Using Nighttime Lights Satellite Imagery to Track the Syrian War

It has been well established that nighttime lights derived from satellite imagery can be used to provide estimates of population settlements and to estimate the socioeconomic status of such places. The data come from NOAA's Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System and one of the more innovative uses has been to sort out the spatial nature of the conflict in Syria. Two Chinese researchers have just published a paper in the International Journal of Remote Sensing in which they are able to conclude that:

This study provides a primary analysis on the response of night-time light to the Syrian Crisis. For the country and all provinces, the night-time light experienced a sharp decline as the crisis broke out. We found that most of the provinces lost >60% of the night-time lights and the lit areas because of the war, and the amount of the night-time light loss is correlated to the number of IDPs. We also find that the international border of Syria is a boundary to the night-time light variation patterns, reproving that the administrative border has the effect of socioeconomic discontinuity.

As this research only provides a primary evaluation of the night-time light data for the Syrian crisis, more information can be discovered by the use of night-time light images in future studies. For example, night-time light variations in control zones of different groups, including the Assad regime, Free Syrian Army, Kurds, and the Islamic State of Iraq and al Shams, can be investigated to evaluate humanitarian situations in these regions. Additionally, by the use of night-time light images, we can also study how the Syrian Civil War has spread to Iraq, where the Islamic State of Iraq and al Shams is now the global focus.

In Lebanon, we might expect that the lights are a bit brighter now than before, as Syrians cram into refugee camps that previously had been largely occupied by Palestinians. Unfortunately, even assuming some change in lights, it seems that misery is simply being compounded as Syrians flee the fighting--with no obvious end in sight.

Ebola May Be Out of Our Sight, But It's Not Gone

If you read Dr. Pollock's comment on one of my posts last week, you'll already know what I'm talking about here. While we in the US were enjoying our Ebola-free Thanksgiving, West Africa--especially Sierra Leone--was struggling with an increasing number of deaths.

While health officials say they are making headway against the Ebola epidemic in neighboring Liberia, the disease is still raging in Sierra Leone, despite the big international push. In November alone, the World Health Organization has reported more than 1,800 new cases in this country, about three times as many as in Liberia, which until recently had been the center of the outbreak.

More than six weeks ago, international health officials conceded that they were overwhelmed in Sierra Leone and reluctantly announced a Plan B. Until enough hospital beds could be built here, they pledged to at least help families tend to their sick loved ones at home.

As the New York Times reports, however, the problem is not just one of getting enough health resources into the country. Like the problem of domestic violence, it involves deeply held cultural beliefs.

Public health professionals are beginning to look harder at Sierra Leone’s culture, which is dominated by secret men’s and women’s societies that have certain rituals, especially around burials. Many people here — just like in other cultures — believe that the afterlife is more important than this one. A proper burial, in which the body is touched and carefully washed, is the best way to ensure a soul reaches its destination.

It is not pure altruism, either. If burial traditions are not followed, people worry they may be haunted by a restless soul. But in a time of Ebola, handling corpses is extremely risky because they are highly infectious. Seventy percent of new cases here, Western officials said, are directly linked to traditional burials.

Neighboring Liberia has many of the same secret societies, but some anthropologists said that the Liberian government may have done a better job working with the leaders of secret societies to change burial practices, one possible reason Liberia’s Ebola crisis has been stabilizing.

The only long-term solution is the development of a vaccine, and there is at least promising news on that front, as a new trial just completed on humans in the U.S. was successful. 

Violence Against Women

Equal status for women in society is, in my view, a key to the successful demographic future of the world. So we need to pay tribute over the next 16 days (really, only 16 days??) to activism against gender violence. Violence obviously represents the extreme example of the subjugation of women by men (not to mention by other women who buy into the idea of male superiority). Female genital mutilaton (FGM) is one of these acts of violence and only a few days ago an Egyptian court rendered a not guilty verdict against a doctor who had performed FGM on a 12-year girl who died as a result of the operation, as reported by the Guardian:

The first doctor to be brought to trial in Egypt on charges of female genital mutilation (FGM) has been acquitted, crushing hopes that the landmark verdict would discourage Egyptian doctors from conducting the endemic practice. 

Raslan Fadl, a doctor and Islamic preacher in the village of Agga, northern Egypt, was acquitted of mutilating Sohair al-Bata’a in June 2013. The 12-year-old died during the alleged procedure, but Fadl was also acquitted of her manslaughter. 

No reason was given by the judge, with the verdict being simply scrawled in a court ledger, rather than being announced in the Agga courtroom. 

Sohair’s father, Mohamed al-Bata’a, was also acquitted of responsibility. Police and health officials testified that the child’s parents had admitted taking their daughter to Fadl’s clinic for the procedure. 

Despite his acquittal, the doctor was ordered to pay 5,001 Egyptian pounds (about £450) to Sohair’s mother for her daughter’s manslaughter, after the pair reached an out-of-court settlement.

The idea behind this is that since it reduces the pleasure from intercourse, it also reduces the risk of adultery. 

According to surveys by Unicef, an estimated 91% of married Egyptian women aged between 15 and 49 have been subjected to FGM, 72% of them by doctors. Unicef’s research suggests support for the practice is gradually falling: 63% of women in the same age bracket supported it in 2008, compared with 82% in 1995.

This practice has nothing to do with Islam, per se. Rather, it is a cultural practice that continues to emphasize the lower status and "fallibility" of women compared to men. There is a world-wide movement against it and we all need to support that however we can. 

Harvest of Shame

In 1960, CBS News broadcast the now iconic program, Harvest of Shame, in which Edward R. Murrow exposed the disgusting way in which migrant farm workers were being treated in this country. They aired the program the day after Thanksgiving. For years, I showed it to my classes right before Thanksgiving, to encourage them to think critically about the meal they were about to enjoy. It is out there on YouTube and I hope that you will repeat my practice, because the situation of farm workers is different, but not really better than it was more than a half century ago. A very large share of the nation's food is dependent upon the work of undocumented immigrants, and their plight is obviously a current political controversy. 

But the issue of food and politics goes even beyond the situation of people who get our food to us. A blog post today by chef Tom Colicchio reminds us that politicians in the U.S. have been favoring the rich over the poor in terms of taking away food stamps, and have been favoring agribusiness instead of the consumer in terms of what gets produced, and how, and at what price. 

It’s harder to see, maybe, how policy can make us fat or sick, make the price of a head of broccoli more expensive than a hamburger. But the time has come to acknowledge that food policy plays a huge role in our everyday lives — from what’s on the table every day (or what isn’t) to the health of our kids and communities.

So, when we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, we need to give some thought to why we are eating what we're eating, and about the real situation of those absolutely necessary undocumented immigrants and other exploited workers who make Thanksgiving feasts possible. 

Will Obama's Executive Action Make Any Difference in Immigration Reform? Part II

President Obama's executive orders regarding temporary relief for undocumented immigrants has created a great deal of controversy, but I have been trying to figure out what difference it might make demographically, as I noted yesterday. Pew Research Center estimates that we have a large (11.2 million) unauthorized immigrant population, and their research and that of others suggests that there are two main reasons: (1) the economy demands more workers than are being supplied by children currently being born in the US (although that may well change in the future as children of immigrants fill in the gaps); and (2) the tighter border security since 9/11 has essentially trapped unauthorized immigrants here because it is much harder than it used to be for people to cross the border back and forth as the economy and/or their family circumstances change. That may well account for the rise in the number of unaccompanied minor children coming to the US--parents do not have the freedom to go back to Mexico or El Salvador to either be with children who were left behind, nor to run the risk of accompanying them back to the U.S.

But, the point is that we need immigrants who are here to work. Most people who are "in line" to enter the country legally are dependents of current U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents and are unlikely to contribute much to the U.S. economy. Given the current structure of immigration laws in the U.S., there is no way to meet the economic demands of the country--that is one of the many reasons why immigration reform is necessary. Since the legal structure doesn't meet the country's needs, the undocumented immigrants are essentially "invited" to come and fill in the gaps. But the consequence is something very close to slavery, where people have no rights and no recourse to justice when they are exploited. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) anticipated this, in a way, by requiring that employers only hire workers who could prove their legal status. It turned out, however, that employers were not happy with this arrangement and so, outside of government, there is very little scrutiny of a potential worker's legal status--thus continuing the status quo of inviting people in to work--while saying we don't want them, even though we really do--and then continuing to exploit them.

Rubén Rumbaut just sent a link to a great op-ed piece in yesterday's Houston Chronicle by a law professor at the University of Houston that helps to sort out some of the legal issues that have led us to the current situation. 

With his executive action, Obama has finally called the bluff of the critics, who now have the burden of persuasion in undertaking immigration reform. They can start by adopting the terms of the original Dream Act legislation offered by Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch over a decade ago, giving "Dreamers" a pathway to permanent, legal residence.
We have invested in these children due to the requirements of Plyler v. Doe, the 1982 Supreme Court decision that allowed children who are in the U.S. without documents to attend free public schools irrespective of their immigration status. Who seriously wants to remove the students and lose the investment we have made in them?
And we can thoroughly vet the arriving Central American children to see if their claims are credible. At the least, we should provide them with advocates and lawyers. That would be a down payment on immigration reform, perhaps leading to a more comprehensive version.

At the end of the day, executive actions are only temporary and cannot change the legal status of an unauthorized immigrant. That can only be done by Congress, and we all have to push our Members of Congress to push John Boehner to put the Senate-passed immigration reform bill up for a House vote, so we can move past this horrible moment in history.