While the media frenzy surrounding Ebola has dissipated in the United States, the war against the virus rages on in West Africa. With assistance from both the nonprofit world (e.g. Doctors Without Borders) and foreign governments (e.g. the U.S. military’s Operation United Assistance), the nations of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have made significant strides to eradication since the height of the epidemic in the summer and fall of 2014.

While the efforts of these groups, whether NGOs or state-based, have rightly earned coverage and praise, the role of for-profit groups — especially multinational companies with a regional presence — has been mostly left out of the conventional narratives of West Africa’s Ebola fight. Such multinational companies, 

, “play an outsized role in West Africa’s economy.” As such, they had integral and unusual roles in the efforts to control and prevent the spread of Ebola.

Firestone, the rubber behemoth, is a prime example. Responsible for nearly 9,000 West African workers and their dependents, 

Firestone “built two [Ebola] isolation clinics

 … converted pickup trucks into ambulances, and enforced a ‘no visitors’ policy.” Their preventative safety measures helped to ensure that not a single employee was infected. Steel giant ArcelorMittal took similar precautions, though the crises imposed extreme delays upon a number of projects, ultimately costing “nearly as much as [Liberia’s] entire GDP,” according to Spar. Yet that investment paid off, as the corporation successfully prevented the epidemic from infecting their West African factory workers.

Still, such efforts were not without their critics, and the implications and influence of multinational corporations in West Africa are profound. Some critics blame corporate behemoths for creating the environmental conditions that sparked the Ebola crisis in the first place. According to Spar, the logic of these critiques is straightforward: “As firms harvested resources or made way for open land, they inevitably cut through forests, reducing their mass and forcing wildlife into areas of human habitation.” The result? Animal-borne viruses (Ebola included) could be contracted more easily by humans.

“Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone were stunned by the sheer enormity of the crisis and their lack of capacity — financial, technical, medical, and even military — to do anything about it.” These nation-states are very young and very weak, having on gained independence far more recently than the regional powers of Nigeria and Senegal, neither of which were touched by 2014’s Ebola epidemic. As Spar emphasizes, these three younger, weaker states have not seen lasting success in their efforts to create stable “independent political parties, strong government institutions, sound infrastructure, or robust civil societies,” and all three score 

in the bottom 12 percent globally in the World Bank’s rankings of government effectiveness

Considering such realities, it should come as little shock that these weakened states succumbed to the Ebola virus with such speed and ferocity. By contrast, multinational corporations recognize their abilities to lend aid in such situations, and “inevitably fill power vacuums, for better or worse.” In short, Ebola became an epidemic-level crisis because of governmental instability; the epidemic became manageable thanks to outside institutions.

For West Africa, writes Spar, “the problem is not the power of foreign investors; it is the weakness of local states.” While the Ebola crisis clearly set Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone back, ensuring a baseline level of public health from viral epidemics is essential for statehood to exist in any meaningful sense.

In the case of Ebola, it is the responsibility of the international community — the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders, troops on humanitarian missions, volunteers, and multinational corporations, too — to provide support. The challenge is too big and the costs — in dollars, opportunities, and human lives — are simply too great for nonprofits and governments to carry alone.

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Ebola reached an epidemic-level crisis because of government instability. It became manageable thanks to outside institutions.

How corporations helped stop the Ebola crisis

At its most primal level, one’s mission in war is simple: defeat the enemy, and win control over the resource or territory in question. Naturally, the reality of war is more complex. At its most brutal, victory in combat is not enough, but merely a milestone en route to annihilation and punishment of conquered peoples and the exploitation and corruption of their taken lands.

“Environmental devastation is not only a byproduct of war, but has also been a military strategy since ancient times,” writes Bronwyn 

. It’s a tactic literally as old as the proverbial “salting of the earth,” and yet while that action is obviously cruel and punitive (preventing land from bearing crops, and destroying a population’s food source and economic foundation), where do we draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate wartime environmental destruction?

“These distinctions matter a great deal in understanding how the just-war tradition and humanitarian norms [can] legitimate certain forms of violence and destruction,” writes Leebaw, “as well as their potential critical role in response to war.” Here, she draws upon the works of 

, a jurist who grappled with the hazy questions of the treatment of enemy property in war, and 

the U.S. Civil War-era Lieber Code, which provided the basis for the 20th century’s Geneva Conventions

. “The principle of military necessity,” argues Leebaw, “has been interpreted to permit potentially limitless destruction, as long as such destruction is carried out in accordance with perceived wartime imperatives.” She emphasizes that wanton destruction of property is not permitted.

Yet, the wantonness of environmental destruction is not necessarily apparent at the time of damage, and often becomes obvious only years and decades later. Often, such tactics can be justified in the heat of combat and fog of war. Take, for instance, the U.S. military’s use of Agent Orange and napalm (among other defoliants and herbicides) during Operation Ranch Hand during the Vietnam War. The goal was to strip trees of leaves and destroy the heavy foliage the Vietcong used to its merciless advantage in its attacks on U.S. troops. In the moment, one could make a moral argument that such destruction wasn’t wanton, but rather, an action necessary to save American lives.

In the broader scope of history, though, Agent Orange’s environmental and human misery is impossible to justify: generations of Vietnamese children (and stillborn babies) with massive defects and deformities, U.S. veterans and Vietnamese combatants and civilians alike with substantially higher likelihood of cancer, millions of acres of soil contaminated, dozens of species of wildlife killed off. Here, Leebaw borrows from Yale biologist Arthur Galston: “We are too ignorant to know how far-reaching and how long lasting will be the changes in ecology brought about by widespread spraying of herbicides in Vietnam.” The danger of these Pandora’s Box situations, writes Leebaw, “is that instead of becoming a cautionary tale that inspires prudence and restraint, [they] can too easily … justify fatalism and the evasion of responsibility.”

In the long run, warfare is a complicated matter, and military leaders — by necessity — must prioritize the objectives of their missions and safety of their troops before the preservation of the environment. At the heart of the matter, a decrease in environmental destruction is less likely to come about from a change in the tactics of warfare than from a rise in diplomacy. Violence, sadly, will continue against man and earth alike.

“Scorched Earth: Environmental War Crimes and International Justice”

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Environmental devastation has been a consequence of war since time immemorial. Can we draw a line between necessary and gratuitous destruction? Where?

In war, how much environmental destruction is too much?

The city of Mecca — birthplace of Muhammad, site of the Prophet’s first revelation, endpoint of the Hajj — has served as the epicenter of the Islamic faith for centuries. With this wealth of history over the centuries, one would expect the city to be rich in architecture dating back centuries. The reality could not be more different.

Were he to visit Mecca today, the Prophet may find new resonance in the old truism that you can never go home again. 

, Stephen Schwartz, declares that “Mecca is threatened.”

 With the exception of the holy Kaaba, the majority of the city’s historical buildings and landmarks have been bulldozed, replaced with luxurious hotels, condominiums and shopping malls.

“The merchandizing of Mecca,” writes Schwartz, “reflects fundamentalist Wahhabi doctrine that promotes cultural vandalism, revealing how comfortable the Saudis are with consumer values of the West.” Many of these now-desecrated locations possessed religious ties and served as important points for prayer. The ancestral residences of Muhammad’s descendants have nearly all been demolished, and replaced with modern centers of commerce and tourism. The onetime home of Abu Bakr — remembered as the Prophet’s close advisor and, upon Muhammad’s death, the first caliph — was razed. In its stead sits a Hilton Hotel.

The stated motives behind such destruction can be found in religious doctrine. According to Wahhabi clerics, the existence of these Islamic sites provides temptation to worship these sites, distracting Muslims from worshiping only Allah. Schwartz quotes a fatwa issued by the Saudi office for religious rulings: “It is impermissible to exaggerate the importance of historical sites and buildings, because this might lead to Shirk [idolatry]. The laypeople may be tempted to believe that such places are blessed, and be driven to commit acts of disbelief.” If there is no god but God, they say, the only way to prevent the worship of false idols is to raze these historic sites, demolishing a piece of the Islamic past for the sake of the Islamic present and future.

Schwartz cautions against such false piety: “The intentions of the bulldozing ‘renewers’ of Mecca are clearly avaricious.” He notes that the officially stated posture grants wealthy Saudi elites the opportunity to capitalize on the sudden availability of land close to a major international tourist destination (one that practicing Muslims are compelled to visit).

Private citizens are not alone in their opportunism. Governmental efforts to ‘renew’ the city stem from the objective to improve its pilgrimage infrastructure (hence the aforementioned Hilton Hotel and, more broadly, the lodging boom). The Abraj Al-Bait Towers, a hulking cluster of Saudi government-owned skyscrapers, house not only the world’s largest clock face, but a number of upscale hotels, and a shopping mall offering nearly 4,000 international luxury brands. The imposing megatowers loom over the Grand Mosque, exhibiting the stark contrast between the antiquity of the holy Kaaba and the modernity of luxury shopping and high-rise apartments. It exemplifies what Schwartz describes as a clash between mercantilism and Mecca’s traditional role as a holy city.

At its core, the city of Mecca serves to facilitate the most important Muslim journey, the Hajj. While credible religious doctrine can justify the destruction of Mecca’s historic sites, such justifications strain credulity when those who stand to make a personal financial gain from this destruction are the same ones hurling accusations of idolatry, writes Schwartz. The development of such lavish and lucrative infrastructure — and bulldozing of world heritage sites — does little but turn the most holy of experiences into a business.

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Most of Mecca’s historic sites have been razed, replaced by new hotels, luxury malls, and high-rises. Here, a glance at the “merchandizing of Mecca.”

Nicole Panoc