The humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean, with staggering high numbers of deaths of asylum seekers and migrants attempting to cross by sea, shows the urgency of an alternative approach to Europe’s current border policies.
Across the EU, mounting internal political pressures have intensified debates about migration and asylum, encouraging policies devised to restrict and control asylum and migration. These policies do not prevent people – many of whom originate from the Horn of Africa – from trying to cross the Mediterranean.
In 2014, Eritreans composed the second largest migrant group to Europe, after the Syrians, reaching 34,320 according to the International Organization for Migration. These figures give an indication of the ongoing and prolonged political repressions in Eritrea. Tragically, these asylum seekers often face further insecure conditions in Libya; a hub for migrants en route to the EU, and a country on the brink of state collapse.Read More
Firestorm in Khakassiya allegedly set by “specially trained oppositionists”.
“Boring” is perhaps the prevalent impression of President Vladimir Putin’s televised four-hour-long Q & A session that aired last Thursday (April 16), which was meant to demonstrate his good health and relaxed attitude to the great many problems worrying his loyal subjects….
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Typically, such commentary by high officials is merely camouflage for Russia’s real intentions. But Moscow is unlikely to try to escalate the conflict in the coming few weeks as the Russian Armed Forces are going through the spring draft cycle. Even more importantly, Putin obviously wants to stage picture-perfect May 9 Victory Day celebrations in Red Square, even if the list of confirmed foreign guests is embarrassingly short. By mid-May, however, these restraining influences will disappear, and any sudden exacerbation of the economic crisis (the recent strengthening of the ruble actually makes it more vulnerable to a new collapse) could trigger the order to launch a new military offensive. Neither Lavrov nor the top brass are apparently involved in the decision-making on this crisis manipulation; while Putin’s performance indicates that he is briefed primarily by the Federal Security Service (FSB) and is supplied mostly with news and analysis he wants to hear. His leadership style is turning increasingly self-defensive and mistrustful of even the top elites, whose predatory corruption curtails his options for playing a benevolent “father of the nation.” Peace just does not work for him, and it remains to be seen how far he is prepared to go on the “hybrid war” path.
Imagine being at a dinner party with friends. Some you know from before and some are new to you. You are served a welcome drink, smile, and begin to greet the other guests. The conversation starts amicably with exchanges about the weather, where you are from, recent events and perhaps your connections to the host or hostess. After initial pleasantries have been exhausted, the conversation turns to lines of work. One guest might work in insurance, his spouse could be an engineer and their friends, the hosts, might be teachers and writers. A few new guests join your conversation which then moves to schools and the state of the roads in the city. Then the insurance guy tells a surreal story about an insurance fraud case he has just recently worked on. Everybody laughs, spirits are high, and then the smiling crowd suddenly turns to you and the inevitable question is asked: So what do you do? Imagine that you are me in this setting.
My job, and research focus, are not dinner-party or small-talk material… Funeral during the siege of Sarajevo in 1992. Photo: Mikhail Evstafiev – Mikhail Evstafiev. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
This is the moment to take stock of my audience quickly and accurately, because the rest of the evening hinges on my answer. Is this a crowd where the answer should be “I am a researcher,” suggesting a kind of generic occupation, perhaps evoking images of a scholarly detective equipped with methodological and theoretical knowledge to tackle the undiscovered? In such a case, the remainder of the evening will entail discussions about science and research. Or is this a crowd where I can go a little further and say “I am a peace researcher”, which inevitably turns any conversation into a sombre discussion of world affairs, in which men turn talkative and women turn silent. Or is it the kind of crowd where I can talk about what I really do? Can I utter the following explicit sentence: “I am a researcher in psychology focusing on crimes of sexual violence in war?” What is at risk if I do? How will the evening unfold after a confession like that?Read More
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 »
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.
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 »
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
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 »
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 »
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 »
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