had effectively created a parallel government in China’s agrarian provinces, in a manner similar to the earlier Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan[4]. This made the KMT increasingly irrelevant to the lives of the Chinese peasantry which undermined Chiang Kai-shek’s rule.

The military aspects of Mao and Zhu’s strategies came in the second and third phases of these strategies. The former involved utilising guerrilla tactics against stronger opponents, such as the KMT and the Japanese, to build support, and to acquire resources while the latter came in defeating the KMT through conventional warfare. In doing so, the CPC was able to preserve their forces while the KMT bore the brunt of the Japanese invasion. As a result, the CPC was better placed for the continuation of the Chinese Civil War after Japan’s surrender. In returning to Sun Tzu, Mao and Zhu used the maxim that ‘supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting’ to defeat a conventionally stronger opponent. It was this maxim that had wider consequences as the new communist government sought to export its vision to the post-colonial world.

To China’s communist rulers, the largely agrarian post-colonial nations resembled pre-revolutionary China, which made it ripe for their efforts to replicate their earlier successes[5]. This came through assistance to the numerous anti-colonial movements battling the European colonial powers that had been damaged by the Second World War. China’s bid to become the vanguard of communism in the developing world clashed with those of the Soviet Union, which also sought to promote its own vision of communism. This became more pronounced with the Sino-Soviet Split of 1963 and there were often clashes between rival communist movements supported by Beijing and Moscow, such as the Angolan Civil War, where the Maoist UNITA battled the Soviet-backed MPLA.

It was the conflicts of the post-colonial world that drew attention to Maoist strategies from those who sought to combat it. The earliest example of this was the French officer, David Galula, who witnessed the first phase of these strategies as a prisoner of the Chinese communists. After his release, Galula attempted to deploy these strategies against the anti-colonial movements throughout France’s overseas territories in a bid to deprive these movements of their local support.

While France failed to retain its colonies, Galula’s Maoist-inspired strategies caught the attention of American counter-insurgency planners who found themselves in the midst of the Vietnam War. Like the Chinese communists before them, the National Liberation Front built support by mobilising the Vietnamese peasantry dissatisfied with the corrupt rule of the American-backed South Vietnamese government. This influence was particularly notable in the Strategic Hamlets programme which replicated Galula’s earlier efforts in Algeria.

The Vietnam War was a case of where Maoist strategies influenced both insurgent movements and those who sought to combat them. Ultimately, the Vietnamese communists were able to prevail over their stronger American foe by destroying its will to fight, as demonstrated by the fallout from the Tet Offensive in 1968. Nevertheless, it was this pattern that would continue even after the Cold War.

With the end of the Cold War, Maoist strategies continued to maintain a degree of influence, the most visible of this being the groups within the developing world that still identified themselves with Mao’s ideas. The most successful implementation of this was the overthrow of Nepal’s feudal monarchy by the Nepalese Communist Party in a manner eerily reminiscent of China’s own revolution, which once again came through the mobilisation of the Nepalese peasantry.

Maoist strategies also found a new audience in the midst of the War on Terror. Just as these strategies had influenced Galula’s theories on counter-insurgency, American strategists, such as David Petraeus, invoked Mao and Zhu’s theories to justify the study of the non-military dimensions of warfare with the irregular conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. This continued the influence of these strategies on both insurgent movements and their opponents.

The most unexpected manifestation of Maoist strategies has been in Chinese foreign policy itself. During the Cold War observers, such as John Cooley, warned that China’s strategies in Africa were aimed at expelling the United States from the continent. In so doing, these attempts would turn Africa into a ‘major revolutionary outpost’ in a Sino-centric world where the US was largely irrelevant[6]. Cooley’s warnings are eerily reminiscent of later fears of Chinese influence in Africa and echoed the first phase of Mao’s strategies applied on a greater scale.

Ironically, this would come to pass, not through Chinese moves, but rather through the disinterest in Africa in the post-Cold War era[7]. As a result, China exploited this development to capture hearts and minds in the developing world, which had often been ignored by the major powers. As a result, China has become an integral feature of the economic landscape of these nations, which has made it more relevant to the governance of these nations. It is this template which China has deployed to the wider world.

In addition, China has also built a parallel international order, through institutions such as the BRI, SCO and AIIB. These institutions shadow more established American led bodies, such as the IMF and NATO, which has seen the emergence of two competing forms of global governance just as China had been fought over by two rival governments. From this, one can infer that Chinese strategies do not seek to overthrow American hegemony, as it has often been accused of doing, but rather seeks to render it irrelevant to global governance[8].

Whether it be the low-intensity guerrilla conflicts throughout the developing world or the globe-spanning machinations of Great Powers, Mao and Zhu’s strategies retain a significant influence. This has become especially notable with China’s wider challenge, since it follows a strategic culture that is very different to those of the Great Powers that came before it. Therefore, an understanding of this is an imperative in crafting a more effective response to Chinese strategies.

[1] Mao Zedong, On Guerrilla Warfare (New York: Dover Publications Inc, 2005), p. 68

[2] Erik Durschmied, Beware the Dragon: China: 1,000 Years of Bloodshed ( London: Andre Deutsch, 2008) p. 223

[3] Rana Mitter, The War Years, 1937-1949 in The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) p. 175

[4] Jonathan D. Spence God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (London: WW Norton and Company, 1996) p. 173

[5] Julia Lovell Maoism: A Global History (London, Bodley Head, 2019) p. 138

[6] Lovell, 2019, p. 186

[7] Joshua Eisenmann, Eisenman, Joshua (2012) China-Africa Trade Patterns: Causes and Consequences, Journal of Contemporary China, 21:77, p.45

[8] Tom Harper, China’s Eurasia: The Belt and the Road Initiative and the Creation of a New Eurasian Power, Chinese Journal of Global Governance, 5.2, October 2019, p. 103

Tom Harper is a doctoral researcher in politics and international relations from the University of Surrey. His research interest is Chinese foreign policy in the developing world and has been published in the Cambridge Journal of Eurasian Studies as well as in the Conversation, the Asia Times and the Independent and has been interviewed by the China Daily and the Gazeta Do Povo. His articles have been translated into Arabic, French, Japanese, and Spanish. He can also speak Mandarin Chinese and Japanese

UK Government Policy in Facing the Coronavirus Threat: An Interview with Professor Calum Semple

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by Timothy Moots

As we are all acutely aware, on 24 March 2020 the Prime Minister announced restricted movement on the UK population to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. As students of war, we have much to learn from observing how governments respond to the pandemic. Like on the battlefield, public health officials today are grappling with how they defeat this potent adversary. Last week I was fortunate enough to get insights into the processes that helped develop UK strategy leading to the situation we are in today in an interview with a world expert on pandemics who is leading research into the battle against the coronavirus.

The expert I sat down with is Professor Calum Semple, Professor of Child Health and Outbreak Medicine at the University of Liverpool, and a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) to discuss his role in outbreak medicine, the coronavirus outbreak, and UK Government strategy.

TJM: What is your role in dealing with the coronavirus?

CS: I am the Chief Investigator on a study called Pandemic Influenza Community Assessment Tools, which is the process of getting data to validate triage tools in the community. I am also the Chief Investigator on the Clinical Characterisation Protocol, which is a much larger research project. It is a very different type of research as it feeds information into various government departments and agencies. It is not research conducted for a paper in six month’s time, rather Urgent Public Health Research is delivered now to inform policy decisions tomorrow.

This involves working out your data collection tools in advance and so when the outbreak happens the nurses and medics can collect information when it comes to the hospital, pass it back to the research team, update to data entry systems, and have an analysis which in an automatic fashion presents it to a dashboard for policymakers. This data can include anything from the length of stay of a patient in hospital to the proportion of patients under the age of 18. Upon uploaded by a nurse say in Devon, policymakers can get this data within 30 minutes allowing quick decisions made in real-time. This has never been done before. I am also a member of NERVTAG, an advisory group set up to advise the government on new and emerging respiratory viruses.

TJM: How did you come to specialise in outbreak medicine?

CS: The very first outbreak I was involved with was the HIV epidemic in the 1980s. This was during my PhD which was researching HIV. The outbreak evolved while I was working on the thesis, and this was my first experience of research taking a U-turn, which resulted in diverting resources and activity to focus on the pressing question at the current moment. This question was the need to identify a surrogate marker of drug efficacy and a surrogate marker of progression of the disease. This led to my PhD focusing on the development of quantitative viral load, which we patented and were the first people to publish on this. Today quantitative PCR for viral load is the most commonly used way of measuring disease progression and drug efficacy of HIV in the world.

The next outbreak was the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), which is a very regular and predictable outbreak every winter. However, I moved into influenza, where there was greater scope for public policy and public impact. Working as a government advisor on influenza and running multiple research projects, I learnt a lot about working in outbreak situations. It is no surprise that a lot of those involved had worked alongside or in the military. It provided better discipline in focusing not so much on the interesting science, but in an outbreak scenario what is the question that needs to be answered over the next two-three weeks which will change decisions about how we manage patients and implement policy decisions.

This brings me to the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, which caused a lot of frustration in that we could not get our studies running as fast as we wanted. So, a group of us set up the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC). Our mantra was to prepare for the next outbreak. This was done by producing the counter-studies you would want to run in an outbreak situation, which turns out to be quite a shortlist. Here you may want to run a clinical characterisation study (the who; what; where; when; and why), a drug trial, a vaccine study, a study on triage. We designed protocols for studies that didn’t name a particular pathogen, as it didn’t matter what the pathogen was, but it did contain sampling schedules, data schedules, and from this we developed the protocols. From here we took it to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which was subsequently taken on by them, as it would enable rapid research for a fast-developing outbreak.

This meant that when the Ebola outbreak came, we were able to conduct the research in West Africa in a matter of weeks and this totally changed the paradigm. The same group was more than ready to set up the research during the coronavirus outbreak. As soon as we got wind that cases were likely to come to Britain, research protocols were activated to gather data and process the first admissions in the UK.

TJM: You previously worked on the Ebola epidemic. What made the Ebola so unique in its transmissibility?

CS: Regarding transmission, what happened in West Africa was part of a burial ritual called “laying out”. Once you would die, your friends and relatives would wash you down, dress you up, put you in a coffin and have a ceremony. It actually was still going on in Britain as recent as 30-40 years ago, and it is still a tradition in isolated parts of Europe where there are not enough undertakers to deal with the dead. In West Africa they take this very seriously.

But what complicated this in West Africa is the “secret society culture”. This is much more than the Masons in the UK. These societies are very important in where you go to school to getting your job and promotions at work. Often you will find that departments in organisations have a large number of members that are part of one secret society, whereas hospitals may have large numbers of members from other secret societies. Members of a secret society, who are typically your peers, will be involved in laying your body out. They will wash you down very carefully, with great care, love, and attention, and it is a very important part of the grieving process.

However, the exposure to the human body fluids meant that everyone who was involved in laying out the body was exposed to catching Ebola. What complicated things is if you were very important you might have over 200-300 people attend outside your house wanting to be involved in the process. The body fluids that had been washed down would be taken outside and distributed amongst the people – some people would dip their fingers in it, others would have it sprayed in faces – and this was a part of associating themselves with the deceased and their spirits. One example is we have one healer who died and at their funeral around 360 people contracted the virus from direct exposure to the body fluids. It was not limited to burial rituals, however. Other examples include in the hospital where you can catch it from a woman giving birth or someone vomiting. The virus spread very quickly and hit very hard.

TJM: What is the difference between the coronavirus and Ebola?

CS: Well Ebola is what we call a viral haemorrhagic fever. This is because the virus gives you a fever and it can make you bleed. But bleeding isn’t the most common symptom, it is actually vomiting and diarrhoea. Ebola can spread from blood, sweat, tears, diarrhoea, and lots of different body fluids. It does not have a clear respiratory spread and people don’t tend to cough and sneeze the virus up. For Ebola its actually profuse production of body fluids where the virus is and where it is coming from. Ebola is actually relatively easy to contain. Once you have identified someone who has been sick you can isolate and prevent contact.

Whereas with the coronavirus you cough, sneeze, and splutter. You do this for possibly 5-7 days before you take yourself out of society because you are feeling unwell or because you are recovering. People infected with coronavirus can walk around for 7 days incubating the virus and then have another 5 days where they have what is called a prodrome (an early symptom indicating the onset of a disease) and during that time remain active in the community spreading the virus, but not so sick that they take themselves to bed or get admitted to hospital. This makes the virus far more transmissible in a community. The virus survives on surfaces, in the house, outside. In dry air it survives for around fifteen minutes. Then people touch the surfaces, then touch their mouths, pick their noses, scratch their eyes. We all do this about twenty times an hour. This brings the virus to the respiratory tract where again it is perfectly suited to taking hold. It’s a very different virus to Ebola. And the transmissibility of corona is far greater than that of Ebola.

TJM: What have we learnt from military command and control structure that can be applied to Corona?

CS: A lot was learned from how the British Army and Relief Agencies interacted with society in Sierra Leone. The sort of planning instigated by the military created a very clear line of what needs to be delivered and what needs to be changed within the community, and it was absolutely critical to delivering rapid research and achieving rapid outcomes. It’s a very different method of patient management. You’re not just thinking about the individual patient – the individual patient is very important – what you’re thinking about is the message you are sending out in managing these patients. Do your messages encourage people in the community to come forward and seek appropriate healthcare, or will it encourage people to avoid the appropriate healthcare and seek traditional healers and ministries?

This is very much the same way in how you engage with the British public and pressing upon them the importance now of not going to the pub and staying at home. Because the reality is staying at home will saves lives. An issue is people thinking that the coronavirus does not affect them, and don’t immediately understand that going out and socialising will mean the virus will spread and people will die. This is because there will be fewer people around to care for people with other diseases. Car crashes, heart attacks, difficult pregnancies still happen. The reality is an overwhelming impact on health resources and general population health means that the doctors and nurses don’t have the scope to care for everyone they want to. This is just part of the medical aspect. If the approach was not taken you may end up with societal effects that have far greater secondary impact then we could have predicted and could have far more reaching impact than the health impact.

TJM: Is the UK really taking a different approach to other countries? If so why?

CS: The UK certainly did take a different approach in the lead up to the shutdown. I am quite pleased that we did not go for a kneejerk shutdown in the 3-4 weeks before we did. That period allowed a degree of calmness and preparation to go on at a very important stage. Where otherwise we could have had a huge, essentially, “phony war”. There was a phony war during the 2009 outbreak, where we saw a spike in GP attendances and health-seeking behaviour that arrived 3-4 weeks before the real flu arrived. This overwhelmed GPs who were prevented from doing their regular work and providing standard healthcare for those who needed it. The way the government policy managed information and society this time was far more sophisticated and prevented a phony war.

The careful considered management by the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Professor Chris and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) Sir Patrick Vallance in the month leading up to the lockdown prevented the excessive health-seeking behaviour that could have caused an earlier overwhelming of GPs and A&E practitioners.

TJM: Do you think the government has done a good job so far?

CS: I think the government has done a good job in cautiously and systematically raising fear in a controlled manner, and this can be seen from the very careful messaging from the CMO and CSO. You can work this out from the press conferences and news clips, which were deliberately telling people about the severity of the crisis. It was realistic and conducted sensibly.

This approach got people to start stocking up – and yes some people were panic buying – but most people stocked up. Over the last 3 weeks of stocking up to the situation we are in now, it has made the lockdown a lot more manageable. Most people have filled their larders, and no one can say they weren’t warned about it. Supermarkets have been warned in advance and are able to cope with the disruptions in demand.

Think about how you manage and keep an army in readiness. There is a level of preparation, training, regular exercises to keep the army in readiness. Equipment, which is not used is checked, serviced to ensure it actually works. And this is the same for us. We have a stockpile of medication and a stockpile of masks, the equivalent to the beans and bullets in the depots.

TJM: Is “herd immunity” Government policy?

CS: It was never policy. It was an assumption by lots of speculators from the side-lines. I never saw a concept that we are going for herd immunity – this is not the case. The terminology used by Prime Minister Boris Johnson was “flattening the sombrero”. It sounds rather crude, but it is not a bad way of explaining how you flatten an epidemic curve. It is unavoidable that we will get exposure. But what is going to cause greater societal disruption is a sharp spike in epidemic activity that will overwhelm services. And this is not just about health services but also national services. [The minutes of NERVTAG are publicly available.]

TJM: Were we really unprepared by not investing in ventilators?

CS: At what point in the last 100 years would you have predicted the global healthcare systems would have needed an extra X amount of ventilators? Even if you wanted to buy an extra hundred, rather than the 10,000 quoted in the press, it would have been impossible to predict this. Ventilators are not household items like microwaves, they are not made in mass in a factory, and nor are we able to go out and shop for them on the market. They are complicated sets of equipment that are bought on a well-resourced planned renewal project. At the same time, there is no way that any advisor to a government would say let us keep X amount of excessive numbers of ventilators in a warehouse, requiring them to be switched on every several months to check they work, service them, and replace parts. It is far beyond any policymaker’s capability to do that.

However, the irony to that is, that it would have been in our interests to do it with the economic effect on businesses over the next few months. If I was a politician, I would not have had warehouses with ventilators. But what we do have, are warehouses stocked with PPE, anti-biotics, anti-virals, which are essential and can be maintained.

TJM: What about PPE?

CS: Local supply issues. There are different types of PPE. Now the PPE you have for the higher risk procedure is different to the PPE for standard procedures. Human nature is to grab the one considered to give the highest level of protection regardless of whether you need that or not. Infections do not work that way. If you are not treating a patient needing to have their lungs washed out, or a tube put down their throat with your face twenty cm away from their mouth while doing it, then you do not need the protection offered by an FFP3 respirator with face shield. If you are doing simple straight forward care you will be fine with a face shield and standard mask.

But that’s not what people do they tend to grab respirator because they perceive it for greater protection. You don’t need a bulletproof vest to go down to the shops, you only need the bulletproof vest if bullets are flying. You only need the FFP3 masks for aerosol-generating procedures, where one gets up close and personal to the aerosols. But people pick these masks thinking it gives them greater protection. But it’s not, it is simply preventing someone who needs that mask from having it. We have kept a huge number of FFP3 masks in reserve for years, but at the current rate, they are being consumed too quickly as people are using them inappropriately. And this is a difficult message to get across.

There may be local supply cases, but the idea we are somehow negligent is very different. Junior doctors have been very good at communicating these shortfalls using the various social media tools to share this. At most places, we do have the equipment but it needs to be used appropriately. The right level of PPE needs to be used for the right circumstances.

TJM: In your experience, what kinds of communications are most effective when engaging populations and getting them to do things – rational or emotive?

CS: Are all people the same? Some people are young, some people are old, some work on emotion prompts, some people work on facts. The biggest mistake is that one communication strategy will work. Instead, what you need is a blend – everything from the Twitterati to the Radio 4 audience. Some people don’t listen to the radio, they rely on social media like Facebook and other sources. I think that clever messaging is blended. A lot of people like the CMO Professor Whitty, as he is seen as the nation’s doctor. But at the same time, he is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. He may be seen as a “pale male”. Is he going to engage a young ethnic minority male in a deprived inner-city London? Will he reach out to a single mother in Birkenhead?

The way you reach out to these parts of the population is through using a mix of social influences, various magazines, and social media apps like Instagram. This is a very different messaging style to what the Radio 4 generation is used to. The government needs to learn more sophisticated communication strategies that are involving social influencers to make sure its message is being read by all corners of the population. In my personal opinion there is a big scope for improvement. Public health messaging has to change, especially to adapt to this.

TJM: Finally, how can governments prepare themselves for pandemics?

CS: Set up advisory groups like the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group. The reason it is called that is that it does exactly what is say on the tin, advises on new and emerging respiratory virus threats. The group is tasked with questions such as what is coming, and if it is coming what it might look like, and how can we prepare. And it is exactly what we did.

Professor Calum Semple, Professor of Child Health and Outbreak Medicine at the University of Liverpool, and a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG)

Timothy Moots is a Senior Editor at Strife and a PhD Candidate at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.

The Future of Nuclear Security: Language of the Nuclear Age

by

by Zenobia Homan

With the harnessing of the power of the atom, a new era dawned (Image credit: Wikimedia)

 

Exploration of enriched nuclear materials inaugurated a new chapter in human history. What is more, since we only recently harnessed the power of atoms, the legacy of this field is still virtually incomprehensible. Therefore, we have a unique opportunity right now to track, monitor, and influence how we communicate about managing the risks from what is arguably still the very beginning of the nuclear era.[1] So how do we discuss nuclear security, what language do we use, and which words should we choose?

The origin of nuclear physics and the terminology of atomic theory barely dates back to the 19th century. These disciplines are almost uncharted, compared to, for instance, chemistry, biology, and music. While both the views and vocabulary of nuclear science have their origin in ancient Greece or earlier, plutonium and uranium were first identified in modern laboratories.[2] The field of nuclear security is even younger. Discussion on fissile materials commenced in various departments of Defence during the 1940s, followed by treaties, laws, and policies influenced by the devastating effect of the World Wars.[3] The earth-shattering impact of attacks such as 9/11 lead to a discussion on nuclear terrorism, which culminated in the 2010-2016 Nuclear Security Summits.[4] This means that the language of nuclear security has essentially existed for only two decades. Two decades, compared to at least six millennia of development in fields such as mathematics, geography, and astronomy.

Despite the youth of the nuclear sector, examples of severe miscommunication already exist. In the 1980s a Soviet officer only just prevented an escalation of the Cold War by correctly identifying a false alarm in the satellite command centre;[5] and the 2011 issues at Fukushima partially came forth out of a culture-communication issue.[6] Not to mention, last year there was a mistaken missile alert in Hawaii causing widespread public panic.[7] Cases like Hawaii also highlight the relevance of raising awareness of nuclear knowledge: many people do not know what nuclear means; when it is harmful, when it is not; and how to respond to incidents ranging from serious to completely innocent. Nuclear energy and nuclear security are not an every-day topic of discussion among the general public, nor does it feature regularly in school curricula.[8]

Nevertheless, it is possible to take lessons on transmission from other new industries, such as aviation.[9] Its first successfully executed concepts date to the dawn of the 20th century, but early airplanes collided mid-air or crashed as a result of communication failures. Sometimes they still do. Eventually, it was decided that it was necessary for every pilot to learn and speak English. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) maintains official ‘Aviation English’ with a test that must be passed – not only by non-native speakers. However, a common language does not necessarily overcome obstacles such as economy, geography and culture. Just as religion and food may hold different degrees of significance, so do nuclear issues. For example, while the United States is a historic nuclear weapon nation, the Netherlands is not. In the first, ‘nuclear knowledge’ might mean being able to name all the nuclear-weapon states, while in the second it might mean knowing whether there is a power plant nearby.[10]

Knowledge goes hand in hand with language when it comes to distinctions based on region or nationality. For instance, in English there are separate words for ‘security’ and ‘safety’, and, while near-synonyms, people generally interpret them as a difference between intentional and unintentional harm. However, many languages do not distinguish between these two words, or even the concepts. In some cultures, it is common to think of security as certainty or being careful; or it might have a strong military association. This is not to argue that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) must also begin to maintain a ‘Nuclear English’. What ‘Aviation English’ really illustrates, is that a new industry comes with a new professional language (in any language) and, inevitably, unexplored sources of confusion. In some cases, this carries more weight than in others. Think of language conceived for fictional worlds like Harry Potter and Pokémon, or vocabulary acquired by sommeliers and cricket players – and then compare to industries which involve gigantic machines taking on the skies, or the danger of radiation. In some fields, communication can directly affect global security.

When communication is not on par, this can lead to misperception and misunderstanding. The term ‘understanding’ should convey that two or more people share the same meanings about certain words or phrases, but reality differs. Security and safety personnel often have different educational backgrounds; as do engineers and regulators. Even when people speak the same language – which they might not, due to the international character of the nuclear sector – they do not automatically express or comprehend concepts equally.

It is possible to address these issues of language and communication. The international framework is in place: we can utilise the IAEA, especially its International Nuclear Security Education Network (INSEN) to foster and strengthen mutual understanding. We must eliminate miscommunication in the nuclear arena amongst the public (i.e. educate people and bring nuclear issues to the forefront) as well as experts in the nuclear field (in order to avoid miscalculations and disasters). Examples of glossaries are the IAEA’s ‘Nuclear Security Series Glossary’[11] as well as the ‘P5 Glossary of Key Nuclear Terms’[12] and progress is slowly being made on translations.[13]

However, words and translations are not the same as language and understanding. ‘Nuclear Language’ is a matter of adult language acquisition. When we consider education and design professional development courses, we cannot simply impose words and concepts; we have to discuss their meaning, across backgrounds and borders. We have to start keeping records: who uses which words, where, and why? We have to begin analysing this, so that we can see where confusion persists. We have to test how to most effectively tackle misunderstandings, and how to teach new approaches; so that we know what works and what does not. These strategies will not only help us manage language-use, but also advance nuclear awareness, knowledge, and resilience.

It is easy to recognise a colleague working in the nuclear industry. They will be that person casually inserting unnecessary acronyms in conversation, holding the railing as they walk down the stairs. Discussion, explanation, and interpretation of language should come just as naturally, eventually. Some call the period we live in today the space age, others the atomic era. Either way, we are still in it; and its history is being written as we speak.

[1] Beginning in the 20th century. See Jacobsen, C. G. (1982). The Nuclear Era: Perception and Reality - A Century Apart? In Journal of Peace Research Vol. 19, No. 1 (1982): pp. 21-36.

[2] Taylor, C. C. W. (1999). The Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus. University of Toronto Press.

[3] Feiveson, H. A., Glaser, A., Mian Z. & von Hippel, F. N. (2014). Unmaking the Bomb: A Fissile Material Approach to Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation. The MIT Press.

[4] Gill, A. S. (2019). Nuclear Security Summits: A History. Palgrave Macmillan.

[5] Aksenov, P. (2013). ‘Stanislav Petrov: The man who may have saved the world’, available online via the BBC at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24280831 [last accessed March 2020].

[6] McCurry, J. (2012). ‘Japanese cultural traits at heart of Fukushima disaster,’ available online via The Guardian at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/05/japanese-cultural-traits-fukushima-disaster [last accessed March 2020].

[7] Nahourney, A., Sanger, D. E. & Barr, J. (2018). ‘Hawaii Panics After Alert About Incoming Missile Is Sent in Error,’ available online via the New York Times at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/us/hawaii-missile.html [last accessed March 2020].

[8] IAEA (2014). ‘Supporting the scientists of the future: Developing extra-curricular educational material on nuclear science and technology for secondary schools’ available online at https://www.iaea.org /newscenter/news/supporting-the-scientists-of-the-future-developing-extra-curricular-educational-material-on-nuclear-science-and-technology-for-secondary-schools [last accessed March 2020].

[9] Howsley, R. & Johnson, D. (2019). ‘Nuclear and Aviation Security - what can we learn from each other?’. In Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management.

[10] Vossen, M. (2018). Nuclear Energy Frames and Stakeholders. Abbreviated public version available online at:

https://mirjamvossen.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Framing-kernenergie-Mirjam-Vossen.pdf [last accessed

May 2019].

[11] Nuclear Security Series Glossary (2015). Available online at https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/ 18/08/nuclear-security-series-glossary-v1-3.pdf [last accessed March 2020].

[12] P5 Glossary of Key Nuclear Terms (2015). Available online at https://2009-2017.state.gov/ documents/organization/243293.pdf [last accessed March 2020].

[13] An example is this ‘Accounting and control of nuclear material, physical protection of nuclear material and nuclear installations, Interpretative dictionary of Ukrainian terms.’ Available online at https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/ rada/term/12886/sp?sp=i7:max25 [last accessed March 2020].

Dr Zenobia Homan works at the Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS) and King’s College London (KCL) where she coordinates international professional development courses and training on nuclear and radiological security. She currently conducts research relating to security culture and CBRN terrorism, with a particular interest in the language of nuclear security.