With the number of full-fledged and low-intensity conflicts across the world increasing both in size and number, a new course has become as essential as inoculation shots for a host of journalists, aid workers and civilian contractors preparing for deployment overseas – Hostile Environment Training.
The logic behind it is: if you would not send a soldier to a war zone unprepared; why would you send anyone else?
However, there has been a shift of late in the types of areas that would require such a preparatory course. Where before it would be essential only for work in an actual combat zone, the change in tactics employed by certain Islamist terrorist organisations like ISIS and Boko Haram towards hostage taking for financial gain and propaganda purposes means that many low-intensity conflict and even non-combat zones are rife with danger for the unprepared.
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