Elements of ‘armed non-state actors’ power: The case of al-Qaeda in Yemen

Over the past few years there is an apparent re-regionalization of al-Qaeda activity, intensified by the ongoing Middle East turmoil. Its main characteristic is a trend towards the abandonment of focoist strategies and their replacement by more popular-based ones. This article aims at evaluating their capacity to implement such a strategy shift and sustain the required level of violence. As a means of evaluating this capacity, this article proposes the use of a DIME (diplomatic, informational, military, and economic) framework, which will hopefully provide an alternative angle of theorizing and understanding ‘armed non-state actors’ (ANSAs). The model is applied in the case of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which appears to have effectively developed the military and informational dimensions, due partly to its own prowess and partly to the Yemeni state's weaknesses and the shortcomings of counterinsurgency. In contrast, the economic and diplomatic dimensions suffer from the lack of resources and the anti-systemic nature of AQAP.     

Z and other cinematic tales from the 30-year Greek civil war

Greek cinema has documented and debated the civil war and its repercussions under different angles, largely defined by censorship, the general political climate, and cinematic trends. This article, first, offers a retrospective that traces the evolution of Greek cinema's ‘takes’ on the civil war vis-à-vis the political changes. Second, it provides an in-depth analysis of Costas Gavras’s film Z, examining its relevance to Greece and how political conflict, in general, is cinematically depicted. The article argues that Z and Gavras’s cinema have been affected and have affected the Greek political situation. However, while Z has spearheaded an international cinematic genre (political thriller), it had minimal effect on the Greek cinema.     

The Environment as a Factor in Small Wars*

This research paper analyzes the relationship between small wars, insurgency, and the natural environment. Existing literature and data are organized into four behavioral patterns: the resource-based wars accounts for the fight over natural resources; the warfare ecology paradigm refers to non-premeditated damage in preparation for as well as during and after conflicts; the environment as a target discusses intended attacks on the ecosystem; and the insurgency–climate intersection pattern denotes a deviation in climate change that increases the frequency of intergroup violence. The main premise is that small wars emerge when the ecosystem becomes a political asset.