Tag Archive for: Coronavirus

Covid-19 and the threat from Islamic State’s online and ‘family’ networks

Following its territorial losses in Iraq and Syria and in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has led to tighter territorial, border and air controls, the Islamic State may seek to use unconventional methods for its radicalisation and recruitment drives. Two such methods are stepping up its online presence and propaganda and exploiting family ties to expand its networks.

In a 24 August 2020 meeting of the UN Security Council on pressing global security issues, counterterrorism experts reiterated the importance of repatriating terrorist families to prevent IS spreading its influence across countries and regions. The meeting also noted a spike in IS’s online activities targeting people confined to their homes amid Covid-19 lockdowns. For example, the June 2020 ‘lockdown’ edition of The Voice of Hind, an English-language online magazine published by IS supporters in India, even encouraged IS supporters to use children to spread coronavirus among disbelievers.

Family terror networks have been a prominent feature in IS’s global operations. Those networks present major global security threats largely because of legal, social and privacy concerns that make it challenging to monitor the activities of family units. Several high-profile terrorist attacks under the banner of IS in recent times have involved people related by marriage and by blood. In one such instance, on 24 August 2020, the ‘widows’ of two prominent IS militants carried out twin suicide bombings in Jolo in the Philippines, killing 15 people.

In 2018, Australia suffered a terrorist attack that was a consequence of the radicalisation of two Bangladeshi sisters by IS. On 9 February, while studying in Melbourne, Momena Shoma stabbed her homestay host in her quest to ‘become a martyr’. Shoma was initially radicalised online when she started following hardline preachers like Anwar al-Awlaki and watching IS videos. Two days after the attack, when security agencies raided Shoma’s house in Bangladesh in further investigations, her sister, Asmal Husna, attacked the security officials in another IS-inspired attack.

The sisters’ case also suggests that IS is increasingly looking to attract and recruit female operatives in ‘active’ roles, especially in South Asia. By attracting women into its fold, the group seeks to promote itself as a global enterprise for both men and women, unlike other terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, which, even though they have some female operatives, mainly recruit men. By 2019, 16% of foreign terrorist fighters in IS were women.

The underlying factors leading to the involvement of members of the same family or the whole family unit in radicalisation and terrorist attacks warrant attention from security strategists and policymakers. With Covid-19 lockdowns in place in many countries and IS increasing its online presence, the probability of traditional conservative families, confined to their homes, being targeted for radicalisation becomes higher. In such families, male members (fathers, husbands and brothers) are treated with respect, making it easier for them to persuade both younger and female members to join violent political or religious groups.

Although technological advances have enabled the monitoring of terrorists in online networks, monitoring and countering physical family networks present significant policy challenges. There are also gaps in security infrastructure, especially in the global south, for understanding and dealing with the role of kinship and family ties in terrorist recruitment and radicalisation. As is evidenced by the well-coordinated 2019 Easter attacks in Sri Lanka involving members of an affluent family, even though IS’s operational capacity has taken a major hit in the Middle East, the threat of family terror networks there and elsewhere shouldn’t be underestimated.

It’s still too early to gauge the real impact of IS’s exploitation of ‘family’ terrorism using comprehensive online recruitment strategies in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, it is timely to start a discussion on the importance, and vulnerability, of kin and family networks in contemporary radicalisation and terrorist recruitment. To prevent and counter this threat, a good starting point could be a focus on the family unit as an essential determinant of radicalisation and recruitment. For experts in preventing and countering violent extremism and for policymakers, traditional family structures can be vital tools in deradicalisation. This is because disapproving relatives, respected within the family, can help dissuade family members from joining radical and violent groups.

Enforcing Covid-19 restrictions could erode public trust in police

Scenes of Australian police, mostly Victorian, using physical force to deal with non-compliant citizens protesting against Covid-19 restrictions have become news fixtures. Breakfast television commentary swings between criticising police use of force and targeting the confrontational approach of members of the public armed with mobile phones and attitude.

Covid-19 lockdown protesters’ acts of defiance must be increasing the risk of spreading the disease, but the more worrying and longer term outcome could be their corrosive impact on Australians’ trust in their police. A loss of public trust in police will affect their social licence to operate in our communities. This loss of trust will have a direct impact on police services’ operational performance—with damaging flow-on consequences for social cohesion.

Covid-19 is fundamentally a health problem, and the average Australian police officer would prefer not to be undertaking lockdown-related duties. Given the high level of public trust in police, and their existing capabilities, there’s little wonder that our governments looked to them to implement and enforce our Covid-19 rules. The virus is so infectious that governments had little choice but to implement lockdowns and they brought with them an unprecedented demand for police services.

In response to the broader Covid-19 challenge, the federal, state and territory governments have provided police with extraordinary powers. Aware of the possible impact on their public image, police services would have been concerned about their roles during the pandemic. However, I suspect that governments did not consider the long-term impacts of their measures on policing, and police forces probably had little choice but to accept their counter-Covid responsibilities.

The images of police, adorned in riot gear, with batons and shields at the ready, walking in formation through Melbourne’s iconic Queen Victoria Market during Sunday’s anti-lockdown protest illustrate this point. The officers were responding to the actions of as many as 250 protesters who, under current legislation, were committing offences. They arrested 74 and issued 176 fines.

Any blame for the disruption and health risks associated with this event rests solely with the protesters. Nonetheless, the images of the response will have eroded public trust in the police as being able to calmly solve problems in the community.

Similarly, video of a terrified young woman being forcibly removed from a car at a Victorian checkpoint for allegedly failing to provide information and refusing to follow a police officer’s direction will do little to promote trust from a Covid-19-weary Australian public.

Public trust is more brittle and perishable than ever. You only need to look at longitudinal studies of public confidence in Australia to see this at play. During the 2019 federal election, trust in government reached its lowest level since the constitutional challenges of the 1970s.

Trust in institutions like the federal and state parliaments was, until Covid-19, also perilously low. By April this year, though, trust in these institutions had rapidly improved on the tails of Australian governments’ successful responses to Covid-19. The longer Covid-19 restrictions remain in place, however, the more likely there is to be a significant reduction in public trust in policing.

In contrast with our political institutions, federal and state police have been Australia’s most trusted institutions for many years.

The trust earned by Australian police forces over decades has provided their social licence to operate within our communities. It allows police to exercise discretion—the power of the constable—in their duties. It has supported their right to use force in response to particular circumstances. It has generated the kind of goodwill that allows communities to work with police to solve problems.

An unexpected consequence of Covid-19 could well be a loss of law enforcement’s social licence. And this loss will have tangible impacts on police performance.

State, territory and federal governments need to act now to ensure that our police do not become the focus of the frustration of Covid-19-weary Australians. A good starting point would be public information programs explaining that police enforce the rules, but they don’t write them.

Australians need to be provided with mechanisms to express their concerns lawfully. While this will not be to the satisfaction of all, it would offer people a chance to be listened to.

Throughout Australia’s struggle with terrorism since 2001, social cohesion has been key to success. Governments need to consider developing a social-cohesion initiative dealing directly with the divisive impacts of increased economic inequality as well as the compromises made in responding to Covid-19.

Australia’s police services need to consider their recovery plan for policing after Covid-19. This plan needs to include retraining of officers who have performed Covid-19 duties. Careful consideration needs to be given to ensuring that police access to extraordinary powers during the pandemic is rapidly rolled back when it is no longer justified.

Could faster Covid-19 testing get the world flying again?

It’s in Australians’ DNA to go forth and conquer the world through international travel. Aussies are the long-haul experts. But now we’re not allowed to undertake outbound travel and inbound is challenging for those not flying business class.

While many are keen to start travelling again and willing to pay for a Covid-19 test to help ease the restrictions on them, they face unpredictable factors, including quarantine and additional border controls.

Covid-19 may not kill international travel, but it has certainly wounded it. Several measures need to be in place before we can get people back in the air (including allowing Victorians to fly interstate) and give the international travel industry the boost it needs.

First would be real-time coronavirus testing for people getting on and off the planes, like the rapid, cheap and reliable test being developed in Israel. Israeli scientists are testing a new gargle-and-spit test that’s super-fast and 95% accurate.

The technology has the potential to replace polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing, which involves an unpleasant swabbing process and requires lengthy lab analysis, as the main screening method used worldwide.

Accelerated PCR testing, the fastest current method, is not widely available and, with a 15-minute turnaround at best, comes at a financial cost and with reduced accuracy. The spit test is intended to replace most PCR tests, especially in places requiring mass screening.

PCR swab testing on arrival is already a reality at many airports around the world. London’s Heathrow, for example, now has a testing facility at one terminal and will have another ready soon. More than 13,000 passengers can be tested in a day, and that can be scaled up depending on demand.

The British government is considering whether the testing will permit arriving passengers to be released from the 14-day quarantine requirement. The cost of the UK test on arrival is around $270 and it gives a result within hours. But it’s a confused picture. Countries are changing their rules fairly regularly, which means travellers can’t be sure if they need a test 72 hours before departure, on arrival or perhaps both.

The reality is that the PCR test is only a stop-gap measure because it has significant weaknesses. A traveller who has been tested might contract the disease on the flight, or even at the airport upon arrival. And, since the virus can incubate for four to 10 days, a negative pre-departure or arrival test might prove to be wrong.

Only a period in quarantine can bring that assurance. PCR tests take many hours, or days, to come back and the traveller must be isolated for that time.

We need an immediate, low-cost, no-hardware diagnostic test, such as the spit test, for everyone boarding an aircraft and at every stop. This will be a way to stop the spread of the virus without a vaccine.

We also need to rethink quarantine arrangements and have two levels of quarantine built into our national and state emergency plans. We need to be able to rapidly assemble mass-quarantine facilities when large numbers of people need to be tested, such as when cruise ships arrive.

And we need standing quarantine facilities where people can be housed when hotels are no longer viable. It could be a converted or long-term rented hotel. Such an institutionalised quarantine facility operated at Sydney Heads from the 1830s until 1984. Migrant ships arriving in Sydney with suspected contagious disease aboard offloaded passengers and crew to protect local residents. Another quarantine station was built at Point Nepean on the Mornington Peninsula in the 1850s.

A greater national effort needs to go into expanding screening and monitoring of existing and emerging diseases and researching drugs for short-term protection against Covid-19, just as travellers to malaria-affected areas take anti-malarial drugs for protection.

Once a vaccine is available, proof that it’s been administered will need to be electronically inserted into a smart passport. We should include in our advance passenger processing regime information on whether a traveller has been vaccinated, just as airlines are required to check whether a potential visitor has an appropriate visa.

Hopefully we’ll have a Covid-19 vaccine soon but, even then, immunity may last a relatively short time. So it’s still likely to be some time before Covid-19 disappears or dealing with it becomes normal. In the meantime, we’ll need to focus on holidaying at home and rediscovering our country.

Covid-19 shows need to accelerate national policymaking for future challenges

If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it’s that Australia needs to link long-term planning with emergency and operational coordination.

Our future prosperity depends on governments thinking in terms of rolling and concurrent crises, ensuring solutions solve multiple challenges, valuing independent expert advice, and bringing the public interest front and centre.

But currently no entity has responsibility for developing holistic national solutions. And we don’t seem to be thinking about how our governments’ handling of the Covid-19 crisis—and the structures they’ve used to cut across agencies—might be useful beyond the pandemic. Our pre-Covid approach didn’t serve us that well, and returning to it won’t help us in the future.

It’s time for a broad debate about what new policymaking structures and approaches are needed to address our changed national priorities as we emerge from the pandemic. Otherwise, we risk trying to rebuild Australia by getting back to business as usual, assuming we can plug back into the world economy that we knew.

But the global economic system has changed and will change more. Strategic competition between the US and China means we have to understand more about our vulnerabilities and who we can and can’t rely on. It’s increasingly clear that our planning must go well beyond the short term.

ASPI’s John Coyne and Peter Jennings have argued that ‘Australia needs to be ready to deal with the crisis after the crisis’. Sadly, the continuation of stage 4 restrictions in Melbourne and state border closures are a sobering reminder that ‘after the crisis’ may be a long way off. But we shouldn’t be waiting for the current challenges to subside before planning for Australia’s future challenges.

Shaking off our collective Covid exhaustion to address, in parallel, our new national priorities will be hard, but we must find that resolve.

And the downside of the pandemic response measures is that they commit future generations to an even more unaffordable Australia.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently announced that the ‘National COVID-19 Coordination Commission is moving into a new mode, shifting its focus to concentrate on creating jobs and stimulating our economy as we learn to live with this pandemic.’ That provides some future focus, but is it broad enough? Job creation is important but we need to go further.

As well as getting people back to work, our industry policies need to respond to an uncertain future, and ensure that our science and technology base is positioned to drive national innovation.

Externally, Australia needs to support the resilience of political systems in our region and build national consensus on our international relationships.

Work on many of these themes is either neglected or incomplete.

The government’s 2020 defence strategic update addresses Australia’s sovereignty, including grey-zone statecraft and countering rising strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific. We also need to boost our capability to respond to grey-zone challenges which are impacting governments, industries and communities.

But what of our wider non-defence interests that are just as important in securing national resilience? For example, how do we build our manufacturing base while at the same time supporting the openness of the global trading system? How can we improve our supply resilience to carry us through future crises? And how can we strengthen our democracy and social cohesion with policies and programs that drive ‘peace, stability and prosperity’?

The policies we develop to meet these challenges will have to be implemented quickly and must have an impact which is sustainable. Anticipating challenges by linking long-term planning with operational coordination by leveraging the Covid-19 collaboration mechanisms will be crucial. But, most importantly, we need to build policy frameworks that can deal with multiple, concurrent challenges.

Recent additions to the national crisis response landscape such as the national cabinet are important but their focus is specifically on Covid-19.

While Emergency Management Australia is the focal point for disaster response and resilience in Australia, the broader system is not addressing longer term challenges. In a statement to the royal commission into national natural disaster arrangements, the secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, Mike Pezzullo, noted, ‘There is a strong case for greater centralisation of decision-making in relation to preparedness, response, resilience and recovery from all-hazards.’ The proposal to ‘bolt’ Emergency Management Australia and the National Coordination Mechanism together is expected to improve the national response. But centralisation by itself is unlikely to resolve the problem.

The objective should be to ensure diverse institutional perspectives are brought to the table. It’s no surprise that the best results in the pandemic response have come from coordinated federal and state decision-making.

Policies to address concurrent crises could include a public communication system for health emergencies that would be useful for bushfire and other environmental hazards as well. This kind of policy thinking is an example of a creative approach that addresses multiple systemic challenges, while at the same time engaging courageously with uncertainty.

As Coyne and Jennings noted:

This pandemic has created a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our nation to critically review and reset many of our policy assumptions. Perhaps 2020 will mark the beginning of a new period of nation-building for Australia that rivals our heady post-war years, but such success will come only from big thinking and bold policymaking.

Now is the time for big thinking and bold policymaking.

Climate experts say pure economics—and Covid-19—may save the world

There is time to save the world from global warming if action is taken urgently, say two top climate specialists. That change, they say, is likely to be driven by economics as more nations measure the true cost of burning fossil fuels.

And, if they’re well targeted by governments, the vast sums being spent to repair the economic damage of the Covid-19 pandemic could speed up that process.

These messages were delivered to ASPI’s ‘Strategic Vision 2020’ conference by Christiana Figueres, Costa Rican diplomat and former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Robert Glasser, former special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, now a visiting fellow at ASPI.

Interviewed by journalist Stan Grant, Figueres said governments were injecting at least $12 trillion, and possibly as much as $20 trillion, into the world economy. Because of the scale and the speed of that investment, it would define the characteristics of the global economy for 10, 20 or 30 years. Ensuring that money was invested in sustainability would define whether countries would be on track to be carbon neutral by 2050, or not.

‘The economic recovery packages that will be deployed and invested over the next 18 months are probably going to be even more important than any political commitment that any government can make’, she said.

Glasser said forces at play during the pandemic were slowing investment in renewables but, at the same time, huge pressures on the oil industry were accelerating renewables. ‘We’ve seen the European Union essentially design their economic stimulus package as a green stimulus package.’

With climate change, these investments would become increasingly important. ‘Ultimately, as the pandemic finishes, the climate impacts are just accelerating, so the public demand for greater action from government is going to be louder, and governments will listen, ultimately.’

Even if governments implemented all of the commitments they’d made so far, the climate could still warm by three to four degrees, ‘which would be dreadful’, Glasser said. ‘If it’s approaching three and four degrees, our efforts to adapt to climate change will be overwhelmed by the scale of the hazards that we’ll experience.

‘We have renewable energy making this transition, we’ve got the financial sector, we’ve got corporations—but governments can fundamentally accelerate all of this transition, and that’s what needs to happen.’

Figueres said that while some countries didn’t have other options for energy generation or for land use, Australia had everything at his doorstep. ‘You have more sun than any other country, you have more wind, you have maritime energy, you have land use, land galore. I mean, honestly, Australia is the most blessed country with respect to all of the solutions to climate change.’

Australia, she said, already had the highest uptake of residential solar panels in the world along with the biggest battery storage. ‘You could completely generate all your own energy in order to not have to burn anything that pollutes the air.’

Figueres said Australia was one of the world’s worst polluters per capita, and Glasser noted that it was by far the world’s biggest coal exporter, which gave it a leadership opportunity.

International demand for coal was reducing day by day, Figueres said. ‘You could substitute the export of coal with hydrogen by using the extraordinary unlimited renewable energy power generation that you have and producing green hydrogen for export, as well as for internal consumption.’

Glasser said reducing coal exports would mean pain for Australia, ‘but the pain will be enormously larger if the climate continues to warm, if those assets that we have currently are stranded assets in coal and fossil fuels. The transitional pain will be far worse if we don’t act.’

‘I think we’re starting to see leadership from the government on this issue’, Glasser said. ‘We started seeing this after a bit of embarrassment following the bushfires. This was interrupted somewhat by Covid, and that opportunity for leadership is going to re-emerge in a big way because we’re going to continue to be inundated by these disasters of enormous scale.’

Glasser said the government was doing some great work on climate adaptation with strong bipartisan support. Large areas of Queensland, for example, had experienced repeated disasters over the past three years, causing great pain in Australian communities.

‘That’s unprecedented. It’s unsustainable. These local government areas are now essentially permanently in the state of recovering from disasters. And it’s the politics that triggers that will ultimately lead governments to act on this more enthusiastically and energetically, as we’ll see with the outcomes of the [bushfire] royal commission.’

Figueres said that in a transition from coal, Australian miners and their families would need to be supported. ‘Spain has done a brilliant job on closing their coal mines and their coal plants over a very careful period and supporting the professional transition of those who were working in either a coal mine or a coal plant. So it is entirely doable.’

Figueres said she didn’t think the Indian company Adani would ultimately open its Queensland mine. She said Adani had been awarded India’s largest ever solar generation contract.

‘So, you have to laugh at the humour of the universe, right?’

This was a very clear marker of a transition that was occurring, she said. ‘It’s a messy transition, but the direction of travel is very clear.’

Glasser recalled United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres commenting that ‘we didn’t leave the Stone Age because we ran out of stones, and we’re not going to leave the fossil fuel age because we’ve run out of fossil fuels. It’s just that there are better alternatives. There are cheaper, cleaner, better, more cost-efficient alternatives.’

Glasser said the world was in the middle of an unprecedented global energy transformation. ‘This has never happened at such a pace before … and it’s being driven fundamentally by profit. Governments can, say, put a price on carbon, which would accelerate this dramatically, but the profit motive is enormously compelling.’

Figueres said the current level of 25% of renewable energy on the global grid could probably have been reached more quickly if there’d been a universal price on carbon. ‘But now we’re there.’

Glasser said that over time the business case for renewables would become much stronger because their price was dropping. Recent research indicated that it would reduce by half again in five years or so. ‘It’s already competitive with new coal and, in Australia and many other markets, new solar is competitive with existing coal.’

He said that even if all greenhouse gas production ceased tomorrow, the climate would continue to warm for decades. ‘This creates the urgency for acting now, before the worst impacts are visible, and putting a price on carbon will help accelerate that transition.’

Glasser said there was without doubt a connection between climate change and the bushfires. ‘We’ve seen unprecedented drought, very high temperatures and how those factors can contribute to outbreaks of bushfires and the intensity of bushfires.

‘With climate change, we are now seeing hazards that are triggering other hazards and together having enormous cascading impacts on society. We saw this with the scale of the bushfires, first of all. Then with the bushfire disaster very quickly becoming a biodiversity disaster, becoming a disaster for tourism in Australia, becoming a health disaster as well in terms of the air quality that many in Canberra, Sydney and other cities experienced during the fires.’

Figueres said climate change had to be understood as an amplifier of natural disasters. People all over the world saw Australia burn. ‘The fires seared into the soul of all of us who were watching this … because of the land area that burned, because of the animals that burned alive, because of the very delayed reaction of the government, and also because of the absolutely devoted, committed, amazing reaction of the firefighting force in Australia, it was so moving. It was so moving to see how they put their lives in danger in order to save the forest and the bush that was burning. So, for all of those reasons, I will never forget those fires in Australia. I hope no Australian will ever forget.’

Figueres said the fires were not caused by climate change, but they were amplified by climate change. ‘That’s the difference that we have to understand. All of these natural events—tornadoes, floods—they’re not caused by a climate change. They are at their root, let’s call them, natural events, but the scale and the intensity and the frequency with which we are being pounded is definitely due to climate change.’

Glasser said that while there was very strong support around the world for action on climate change, surveys revealed the largest numbers of climate deniers in Australia and the United States. ‘And there are some particular political challenges in Australia and the coalition government, for example, that make action harder on this issue’, he said.

‘We should, frankly, not tolerate the fact that climate change has become unreasonably politicised because climate change has nothing to do with partisan politics. It has to do with humanity’s future, all of us, no matter what political party we actually subscribe to.’

Figueres said that even leaving global responsibility out of the equation, decarbonising the economy of any country leads to a stronger economy, many more jobs, more liveable cities, more productive land and greater economic independence.

Glasser said climate change would have a huge disruptive impact on some of Australia’s less developed neighbours, triggering food shortages and a flood of asylum seekers. ‘It’s just not a credible response to just put up walls and hope that that’s going to stop that sort of response’, he said.

‘If Australia puts up walls, the climate is still going to warm and the impacts on Australia will be particularly severe because of our geographic location.’

Supporting the ADF women who have stepped up during the pandemic

In recent years, the promotion of equality for serving women in the Australian Defence Force has been a great positive. But there’s still an equity problem in the lack of mental health care specifically tailored for ADF women. The support that female ADF members are providing to the government’s Covid-19 response has only highlighted the need for a gender perspective to be incorporated into health support services for these personnel.

In 2012, gender restrictions were lifted from all combat roles in the ADF. But while women make up 51% of the Australian population, a significantly smaller proportion of women than men serve in the ADF. To address this shortfall, the Australian government set a goal in 2012 to increase the number of women serving in the ADF by 25% for the navy and air force and by 15% for the army by 2023.

More than 2,800 ADF members have been deployed across the country to assist with the pandemic response. ADF health personnel are providing extensive support to Victoria, in particular, including support in responding to the crisis in aged care homes. In 2017–18, women accounted for 51% of those deployed as part of the ADF health workforce, so the pandemic is putting a lot of female members on the front line.

We know from the SARS outbreak that frontline healthcare workers experience higher anxiety than the general community about contracting a virus during a pandemic. This anxiety is justified. Women make up 70% of the health workforce globally, which puts them at greater risk of transmission, in addition to shouldering much of the care burden.

At the same time, women in general are more vulnerable to a pandemic’s effects. They are less likely to be able to access health care, more likely to suffer domestic violence, and more likely to be first hit by the economic crisis generated by the disease.

The disproportionate gender risk means that the protection of female healthcare workers is essential for maintaining healthcare resiliency in the current crisis. This raises a clear question for the ADF: how do we implement a gender-specific mental health care model for female ADF personnel providing Covid-19 support?

In the ADF, men are more likely to report a traumatic incident or event than women. Social expectations and differences between men’s and women’s military experiences and roles can affect the reporting of symptoms of PTSD. Due to the historic legacy of women not serving in combat, they may not be readily considered for PTSD interventions or programs.

The experience of PTSD seems to be more acute for female personnel. One study compared 96 cases of PTSD in veterans and found that women experienced more severe symptoms than male veterans. Further research has found that, compared with male veterans, women experience a higher level of pain and also internalise emotions relating to a traumatic event. More studies are needed into this growing and highly trauma-exposed group in the ADF.

The ADF has long recognised the valuable contribution that female personnel make to national and international operations. Unfortunately, however, health care for women in the military setting has to date largely focused on gynaecological needs and rarely addressed deployment-specific health risks and outcomes.

Although veterans’ organisations, both government and private, strive to be inclusive, it has been left to a limited number of under-resourced groups like the Women Veterans Network Australia to identify a specific female perspective. It is clearly impractical to expect such small organisations to take responsibility for the mental health care of female veterans.

More robust awareness-raising of the issue is also sorely needed. The public perception of what a contemporary veteran looks like is overwhelmingly male. When the press and the general public discuss PTSD in ADF veterans, consideration is rarely given to referring to female veterans or acknowledging differences in PTSD between men and women.

For example, in February, the Daily Telegraph published a front-page feature announcing a royal commission into the deaths of ADF veterans. One headline read, ‘Veterans, fathers, sons and brothers’. Of the 46 photos of deceased veterans that accompanied the article, not one was of a female veteran. This is despite a 2019 report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare stating that the age-adjusted rate of suicide between 2001 and 2017 among ex-serving women was higher than that of Australian civilian women.

The ADF needs to address this problem by developing mental health care programs and outreach services specifically targeted to the needs of female veterans and providing financial support for further research. Educational resources for commanders, the public and families also need to be developed so that ADF women who are at risk of mental health conditions can be more readily identified and provided with appropriate treatment and support.

Now is the time to support women who have answered the ADF’s call for action. It’s not about providing special treatment for our female personnel; it’s about providing the right treatment.

Vaccine ‘probably a 90% chance’ but huge challenges remain in tackling Covid-19

Two of Australia’s leading experts on the Covid-19 pandemic say there’s a very good chance a vaccine will be developed for the disease but there will be huge challenges to overcome until then, and in rolling out that vaccine to the entire world.

Epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre told ASPI’s ‘Strategic Vision 2020’ conference she believes there’s ‘probably a 90% chance’ the unprecedented global effort to find a vaccine will bear fruit.

‘Just because of the level of focus and resources and effort that’s being undergone at the moment, I think it’s very likely we’ll see vaccines’, Professor MacIntyre told journalist Stan Grant.

‘How good they will be, I don’t know. They’ll probably be okay. I think that we’ll have vaccines that are reasonable enough to provide herd immunity.’

Also speaking at the event was former head of Australia’s health department and ASPI council member Jane Halton, who said that she’s cautious in her optimism but some trials are showing promise.

‘There are over 250 groups working on a vaccine. It’s a big number, but most importantly, there are well over 20 candidate vaccines that are currently in human trial around the world, and more in preclinical work. And we know that the early signs on a number of those are quite positive.’

The good signs don’t mean there won’t be challenges in distributing a successful vaccine to all those who need it, and it would be at least 18 months before a large number of doses would be available.

Because two billion people—the elderly and immunocompromised, and emergency and healthcare workers—would need to be vaccinated to significantly reduce mortality from the virus, ‘we’re talking late next year and into the year following’, Halton said.

That timeframe means the world is going to have to learn to live with the virus for some time to come, even if a vaccine is found soon.

On news that Russia has given its ‘Sputnik V’ vaccine regulatory approval after two months of clinical trials, Halton said she would not be comfortable taking a vaccine that had not finished phase three trials, which usually involve thousands of people, and MacIntyre said seeing the data—which Russia hasn’t released—would be essential in examining its efficacy.

There’s a risk that in the race to be first with an effective inoculation, some countries will cut corners simply because the payoff is set to be so big.

Halton described the current situation as an arms race, ‘because what you’re looking for is the opportunity to use a product for strategic advantage.

‘The strategic advantage that comes with being able to say to potentially a smaller country, “We can help you. We can look after your needs here, but there are strings attached.” I think that is a very real risk.’

There are direct downsides to such an approach of potential coercion and inequitable access, but there are indirect ones that mean it’s actually in a nation’s self-interest to ensure as many people as possible can be inoculated as quickly as possible.

As Halton puts it, ‘In the end, it’s better that we control the disease globally for everyone. Because as long as it’s uncontrolled in the world, it’ll always continue to cause a problem for every country.’

And even with a global upsurge in nationalism, she says that same self-interest may also drive countries to work together to produce candidate vaccines.

‘At the moment as yet, and I’m discounting the Russian announcement, nobody actually has a viable vaccine. Which means there’s an argument for countries to collaborate, because at the end of the day, do you take a bet on one or two and possibly miss out? Or do you work in a collaborative mechanism to actually make sure that you have access to something that will work?’

Asked which countries had done well in containing Covid-19, MacIntyre listed China, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan and New Zealand, as well as Australia, despite the wave of infections currently plaguing Victoria.

What do those countries have in common? They ramped up their testing and tracing capabilities to a large degree and did so quickly, many of them with the aid of digital contact tracing to keep on top of any outbreaks.

Halton told Grant there has also been a noticeable difference in response ‘in the countries that actually had SARS as opposed to the countries that watched SARS’ and that ‘a level of trust, a level of empathy and a capacity to explain what is going on and why things are necessary has been a standout feature of some of those countries’ leadership’.

MacIntyre adds that she has been surprised by the failure of the US to bring the pandemic to heel.

‘It’s really shocked me. That was so unexpected that they would be really struggling so badly with controlling this pandemic and the failures have been at multiple levels.

‘It’s just been shocking and tragic really to see a great country that has all the resources to have done a magnificent job, just do exactly the opposite’, she said.

Both experts agree that a large part of the problem in the US was the failure to recognise the seriousness of the pandemic and to increase testing capacity in response.

Real leadership will be needed to help bring Covid-19 under control in the countries where it is still running rampant and, if and when a vaccine is developed, leadership will also be needed to ensure it gets to those who need it most.

Even from the level of pure national self-interest, the best way out of this pandemic is likely to be through global cooperation and collaboration.

Why do conspiracy theorists film themselves refusing to wear face masks?

Over several weeks, viral videos have appeared on social media showing individuals flouting public health recommendations and legal requirements and actively attempting to provoke confrontations with staff (or in some cases even police officers) responsible for enforcing those rules. This trend has increased sharply in Australia since the requirement for people to wear face masks in public spaces went into effect in Melbourne.

A range of conspiratorial beliefs are fuelling these incidents. However, the most significant driver is the social affirmation which these videos garner among online conspiracy communities. Conspiracies explain the resistance to wearing a mask, but not the need to film it and share it on social media. People’s desire to film their own refusal to wear masks, and to try to make it more exciting by provoking a confrontation, is a reflection of the ways in which social media interacts with and inspires online conspiracy communities.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, a swirling galaxy of conspiracy theories has claimed for one reason or another that the virus is not real and is part of a sinister plot which must be resisted at all costs.

This generalised opposition to Covid-19 health measures has crystallised around face masks due in significant part to the intense politicisation of mask-wearing in the United States. President Donald Trump spent months refusing to publicly don a mask and repeatedly undermining public trust in their effectiveness.

Those views have trickled across to Australia in a number of forms, perhaps most prominently in the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy (which has absolutely exploded since the start of the pandemic) and the ‘sovereign citizen’ conspiracy (which believes that governments can only rule by individual consent and that citizens can rightfully evade laws simply by choosing to do so). These are both off-shoots of conspiracy theories which originated in the US and continue to have substantial ties to the US-based conspiracy communities.

Often it’s not actually clear from the videos which of these conspiracies the person believes, and in some ways it doesn’t matter much. As these weird theories swim around together in the same social-media Petri dishes, they are increasingly cross-propagating and evolving new strains that combine elements of a multitude of different conspiratorial narratives.

One of the most notable features of many videos has been the individual reciting a list of obstructionist questions to the staff member or police officer attempting to enforce the mask rule. In some videos, the person even has a printed list to read from.

This is a tactic that derives directly from the sovereign citizen conspiracy, which encourages its followers to use quasi-legalistic questions and challenges (usually based on extremely misguided interpretations of the law) to undermine government authorities. Several versions of these lists adapted for Melbourne’s mask regulations are being circulated in social media groups.

Some of the questions are straight out of the sovereign citizen playbook, literally. For example, one suggests challenging the definition of ‘driver’ and claiming to be a ‘traveller’ instead to avoid having to show a driver’s licence. This is a sovereign citizen question which is so common in the US that there are articles guiding police on how to handle it.

Unfortunately, this tactic sometimes succeeds purely because the staff member or police officer gives up out of frustration, as we saw in a recent incident in which a Melbourne woman was allowed to pass a check point without answering police questions.

Although it would be a mistake to dismiss these groups as ‘crazies on the internet’ (they’re clearly not just on the internet), it is true that these conspiracy communities are heavily dependent on social media platforms and wouldn’t exist in anything like the same numbers without them. The more such videos there are, the more the dynamics of social media stimulate users to make their video ever more exciting so that it stands out from the rest and gets more likes and comments—including by, for example, deliberately provoking an altercation as we have seen in some of the videos. Even as the videos may be being widely condemned by the mainstream public, in conspiracy Facebook groups they receive hundreds or even thousands of likes and comments of support.


Screenshot of Facebook post about the ‘persecution’ of a woman who refused to wear a mask in Bunnings, comparing her treatment to the biblical tale of Daniel being fed to lions

As an immediate measure, Victorian police and perhaps even retail and hospitality staff should consider adapting some of the advice which is already out there about how to deal with sovereign citizens asking endless obstructionist questions. Now that they have seen some success, we should expect the use of that tactic to continue and to grow, and police, health officers and other frontline workers need to be prepared to respond to it.

In the longer term, social media platforms could consider changing the incentive structures for engagement with conspiracy groups. That doesn’t have to involve removing content (which conspiracy groups would immediately decry as censorship). It could, however, include turning off comments, limiting or blocking likes, or preventing their own algorithms from boosting videos which depict individuals deliberately flouting public health regulations. Taking away the immediate validation which conspiracy theorists are showered with when they post these videos online would remove a lot of the reason for making them in the first place.

Covid-19 accelerates maritime insecurity in the Asia–Pacific

Covid-19 is showing the world how a health crisis can exert disproportionate pressure on existing social and political fissures. The Asia–Pacific maritime environment is no exception, with hybrid challenges persisting and non-conventional incidents on the rise. As state budgets adjust to accommodate the health crisis, non-state actors are escalating violence on land that is spilling over into the maritime domain.

Before the onset of the pandemic, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing incidents were gaining recognition as a serious security issue. Known as hybrid challenges, these incidents are characterised by the combination of regular and irregular tactics used by adversaries to exploit non-conventional concerns in order to gain an asymmetric advantage. These tactics include the use of criminal behaviour, subversion, sponsorship of proxy forces and even military expansionism.

Covid-19 is not hindering state and non-state actors from posing maritime hybrid threats despite national budgets being diverted to crisis response. The sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat near the Paracel Islands, harassment of supply ships off Sarawak, and China’s annual announcement of a fishing ban are some of the irregular hybrid tactics that persist alongside the global pandemic.

Non-state actors are also exploiting the health crisis and perceived weakening of state capacity to heighten internal violence, with negative consequences for the Asia–Pacific’s maritime domain. Organised violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine and Chin states increased by 74% from January to April 2020 compared with the year before. The increased violence is causing mounting civilian fatalities, displacing villagers and pushing migrants out to the Andaman Sea—a maritime route into other regional countries. As countries reject migrants for fear of spreading unidentified infections, the exodus under pandemic conditions could trigger a repeat of the 2015 migration crisis.

There has also been a marked increase in piracy and armed robbery during this period. The Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) Information Sharing Centre reported a two-fold increase in the number of piracy and armed robbery incidents from January to June 2020 as compared to 2019. Security arrangements such as the Eastern Sabah Security Command were also on high alert after receiving information of a raised risk of armed Abu Sayyaf Group members targeting vessels in the Sulu and Sulawesi seas.

The heightened risk of instability at sea is accompanied by related reports of clashes between government forces and militants on land. In Sultan Kudarat province, Philippine government forces targeted Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters militants that are associated with a kidnap-for-ransom group. Violent clashes with Abu Sayyaf Group members were also reported in Sulu.

While these maritime challenges demand an immediate security response, Asia–Pacific countries are preoccupied with battling Covid-19 infections within their own borders. By redirecting more resources towards containing the spread of Covid-19, regional countries are experiencing corresponding budget cuts to other state functions—including defence. For example, Indonesia’s defence budget has been lowered by 7% and Thailand’s budget will shrink by 8%. For Thailand, this has translated into a standstill on military procurement purchases including two Chinese-made submarines.

Despite these restrained national resources, regional governments are still adopting strategies to compensate for any shortfall in state capacity. To maintain a coordinated and balanced response to both domestic and external threats, Malaysia is implementing the integrated ‘Ops Benteng’ to enhance enforcement along maritime and land borders. In the Philippines, a controversial bill designed to strengthen the country’s counterterrorism authorities came into effect on 18 July. Meanwhile, annual multilateral naval exercises such as Southeast Asia Cooperation and Training, or SEACAT, have shifted to virtual platforms to maintain active levels of information sharing and multilateral coordination among naval forces in the region.

Covid-19 is placing intense pressure on pre-existing political and social fissures in the Asia–Pacific. Non-state and state actors are taking advantage of a perceived reduction in state capacity to pursue activities that result in maritime instability. An extended pandemic period threatens to exert further pressure on national budgets and state capacity to protect exclusive economic zones. Although Covid-19 began as a threat to public health, it is slowly evolving into a threat to maritime security too.

The politics of a Covid-19 vaccine

The global toll of the Covid-19 pandemic is enormous: more than half a million lives lost, hundreds of millions out of work and trillions of dollars of wealth destroyed. And the disease has by no means run its course; hundreds of thousands more could well die from it.

Not surprisingly, there is tremendous interest in the development of a vaccine, with more than 100 efforts under way around the world. Several look promising, and one or more may bear fruit—possibly faster than the several years or longer it normally takes to bring a vaccine on line.

But even if one or more vaccines emerge that promise to make people less susceptible to Covid-19, the public-health problem will not be eliminated. As any medical expert will attest, vaccines are not panaceas. They are but one weapon in the medical arsenal.

No vaccine can be expected to produce complete or lasting immunity in all who take it. Millions will refuse to get vaccinated. And there is the brute fact that there are nearly 8 billion men, women and children on the planet. Manufacturing 8 billion doses (or multiples of that if more than one dose is needed) of one or more vaccines and distributing them around the globe could require years, not months.

These are all matters of science, manufacturing and logistics. They are sure to be difficult. But the politics will be at least as challenging.

For starters, who will pay for any vaccine? Companies will expect to recoup their investment in research and development, along with the costs of production and distribution. That is already tens of billions of dollars (and possibly much more)—before the question of profit is even introduced. There is also the related question of how companies that develop a vaccine will be compensated if they are required to license the patents and know-how to producers elsewhere.

The toughest political question of all, though, is likely to concern access. Who should receive the initial doses of any vaccine? Who determines who is allowed into the queue and in what order? What special advantages accrue to the country where a vaccine is developed? To what extent will wealthier countries crowd out poorer ones? Will countries let geopolitics intrude, sharing the vaccine with friends and allies while forcing vulnerable populations in adversary countries to the back of the line?

At the national level, every government should start to think through how it will distribute those vaccines it produces or receives. One idea would be to administer it first to healthcare workers, followed by police, firefighters, the military, teachers and other essential workers. Governments must also consider what priority to give those at higher risk of developing serious complications from Covid-19, such as the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions. Should a vaccine be free to some or all?

At the international level, the questions are even more complex. We need to make sure that production can be scaled rapidly, that rules are in place for availability and that sufficient funds are pledged so that poorer countries are covered. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the World Health Organization, several governments, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have formed the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access, or Covax, Facility. Its creators propose that any effective vaccine that emerges be treated as a global public good, to be distributed equally around the world, regardless of where it was invented or of a country’s ability to pay for it. The WHO has put forward a global allocation framework that seeks to ensure priority for the most vulnerable populations and healthcare workers.

But such approaches may be unrealistic. It’s not just that the Covax effort lacks adequate funding, the participation of the United States and China, and clear authority. It’s that all governments are sure to come under enormous pressure to take care of their own citizens first. Vaccine nationalism is almost certain to win out over vaccine multilateralism.

Recent history reinforces this scepticism. Covid-19 emerged in China and quickly became a worldwide problem. Responses, though, have been mostly along national lines. Some countries have fared relatively well, thanks to their public health systems and political leadership; with others, it’s been just the opposite.

Continuing this national-level approach to a vaccine is a recipe for disaster. Only a handful of countries will be able to produce viable vaccines. The approach must be global. The reasons are not just ethical and humanitarian, but also economic and strategic, as global recovery will require collective improvement.

In Iraq, when military progress outpaced planning for the US-led war’s aftermath, the result was chaos, or ‘catastrophic success’. We cannot afford an analogous outcome here, with success in the laboratory outpacing planning for what comes next. Governments, companies, and nongovernmental organisations need to come together quickly, be it in the Covax initiative, under the auspices of the United Nations or the G20, or somewhere else. Global governance comes in all shapes and sizes. What’s essential is that it comes. The lives of millions, the economic welfare of billions and social stability everywhere hang in the balance.