CHOOSING GENOCIDE: ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES ON THE DISTURBING RATIONALITY OF RACE MURDER

An economic theory of genocide is presented with application to Rwanda‐1994. The theory considers ‘macro’ conditions under which an authority group chooses genocide and ‘micro’ conditions that facilitate the spread of genocide. From the macro perspective, a bargaining model highlights four rational explanations for an authority’s choice of genocide: prevention of loss of power, indivisibility, elimination of a persistent rival, and political bias. From the micro perspective, an evolutionary game model shows how supporters of genocide gain the upper hand in group dynamics over resisters and bystanders. The theory and application suggest that the conditions for genocide are not exceptional.     

Combating Islamist radicalisation in South Africa

Is radical Islamism spreading in South Africa? The answer has to be an emphatic ‘yes’. When discussing issues of radicalisation in Africa, commentators often examine the case of Somalia's al-Shabaab or al-Qaeda's North African franchise, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Very little attention is paid to radicalisation amongst South Africa's Muslim population. Yet, there is growing evidence that South Africa has come to play an important role in global jihadi networks, from the provision of safehouses and identity documents to the movement of funds and the existence of paramilitary camps for local and foreign jihadis. This paper aims to briefly examine radicalisation and its attendant sources in the country, as well as seeking ways to combat it utilising lessons learned from other countries. ‘Institutional socialisation’ by means of the sources of radicalisation, as well as the concept of what could be termed ‘the democratisation of jihad’ are discussed. The author also proposes ways to combat radicalisation in South Africa utilising lessons learned from other countries, concluding that issues of radicalisation and deradicalisation have to be dealt with on the part of both government and the South African Muslim community.     

The Strategic Use of Soft Balancing: The Normative Dimensions of the Chinese–Russian ‘Strategic Partnership’

This article examines Chinese and Russian foreign policy and military strategy from the theoretical standpoint of soft balancing. Analysis of their thinking indicates that both seek to offset US military superiority without engaging American power directly. To that end, Chinese and Russian strategists have adopted ‘soft’ or ‘normative’ power assets as strategic capabilities in their military and foreign policy. Alternative norms, such as the concept of ‘sovereign democracy’, allow China and Russia to deliberately ignore human rights issues in order to achieve diplomatic advantage with respect to the United States. The two powers have institutionalized these norms within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which they use to counterbalance US interests in Central Asia.     

When the military became militarised: Accounts of Zimbabwean National Army deserters in exile in South Africa

In post-colonial Africa, the military has been central to sustaining freedom. However, the current political trends in Zimbabwe represent a different phenomenon, with the army perpetrating violence against its own citizens. For many years, the concept of ‘militarisation’ has been used to define social and political practices outside the military. Scholars have deployed the concept of militarisation as a category of analysis and practice. In doing so, scholarly writing portrays the military as an instrument of militarisation. So, who militarises the military? While scholars use the concept of militarisation to analyse other state institutions, the central argument of this paper is that the concept of militarisation has been deployed inappropriately and narrowly by scholars to refer to the appointment of military personnel in state institutions. I argue that in the Zimbabwean post-2000 political crisis, what has in fact been militarised is the military itself as an institution – through the command and control of soldiers against their moral will – and this phenomenon is exemplified by the growing involvement of the military in the perpetration of political violence against the civilian population in Zimbabwe. This paper draws on the experiences of 44 Zimbabwe army deserters.     

THE AU PLAN ON TERRORISM

At a senior officials' meeting held in Algiers from 11–14 September 2002, the African Union proved ready and able to provide the political cohesion and sense of purpose needed for Africa to combat terrorism. While member states inevitably played to a global gallery in demonstrating their commitment to the ‘war on terrorism’, the practical counter-terrorist proposals adopted at the meeting substantially address Africa's security challenges. The resulting Plan of Action on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism focuses on state building and inter-governmental co-operation, to literally and figuratively close Africa's borders to terrorist activities. Implementing the plan will be a tough challenge for many African governments, especially to ensure that their counter-terrorist measures adhere to international and regional human rights accords.     

Was World War Two a Completely Just War?

ABSTRACT

According to Brian Orend’s binary political model, minimally just states possess a robust set of moral rights, while other states essentially exist in a moral vacuum in which they possess no moral rights. I argue that a more plausible comparative model would allow for a state to acquire (or lose) discrete moral rights as it improves (or damages) its moral record. This would generate a more accurate portrayal of both domestic policy within states and military conflict between states; including, in particular, the role of the Allied forces during World War Two.     

Legacy of Bitterness: Insurgency in North West Rwanda

The insurgency in North West Rwanda is a good example of a small scale conflict that provides a first step into the more complex world of regional instability in central Africa. Following the genocide of 1994, genocidaires and ex-military personnel fled to what was then Zaire and established a network of anti-Tutsi bases. Linking up with local groups in Eastern Zaire, these insurgents, usually known as ‘infiltrators’ have carried out a low-intensity but consistent insurgency campaign in Rwanda.

The constant barrage of propaganda aimed at the local population, a technique pioneered during the 1994 genocide, has led to a general, manufactured support for the insurgency. In particular, those people returning from Zaire have been fed a constant diet of anti-Tutsi and Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA) propaganda, making it easier to act against these groups. Even within the local government and other official bodies, there are widespread Hutu sympathies that have led to additional aid reaching the insurgents.

The particular strain of ethnic violence has led to an insurgency in which civilian villages are as likely to be attacked as RPA military installations. More surprising, given the nature of the insurgency, Hutus themselves have been targets. Initially, moderate Hutus were singled out as examples, but increasingly indiscriminate killings have been aiming to force all Hutus to take sides.

The insurgents have deliberately polarised large parts of Rwanda and this has profound implications for conflict resolution. In particular, supplementing the military campaign with political social campaigns, at least partly to combat the mythology of grievance among the Hutus, and tackling the conflict as part of a supra-national conflict that goes beyond ‘national’ borders.     

Just and Unjust Memory? The Moral Obligation to Remember All Victims of Wars and Totalitarian Regimes

ABSTRACT

The main purpose of this article is to analyze the philosophical problem of just and unjust memory. There is a general consensus about commemorating fallen soldiers and killed civilians. But, unfortunately, our human memory of such victims is often incomplete. Some victims are remembered, others are not – maybe very few even want to remember the latter. It turns out that in our world, not only wars may be just or unjust, but also the memory of their victims. In this context, a serious problem is the unequal memory of crimes perpetrated by Nazism and Communism in the last century, denying several dozen million victims of the latter totalitarian system their due place in the collective awareness of mankind. Therefore, one of the most important aspects of the ethical analysis of wars and totalitarian regimes should be the moral obligation to commemorate all victims in a just way.     

THE US NAVY AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER

In the last decade, the nature of peacekeeping in Africa has changed somewhat, especially the manner in which peacekeeping missions are comprised, funded and driven. What one can observe is that there has been new thinking in the field of peacekeeping where this initiative is driven by states with particular interest in a particular issue(s). This thinking has led, to a certain extent, to the United Nations (UN) de-monopolising peacekeeping and ceding its ‘responsibility to protect’ to either lead states or regional organisations to deal with crises in respective backyards. In the first instance, ‘lead states’ have been empowered (financially and militarily) by peacekeeping powers to attend to crises in their respective regions to drive peacekeeping efforts. In the second instance, while financial and military support is not paramount, regional powers have had the blessing of the UN to deal with regional issues and crises in various parts of their respective regions. This situation evidently signifies the shifting nature of peacekeeping on the African continent. On assessing this scenario, the question that emerges in one's mind is where does this leave the UN? Does this mean that the UN and multilateralism is being sidelined in favour of unilateralism? Or does the UN still matter? What is the future of peacekeeping in Africa? These questions and the challenges posed by both the ‘old’ and ‘new’ approach to peacekeeping will be analysed in this article.     

The African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis: conceptual breakthrough or anti-imperialist phantom?

The creation of an African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis (ACIRC) is a sign of Africa's willingness to take its destiny into its own hands. Presented as a reaction to the slowness of the development of the African Standby Force (ASF), it is also a response to some of the ASF's conceptual weaknesses. This decision reflects a wish to establish an instrument better equipped to deal with the challenges Africa is facing. Departing from the (sub)regional logic of the ASF results from a desire to take into account the transnational nature of threats, while its enlarged mandate is meant to offer Africa the capacity to intervene in all kinds of conflicts, including by undertaking peace enforcement activities. But the obstacles on the road towards the actual creation and mobilisation of this capacity should not be underestimated. These include material difficulties, but also political tensions, between ‘small’ and ‘big’ states as well as between the African Union and subregional organisations. The risk then is high that the ACIRC, whose announcement came as a reaction to France's intervention in Mali, ends up joining the ranks of the many ‘anti-imperialist’ phantoms haunting the history of the Organization of African Unity/African Union (OAU/AU). Confronted by events considered ‘neocolonial’ initiatives, African actors have indeed traditionally reacted by launching grand projects that never got off the ground. However, by actually establishing this new instrument, they may also demonstrate that times have definitively changed.     

Kinetic responses to global terrorism: Lessons from Africa

This essay recalls the immediate and longer-term responses of the US and its allies to the events of 9/11. It contends that the die for contemporary developments in transnational terrorism was cast in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 – in particular the launching of sustained ‘anti-terrorist’ military combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more covert ‘kinetic’ operations elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa. The essay seeks specifically to expose the counter-productivity of using military operations as the primary antidote to transnational terrorism. Focusing on the African ‘laboratory’ and the spread of transnational terrorism and Islamic militancy, particularly in West and East Africa, the essay concludes that radical Islamists have mastered the ‘battle of the narrative’ and that the Western penchant for dispensing a kinetic brand of medication is feeding rather than fighting the virus of global terrorism.     

Colonial violence and its ‘Small Wars’: fighting the Kuki ‘guerillas’ during the Great War in Northeast India, 1917–1919

ABSTRACT

This paper concerns the lesser known British counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in Northeast frontier of India during the First World War. Officially known as the ‘Kuki Operations’, it was considered as part of the Great War. Carried out in isolation from press and public, and shelved in colonial archives, the event remained invisible until today. Yet, it registers a critical case of colonial COIN doctrine where the ‘moral effect’ doctrine was employed without being questioned. It unleashed enormous amount of organized violence, ranging from shoot at sight to indiscriminate burning of villages, wholesale destruction of property and livestock, prevention of cultivation and rebuilding of villages, forced mass displacement in jungles or in ‘concentration camps’, and collective punishment (communal penal labour and payment of compensation) after the war. This paper argues that the theory of ‘minimum force’ and the practicability of the ‘moral effect’ doctrine as applied by the Empire, sit oddly with each other at the frontier, where violence was seen both as a natural and moral orders. Violence as an ‘imperatively necessary’ method to bring order in a disorderly frontier, in the opinion of colonial state, informs and registers Northeast India as geography of violence.     

RETHINKING CONFLICT TRAJECTORIES

South Africa and Kenya experienced various forms of conflict and gross human rights abuse between 1948–1994 and 1963–2002 respectively. In both situations, the conflicts were motivated by various factors; these included unequal distribution of socio-economic resources and skewed political relationships. The centrality of human rights abuse and political violence to both situations places similar issues on the agenda for analysis. In both cases opposition to regimes was justified on the basis that the political systems were constructed in such a way that limited alternative conceptions and prevented democratic freedom (until 19921 in Kenya and 1994 in South Africa). After undergoing transition to democratic rule in 1994, South Africa engaged the idea of a truth and reconciliation commission as an instrument for dealing with its past conflicts. The South African case animated widespread international interest and after an electoral victory in 2002, the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) government in Kenya mooted the same idea. By the end of 2004 however the NARC government seems to have lost interest in the truth commission concept; this paper probes the question why? Broadly there is room for alternative interpretations both within and between the two cases on how conflicts were perpetuated and the potency of a truth and reconciliation commission as a viable alternative for dealing with past conflicts. This paper broadly aims to offer a clearer account of conflicts and mechanisms for dealing with them from the conceptual lenses of conflict management theory.     

Bringing it all back home: Hollywood returns to war

This essay looks at two Hollywood films Black Hawk Down and We Were Soldiers as reflective of a more general popular mood in the US that accompanied Operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ and the removal of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In part this mood was a militaristic one, though this can also be seen as a rather belated response by Hollywood to invest moral purpose in the US military following an earlier spate of hostile Vietnam war films. The two films examined are different in form: Black Hawk Down is a combat film about extraction while We Were Soldiers is unusual for a US Vietnam war film for investing moral purpose in both the US combat troops as well as the Vietnamese enemy. Overall it is possible to conclude that both films contribute to a kicking by Hollywood of its earlier Vietnam war ‘syndrome’ which is likely to have wider cultural and political repercussions.     

CONSOLIDATING AFRICA'S REGIONS

The police enjoy unique and special powers in the furtherance of their duties. Depending on how these powers are used, they may either protect or violate human rights. Therefore the exercise of police power requires that it should be used responsibly. Over the years, however, the involvement of police and other law enforcement officials in systematic abuses of human rights and attendant police ‘cover ups’ in many countries have underscored the need for oversight of their actions. This article surveys the various mechanisms for policing oversight in countries within the Southern African Development Community.     

Recruitment and abuse of trafficked children in south-west Nigeria

This article examines the recruitment and transportation of internally trafficked children from Benue State in the north-central geo-political zone of Nigeria to Oyo State in the south-western zone of Nigeria. The study is essentially qualitative: with the aid of the snowball sampling technique, in-depth interviews (IDIs) were conducted with drivers, employers and trafficking agents in two recipient communities in Ibadan. The findings show that human rights abuses manifest at the recruitment, transportation and destination phases. The human rights abuses include the recruitment of underage children for domestic work outside their immediate family environments; transportation under inhumane conditions; restriction of movement at traffickers' ‘warehouses’; non-disclosure of amount payable for the services of domestic servants by agents/traffickers; exclusion of domestic servants in wage negotiations; and violence by employers. In view of these, there is a need for the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons to strengthen its internal trafficking campaign.     

Forces of heresy versus forces of conservation: making sense of Hezb-e Islami-ye Afghanistan’s and the Taleban’s positions in the Afghan insurgency

Ethnicity and ideology are frequently used to determine whether an armed group is hostile or friendly vis-à-vis the state. By contrast, I argue that the social structure of insurgent movements holds more explanatory power for their respective positions than ethnicity or ideology. To illustrate this, I apply Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of a contest between forces of ‘conservation’ and forces of ‘heresy’ to the current Afghanistan war. I demonstrate that the social structure of the Taleban renders them prone to ‘heresy’, while the formerly second biggest insurgent group, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s party, has rather been an impeded force of ‘conservation.’     

THE 3rd PAN-AFRICAN PARLIAMENT SESSION

Frustrated by decades of authoritarian rule, political repression, economic mismanagement, poverty, soaring unemployment and other related injustices, the youth in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya rose up against the state, while Algeria and Morocco narrowly escaped the events of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. This quest for political reform is an indication of a great collective shift that has the potential to reverberate throughout the African continent. However, to what extent can the youth succeed in bringing about the much-desired transition to democracy? This article focuses on the North African youth uprising and the quest for political reform in Africa. It examines the core issues of the youth uprising and the challenges to the attainment of political reform. A youth uprising can lead to genuine political reform if the major challenges in building new democratic forms of governance which can address economic disparity, protection of human rights, justice and security, can be overcome.     

The International Criminal Court and the Deterrence of Human Rights Atrocities

Research on human rights treaties has mostly reached depressingly similar conclusions – that such treaties and their resulting institutions have little or no impact on human rights. The International Criminal Court, however, possesses significant power to investigate and prosecute violations of international law that equip it with potentially more influence than previous human rights regimes. I suggest, however, that the impact of the ICC on human rights is conditioned by signatory governments’ commitment to good governance and acceptance of the role of the ICC in addressing violations of international law. I develop a two-stage model of ICC ratification and human rights abuse that shows that while many states have ratified the ICC Treaty, not all are committed to stopping the crimes under its jurisdiction. Rather, state commitment to human rights depends first on its commitment to the rule of law within its own borders. Second, commitment to human rights depends on states’ willingness to grant the ICC the powers necessary to carry out its mission. Through a number of statistical tests, I find strong support for these hypotheses on states’ human rights and propensity for violence.