BARCELONA: Policymakers at the International AIDS Conference here said the disease’s relentless march is posing a major challenge to the nation-state system.

A decade or so from now, they suggest, the ravaging economic toll and social stress caused by AIDS could drive some of the poorest, worst-hit countries into anarchy and civil war.

Like Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and, until just recently, Afghanistan, such countries could join the ranks of non-states — nations that exist in name and on paper and maybe have a UN seat but have no government worthy of the name, no rule of law or any economy beyond a black market.

In contrast to so-called rogue states, whose authoritarian leaders can be coaxed or cowed by the big powers into toeing the line, non-states are dangerous because they have no coherent leader, often being ruled by ephemeral, unpredictable thugs.

Such places are not only a seething pit of discontent and dislocation.

They also become a haven for drugs barons, international criminals on the run — and, as Afghanistan showed, international terrorist groups.

Senior US officials say that Washington is worried that some countries could become non-states unless urgent action is taken, or a sudden cure found, to blunt the AIDS’ scythe.

The worst-hit population is in Botswana, where 38.8 percent of the adult population has HIV. There, according to a study by the US Census Bureau, life expectancy is only 39 years, compared with 72 years if it were not for AIDS.

The study found that five countries — Botswana, Mozam-bique, Lesotho, Swaziland and South Africa — will experience negative population growth by 2010, meaning that more people will die than babies are born.

UNAIDS’ executive director, Peter Piot, said the risk of turmoil is high when the infection has infected such a large number of people and they are condemned to a de-facto death sentence for want of antiretroviral drugs.

“If one-third of your adult population, including the professionals, die within a decade or so, that means an implosion of society. When you have millions of orphans growing up in an environment without families, you have what I would call desocialised youth,” Piot told AFP.

“You are definitely going into very unstable states, where people are desperate,” Piot said, adding that he would not however go so far as to say this would make “a direct link” with terrorism.—AFP