Islamic State, Ebola’s Common Ally: Weak Crisis Response Mechanisms

Across Africa and the Middle East, governments and international organizations are paying the price for responding to crises too late. Last week, the continuing spread of Ebola in West Africa vied for global attention with new advances and atrocities in Syria and Iraq by the so-called Islamic State (IS). These were arguably both avoidable disasters. A more determined international medical effort to contain Ebola when it appeared in Liberia and Sierra Leone at the start of this year would almost certainly have stemmed the epidemic. Earlier Western and Arab military action against IS, perhaps paired with a nasty but necessary […]