Bixby Center Chair Malcolm Potts published an op-ed in the LA Times Aug, 23 2009.

Read the article online here: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-potts23-2009aug23,0,4867091.story

In his op ed Dr. Potts aruges, “it is not worth risking the death of one more American or British soldier fighting there unless there is a bold, achievable plan to educate women, enhance their autonomy and meet their need for family planning”

The war for Afghanistan’s women:

It’s not worth risking U.S. lives unless we raise the status of Afghan women

“There are two wars going on in Afghanistan. One is to defeat the Taliban, and that war is not going well. The other is to liberate women, and that war has hardly begun. If the first war is won but the second is lost, Afghanistan will turn into a failed state — a caldron of violence and misery, home to extremism and totally outside the Western orbit of influence.

Last week’s election, however imperfect, is welcome, but it means little as long as women remain enslaved in this patriarchal, tradition-bound culture. In most of the country, a woman needs her husband’s permission to leave her home. Domestic violence is tragically common. Indeed, the government elected in 2004 passed, and President Hamid Karzai signed into law, legislation legalizing marital rape. Older men use their wealth and power to marry young women. In April, according to news reports, when a teenage Afghan girl called Gulsima eloped with a boy her own age instead of marrying an older man, she and the boyfriend were shot to death in front of the mosque in the southwest province of Nimrod.

Currently, Afghanistan is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman, and — as is the case everywhere women’s rights are nonexistent or in decline — the birthrate is high. Afghan women have an average of about seven children, and the population has been doubling about every 20 years. Today it is 34 million. According to U.N. estimates, by 2050 it could reach a staggering 90 million. That rapid population growth and the demographics that go with it drive most of Afghanistan’s worst problems.

All too often, demography is overlooked in developing countries, as I experienced in 2002 when I wrote the budgets for a U.N. agency working to rebuild Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. Part of our job was to write a 10-year financial plan. As my colleague from the World Bank was closing his computer, I said, “You do realize in 10 years’ time there will be almost 50% more people needing healthcare?” He hadn’t. After an expletive and some more hitting of computer keys, the budget totals rose considerably.

I made my first visit to Afghanistan in 1969. Even then it was clear that slowing population growth was a prerequisite for feeding Afghanistan, for its socioeconomic progress and for any shred of hope for a stable democracy.

One result of rapid population growth is that two-thirds of the Afghan population is below the age of 25. The primary role models for the volatile, testosterone-filled young men in this group are local warlords. The reason Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden (who, incidentally, is the 17th child of a man who had 54 children) have found a haven in Afghanistan is largely because of the mixture of loyalty and anger generated among males in such a society, in which there are no genuine economic opportunities for advancement. The word “taliban” means “student.” The men who condemned Gulsima and her young boyfriend were probably 18 or 19 years old.

So in a country where women have had their fingers cut off because they painted their nails, where the Taliban threw acid on girls trying to go to school, is there any possibility of improving the status of women? Yes.

When Karzai signed the law demeaning and controlling women, he did so as an ugly deal to buy the support of the very traditional Shiite minority in the west of the country. But linguistically, culturally and religiously, this population is simply an extension of eastern Iran. And Iran happens to be a powerful example of how family planning can liberate women and change a society for the better.

In the 1980s, the typical Iranian woman had almost as many children as her counterpart in Afghanistan today. Even an oil-rich country could not support that rate of population growth. The Koran mentions contraception in a positive light, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the religious leader and founder of Iran’s Islamic Republic, endorsed family planning. Iran began to offer a full range of contraceptive choices and even voluntary sterilization. Before young couples could marry, they were required to receive family-planning instruction.

The typical Iranian woman now has 2.1 children. The transition in Iran from high to low birthrates was as rapid as that in China, but without a one-child policy, and it has had similar social benefits. Maternal and infant mortality have fallen, and, despite repressive politics, the U.N. Human Development Index, using such measures as education and individual wealth, shows that the country is better off.

How would this translate to Afghanistan, which is far behind Iran in so many ways? From my experience, I know that teenage girls in Afghanistan want to be in school, despite the cultural obstacles. And having seen firsthand Afghan women suffering from botched abortions, I am sure some, at least, want fewer children. In addition, Westerners are training female health workers. Private pharmacies often dispense drugs smuggled from neighboring countries. It would be possible to introduce contraceptives, even in remote areas.

A stable, modern and functioning Afghanistan is the West’s goal. But it is not worth risking the death of one more American or British soldier fighting there unless there is a bold, achievable plan to educate women, enhance their autonomy and meet their need for family planning.

This feudal, fundamentalist, warrior society will never join the 21st century — or even the 16th century — unless we win the war to liberate women. Unless women are given the freedom to choose whether or when to have a child, by 2050 there will be millions more angry men age 15 to 25 in Afghanistan. If only a tiny percentage are potential insurgents or suicide bombers, no Western army, however large and however strongly backed at home, has the slightest chance of prevailing.”

Malcolm Potts is a UC Berkeley professor and the chairman of the university’s Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability. His latest book is “Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safe World.”

Barrick Lecture Series hosts UC, Berkeley professor to discuss “Sex and War”
February 26, 2009
by Lisa Rush

Dr. Malcolm Potts of the University of California, Berkeley discussed his book “Sex and War” as a part of the Barrick Lecture Series Monday.
The book, co-authored with science writer Thomas Hayden, discusses findings that suggest men are more aggressive than women and consequently are responsible for the existence of human warfare.

Potts, professor of population and family planning and the director of the Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability at UC Berkeley, explained how humans and their closest relative the chimpanzee are both uniquely violent creatures. Historically, both species show increased violent and risky behavior in males compared to their female counterparts.

Both species engage in team aggression (deliberate and systematic forms of group violence) and same-species killings, which are both notably strange behaviors. In team aggression, animals that are related to each other take risks for each other. With humans, these behaviors are rewarded with the Medal of Honor for soldiers who are brave in battle.
Researchers have found that chimps tend to use these forms of violence to gain territory. Potts said these behaviors are a low-risk strategy to be able to increase resources in order to better reproduce, suggesting that these are evolved behaviors.

“Evolution is not about what is good, just or moral. It is about what works,” he said.

Potts pointed out how the first “Ice Man” was found with an arrow in his back and three different blood groups on his body. He argued against the popular view that this must have been “some poor Shepard that lost his way,” saying the man was more likely someone who “was involved in killing other people and was killed himself.”

Potts suggested that, contrary to popular belief adopted by the American Anthropological Association and the American Sociological Association, humans are not generally nice, peaceful creatures.

Potts discussed a survey that asked a sample of men whether they would rape a woman if they had the opportunity to do so without consequence. According to Potts, 35 percent said they would.

Potts said that since humans and chimps are highly sexual and very intelligent, it is intrinsically difficult for them to kill members of their own species.

“Therefore, my speculation is that we have a mental mechanism… that enables us to dehumanize… the person we’re attacking and I think we see that throughout history,” he stated. “Any of us could make a good soldier.”

Potts claimed that environment also influences behavior.

“Those who had encountered abuse as a child… tend to be more violent,” he explained.

Men ages 18 to 30 are the most volatile in the age spectrum, and most prone to risky behavior. Therefore, Potts claimed, “testosterone is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.”

Potts explained how the 9/11 commission draws attention to the fact “that a large, steadily increasing population of young men without any reasonable expectation of suitable or steady employment” are a “sure prescription for social turbulence.”

Potts suggested that the Palestinian territories, particularly the Gaza Strip, are the most dangerous areas in the world. He claimed that the population of males aged 15 to 30 will increase drastically in the region, adding to the tensions.

“They’re full of testosterone, they’re uneducated, they can’t get a job…I would be a terrorist if I lived in the Gaza strip,” Potts exclaimed.

Potts believes that the availability of contraception, along with the option of safe abortions, is the only solution to population problems in the Middle East.

“Those unwanted pregnancies are going to be the world’s next terrorists,” he said.

Cara Connolly, an anthropology graduate student, found Potts’ views on abortion to be of interest.
“[Potts suggested] it’s a doctor’s job to do what the woman wants, [not what the culture thinks should be allowed.]”

Potts even admitted he taught people in the Philippines how to perform abortions and that he was not ashamed to do so even if it was illegal in the country.

Despite his arguably grim arguments, Potts said, “We’re much less violent than we used to be and I think we should rejoice in that.”

To read the article online go here

To download a printable version click here Asking why human’s kill- The rebel Yell

Review of  “Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World,” by Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden

“As Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden remind us in “Sex and War,” for much of human history the most successful and dominant males went to war, took the spoils and — exhibiting classic Darwinian behavior — raped and impregnated women, thereby benefitting future generations with their genes. You know, Genghis Khan, etc.”

To read the whole article go to the Pittsburg Tribune-Review

Download a PDF Pittsburgh Tribune Review Sex and War Review 01.09

The launch of the Bixby Center was covered in the San Francisco Chronicle

Population growth grant for Cal school

By David Perlman

“A $15 million grant has been awarded to UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health to study the impact of the world’s population growth on the global environment, international conflict and public health.”

Read more

In December 2008 Bixby Chair Malcolm Potts was a guest contributor to the New Security Beat The blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Guest Contributor Malcolm Potts on the Biological Roots of Conflict

Armed conflict and its consequences concern us all. But where does war actually come from? In our new book, Sex and War: How Biology Explains War and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World, Thomas Hayden and I argue that warfare and terrorism are written in our DNA. But that doesn’t mean humanity is doomed to a future as violent as our past has been. Understanding the biological basis of our warring instincts, we argue, gives us our best hope of decreasing the frequency and brutality of warfare.

Biologically speaking, war is an unusual behavior—very few other animals intentionally set out to kill members of their own species. Along with chimpanzees, with which we share a common evolutionary ancestor, we humans have a rare and terrible behavioral predisposition: Our young males, in the prime of life, are prone to band together and attack members of neighboring groups. The conflicts currently underway in the the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur, Iraq, and elsewhere all have many proximate causes—political, religious, environmental, and otherwise. But contrary to long-held beliefs about the cultural roots of war, we argue that the behavior that makes the systematic slaughter of other human beings possible in the first place is based on a suite of evolved behavioral predispositions, which we call “team aggression.”

Anyone who has been in combat will tell you he fought not for a flag, or democracy, or some other abstraction, but for his buddy in the trench, his mate in the torpedo boat, or the soldier next to him in the up-armored Humvee. Intense loyalty for one’s immediate comrades, along with loss of empathy for the members of the enemy, are at the heart of team aggression, and of warfare and terrorism. These predispositions stretch back more than seven million years to our ape ancestors’ early battles for survival. We are all descended, by definition, from the victors of innumerable conflicts over resources, territory, and the right to mate. And we bear the marks of this legacy in the behaviors and impulses that spur us on to lethal conflict to this day, even when other solutions might be available.

The big question then becomes not, “Why do wars break out?”—that is the easy part—but, “Why does peace break out?,” as we know it often does. Far from condemning us to a future of warfare, understanding war’s biological roots can point us toward policies that increase the likelihood of peace, which also has deep roots in our biology. The first step toward peace is to do everything possible to grant women greater decision-making power in society. Team aggression is primarily a male drive, and while women are certainly competitive and capable of fighting bravely and ferociously, in the vast expanse of human history there is not a single record of women banding together spontaneously to attack their neighbors.

Our book argues that when women have more agency, their societies become less warlike. Population size and growth rates are two more key factors in the quest for peace. Rapid population growth increases competition over resources, increases unemployment, and boosts the ratio of young to older men, and all of these factors help facilitate extremism and violence. Experience shows, however, that when women have the opportunity to control their own fertility, family size and population growth decline—demonstrating that accessible, voluntary family planning programs are powerful tools for peace. There is an aphorism: “If you want peace, understand war.”

In Sex and War, we argue that understanding war also means understanding our own biology and evolutionary history. If we can do that, we can find more ways to help the biology of peace win out over the biology of war.

Malcolm Potts is Bixby Professor of Population and Family Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. For more media coverage of Sex and War, see Newsweek, Wired Science, and The Scientist.

Read the full article online here

Download the article New Security Beat. Potts 12.08