The political economy of expedience: examining perspectives on military support to Sierra Leone’s Ebola response

The 2013–2016 West Africa Ebola Epidemic is the largest outbreak of Ebola in history. By September, 2014 the outbreak was worsening significantly, and the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières called for military assistance. In Sierra Leone, the British and Sierra Leonean militaries intervened. They quickly established a National Ebola Response Centre and a constituent network of District Ebola Response Centres. Thereafter, these inherently militarised centres are where almost all Ebola response activities were coordinated. In order to examine perspectives on the nature of the militaries’ intervention, 110 semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted and analysed. Military support to Sierra Leone’s Ebola response was felt by most respondents to be a valuable contribution to the overall effort to contain the outbreak, especially in light of the perceived weakness of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation to effectively do so. However, a smaller number of respondents emphasised that the military deployments facilitated various structural harms, including for how the perceived exclusion of public institutions (as above) and other local actors from Ebola response decision making was felt to prevent capacity building, and in turn, to limit resilience to future crises. The concurrent provision of life-saving assistance and rendering of structural harm resulting from the militaries’ intervention is ultimately found to be part of a vicious cycle, which this article conceptualises as the ‘political economy of expedience’, a paradox that should be considered inherent in any militarised intervention during humanitarian and public health crises.