It was entirely possible for the Russian Foreign Ministry to downplay the minor scandal around Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin surprise visit to Spitsbergen, but instead the choice was for making a full-blown crisis. It was quite embarrassing for the Norwegian authorities that they learned about Rogozin’s arrival to Longyearbyen and excursion to Barentsburg from… Read more »
Is Boko Haram a Roving Bandit?
In recent months, Boko Haram has devastated a number of communities across a vast swath of Northern Nigeria, and even reaching into Chad, Cameroon and Niger. Although Boko Haram has some territorial control in the border regions near Lake Chad, its attacks do not occur in a consistent geographic area, but rather devastate communities with considerable distance between them. This mobile pattern contrasts with other, more geographically-fixed rebel groups, such as the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF) fighting for the self-determination of the Ijaw people and control of the rich resources in the Niger Delta in Southern Nigeria.
A stylized portrait of Boko Haram. By AK Rockefeller.
Everybody is afraid of our vastness
Not a word about the Arctic could be found in the transcript of President Vladimir Putin annual Q&A session, perhaps except the rather abstract assertion that “everybody is afraid of our vastness” (Kremlin.ru, April 16). It is certainly not the vastness as such, but rather the vast increase of Russian military activities that prompted the five… Read more »
Islam and Conflict
The number of civil wars worldwide has fallen in recent years, but meanwhile the number of civil wars in Muslim countries is increasing.
Kurdish Peshmerga troops take part in security deployment against Islamic State. Photo via Flickr
From early on in the 21st century, we have also seen a marked growth in the number of active groups of Islamist insurgents. The media in Western countries focus strongly on terrorism and threats from the Muslim world. Are Muslim countries really more violent than others? And if they are, is it the West that is paying the price? In 2012, there were six civil wars worldwide (defining “civil war” as a conflict resulting in more than 1,000 combat-related deaths during a single calendar year). The countries affected were Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. In other words, all of these wars were in Muslim countries, and seven of the nine insurgent groups actively involved were Islamist in orientation.Read More
“A year of South Sudan’s third civil war”
The abstract below is from a recently published, peer-reviewed article in International Area Studies Review. The article is based on the output of the Monitoring South Sudan blog over the last year, and takes an empirical look at how South Sudan’s civil war has evolved since the outbreak in December 2013. The article is written… Read more »
This Week in South Sudan – Week 15
Monday 6 April A grenade explosion injured 10 civilians in the IDP camp inside the UN base in Bentiu. A recent Small Arms Survey report questions the neutrality of the South Sudan Democratic Forces (SSDF)-Cobra Faction. The leader of an Ethiopian rebel movement, known as the Ethiopia United Patriots Front (EUPF), dismissed reports alleging his… Read more »
This Week in South Sudan – Week 14
Monday 30 March War Economy: South Sudan’s budget for the current fiscal year is twice as much as last year’s oil revenues according to Petroleum Minister Stephen Dhieu Dau. War Economy: South Sudan has suffered huge production losses, amounting to about 20 million barrels of crude oil as a result of the 15-month shutdown of… Read more »
Beyond Sexual Violence: Gendered Political Insecurity as a Threat to Peace
Based on extensive field research in Colombia, our new article “Beyond Sexual Violence in Transitional Justice: Political Insecurity as a Gendered Harm” examines political insecurity as a specifically gendered harm that must be addressed in the ongoing Colombian transitional justice process.
A woman holds up a poster dotted with rose petals and a message that reads in Spanish; “Only a kiss would shut me up,” during a march to protest physical abuse of women and in support of Colombia’s peace talks in Bogota, Colombia in 2013.
Emergency Exit for the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict
The tragedy in Syria bears witness to the deep crisis afflicting the international commitment to the “protection of civilians”. But there is a way out.
Against the background of a politically divided Security Council, there is a need for a new international strategy to protect civilians caught up in armed conflicts.
The international system for crisis management that emerged after the Cold War assumed a degree of political consensus that has now evaporated. As a result we are left with peace policies that do not work.Read More
The Hitler Analogy
From left to right, Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini and Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano as they prepare to sign the Munich Agreement. Photo: Bundesarchiv
The Hitler analogy – also known as the Munich analogy – is deployed frequently in political debate. In Munich in 1938, the British prime minister made the historic error of failing to comprehend the extent of the evil represented by Adolf Hitler. Chamberlain signed a peace agreement with Hitler that Hitler never honoured and that gave Hitler reason to believe that he would not encounter resistance. As Winston Churchill famously said, “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”