The Important Debates – Four Years Later

Posted by & filed under Law and Ethics

Streets of Oslo following 22 July 2011. Photo: Jørgen Carling, PRIO

Four years have passed since the biggest terror attacks on Norwegian soil during peacetime. Once again we are solemnly commemorating the dead and expressing our solidarity. The debate about the potential uses of the actual sites that were affected is also very much alive and continuing. But are there other debates that we also need to have?

Our research for the NECORE project focuses on discourses, negotiations, identity and resilience in Norwegian society after the terror attacks of 22 July 2011. In our research, we consider among other things the four important debates described below – and different ways of approaching them.Read More

The China Factor in Russian Support for the Iran Deal

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

To the oil prices, and might they never go up – or down?

The United States needed Russian support to conclude the Iranian nuclear deal. As U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged, “we would have not achieved this agreement had it not been for Russia’s willingness to stick with us.” But with U.S.-Russian relations at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War, Russian support came as somewhat of a surprise, even to Obama. So, why was Russia willing to support an Iran deal that even the normally anti-American Russian media describes as Obama’s personal achievement?

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The Air Tragedy that Condemns Putin’s Russia

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

Memorial to the victims of MH17 in the Netherlands. Nobody from Russia came to the ceremony in Nieuwegein.

It was a year ago last Friday (July 17) that the Boeing 777 Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a missile over eastern Ukraine, resulting in a loss of 298 lives. The shock of that tragedy awakened Europe and the wider global community to the grave risk that the localized armed conflict in Donbas posed to international security. Russia strenuously denied responsibility, despite its direct involvement in sparking the very war that turned the sky over Ukraine into a battle-zone, and despite supplying the separatists with the surface-to-air missiles that inflicted heavy losses on the Ukrainian Air Force and later shot down the Malaysian passenger jet. International investigations have not as yet delivered definite results, but various independent examinations of the tragedy have firmly established that Flight MH17 was hit by a single missile fired from a Buk-M1 missile system, which arrived to the rebel-controlled part of Donetsk region on July 14; and immediately after the salvo, the weapon was withdrawn back to Russia.

The rest of the article is in Eurasia Daily Monitor, July 20.

This Week in South Sudan – Week 29

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Monday 13 July The civil war continues to stifle South Sudan’s oil economy. The Central Equatoria state government condemned the SPLA of “brutality” after clashes with fighters from the Mundri tribe near Juba, which left at least 8 people dead. The SPLA later denied allegations of attacks on unarmed civilians. A hand grenade explosion in… Read more »

How Can States and Non-State Actors Respond to Authoritarian Resurgence?

Posted by & filed under Governance, Non-state Conflict Actors

Anti-democracy, pro-Sharia public demonstration in Maldives, 2014. By RLoutfy.

Two weeks ago, the Monkey Cage ran a piece by Matthew Baum and Phil Potter suggesting that the policy of “democracy-promotion” has gone out of style.[1] I think they’re right that in many circles democracy-promotion is politically passé and that, more broadly, democracy advocates are really having a tough couple of years. In the midst of pushback against democracy agendas within democracies themselves, they are also dealing with the “comeback” of authoritarianism. [2] Setting aside the debate as to whether the recent resurgence is overstated, it does appear to be the case that while democratic countries are questioning the wisdom of promoting republics abroad, authoritarian regimes are pushing back against civil society, activists, and oppositionists, seeing them as a direct threat to their established orders.Read More

Putin Flexes Diplomatic Muscles on Iran

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

Not very sincere smiles: Putin meeting with Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the St. Petersburg economic forum.

“Russia has been rather ambivalent about striking the deal, not because it is worried about the Iranian nuclear program, but because it is worried about the Iranian oil,” said Pavel K. Baev, a researcher at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo.

Mr. Baev noted that at several crucial points in the long negotiations, Russia had seemed to be working to complicate things. In November, for example, it announced a new deal to build nuclear reactors in Iran, and in April said it was resuming the sale of S-300 surface-to-air missiles that Iran had ordered before a 2010 arms embargo was authorized by the United Nations Security Council.

“In the crucial final stage of negotiations, however, Moscow refrained from any spoiling,” Mr. Baev said, adding that “the real influence behind this self-restraint, in my opinion, is China, which wanted the deal concluded and impressed upon Russia the undesirability of any sabotage.”

For the rest of the article, see New York Times, July 15.

Most Muslims Celebrate Eid

Posted by and & filed under Migration, Religion

Now that Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, is ending, most Muslims – in Oslo, as elsewhere in the world – celebrate the festival of Eid. It is a time for celebration. For many Muslims, it is also a time to help those less well-off than themselves, either through the annual “religious tax” zakat or through other forms of charity. Muslims in Oslo are engaged in a range of charitable, humanitarian and development efforts. We have learned about these through our research over the past four years, exploring development involvement in Pakistan and beyond, among the Pakistani diaspora. However, charitable work and commitment to social causes are not what dominates current media debates about Muslims. Rather current debates are unfortunately often characterized by stereotypes about what it means to be Muslim, at times coupled with lacking knowledge.

A table set for the celebration of Eid. Photo: CC/Phalinn Ooi

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Greek Agreement and Iranian Deal leave Russia Disappointed and Irrelevant

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

The Iranians are very satisfied, but the Russians are worried.

It was a rare coincidence in world politics that two pivotal and protracted negotiation processes—the European Union’s talks with Greece on managing its debt, and the “P5+1” talks on managing the Iranian nuclear program—both culminated in crucial agreements at the start of this week (July 13–14). Russia was a party (albeit not a very active one by the end) to the bargaining with Iran, but not with Greece (while demonstrating close engagement); and it has large stakes in both crises. Typically, while declaring support for reaching comprehensive agreements in both cases, Moscow was, in fact, more interested in the talks breaking down, so that the EU would plunge into a deep mess marked by a “Grexit” and Iran would remain isolated by the sanctions regime. However, the two landmark compromises signify a big step forward in enhancing the governability of world order, which leaves Russia—as a revisionist power that favors a crisis of the West-imposed global order—quite irrelevant.

The rest of the article is in Eurasia Daily Monitor, July 14.

This Week in South Sudan – Week 28

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Monday 6 July A customs officer was wounded and three freight trucks were torched when armed men attacked the border town of Nimule near Uganda. Rebecca Garang de Mabior said Salva Kiir removed her as Minister of Roads and Bridges in 2007 after she raised concerns about large, unapproved payments to the Sudanese construction company, Eyat… Read more »

The Genocide in Srebrenica

Posted by & filed under Regions and Powers

On 11 July this year, a number of heads of state and foreign ministers, including Bill Clinton, will meet on a plain seven kilometres outside Srebrenica. They will be there to commemorate the fact that it is twenty years since over 8000 men and boys were killed while the women were put to flight and were subjected to systematic persecution here in the heart of Europe. The site where they will be gathering, Potočari, was the headquarters of the UN forces who were supposed to protect the people of Srebrenica. Their total failure to protect the people of the little town as they had promised to remains a lasting brand of shame, on the international organisation. Potočari is now a cemetary and memorial site for the many lives that were lost.

Gravestones at the Potočari genocide memorial near Srebrenica. Photo: Michael Büker, Wikimedia Commons

The war in Bosnia from 1992 – 1995 was brutal. Few had believed that ethnic cleansing could ever take place in Europe after the Second World War. The people of East Bosnia, where Srebrenica lies, were particularly hard hit by this war, and the Muslim population was sometimes wiped out and sometimes put to flight from areas where they were in the minority. They therefore gathered in areas where they had been in the majority, and became Muslim enclaves. One such place was Srebrenica. In 1993, the French General Philippe Morillon, who was commander of the UN protection force UNPROFOR, visited the town. He was shocked at what he saw. The town was overcrowded, and there was hardly any drinking water left. Food, medicines and other vital commodities were lacking. In response to what he saw, Morillon proclaimed that he would guarantee that the town was safe, and that the UN would protect the townspeople and never leave them.

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