Why did Sudan Lose a small war in Southern Sudan?

ABSTRACT

When on the wrong end of an asymmetry in the projection of hard power, weaker sides countenance the grim arithmetic of avoiding direct and massed confrontations. Invariably, insurgents have over the ages tended to employ indirect tactical methods to render their stronger opponents ineffective. Ultimately – interest asymmetry, regime type, asymmetries of strategy, and external intervention – combine in a complex interplay and pattern, to militate against a strong side. In Sudan, these factors interacted throughout the civil wars to produce regional autonomy and finally an independent South Sudan in 2011. Similar strategic logic had confronted many large African states battling insurgencies in Ethiopia, Angola, Nigeria, Zaire, and apartheid-era South Africa. Oftentimes, weakening public resolve has caused these governments to accommodate, capitulate or withdraw even if they try not to blink. Notwithstanding the regime type, it can be concluded that the majority of strong actors are prone to fail in a protracted, asymmetric conflict. Hence, the notion of linking victory in counterinsurgency to the degree of openness (democratic polyarchies); or closeness (totalitarianism) – is still valid but highly contestable in the case of Africa’s large dysfunctional states.     

Women combatants and the liberation movements in South Africa

This article examines women's role as combatants in national liberation forces in South Africa. Three categories – guerrilla girls, combative mothers and the in-betweeners – are introduced to underscore the varied ways in which women have participated in combat within the national liberation movements. Factors such as age and one's ability to leave the country affected whether women could participate in combat as ‘guerrilla girls’ or if it limited them to fighting apartheid violence from home, or if there were women who can be defined as having fallen somewhere in between these categories. These categories are used to theorise women's combat roles in the anti-apartheid struggle, thus broadening and challenging the dominant notions of combat that often hide women's contributions in war. In this regard, different periods of struggle, physical location, as well as age, determined the methods of activism available to men and women.     

Initiating insurgencies abroad: French plans to ‘chouannise’ Britain and Ireland, 1793–1798

Secret French plans to launch guerrilla-style raids on the British Isles devised in the spring of 1796 were referred to as ‘chouanneries’. The name and concept behind these small-war operations were modelled on the irregular tactics used by the Chouan rebels in the Vendée, which the French state army had brutally quashed, but some wished to transfer into their institutional practice. Part of France's ongoing military strategy in the war against Britain, which included fomenting insurrection in Ireland, these irregular operations were to be manned partially by pardoned deserters and released convicts and prisoners of war. Of these, only Tate's brief invasion of Wales in 1797 was realised, but the surviving plans provide insightful historical lessons into an Anglophobic mindset shared by a small network of practitioners and policy deciders on the effectiveness of such shock and awe tactics. Largely motivated by the desire to take revenge for Britain's support of counter-revolutionaries in the Vendée, these plans could more aptly be referred to as counter-‘chouanneries’.     

论赵树理早期小说中女性主体意识的启蒙意向——对赵树理早期小说中女性形象再解读

赵树理基于反封建和对女性进行思想启蒙的立场在他早期小说中塑造了众多的女性形象,这表现了他对中国现代女性命运的深切关注和对女性苦难处境的人性关怀。赵树理的启蒙意向是通过对新旧女性形象不同命运遭际的揭示有力地表现了出来,既彰显了作家鲜明的女性解放观,也揭示了中国乡村现代女性主体意识自觉和建构的艰难历程。因此,赵树理早期小说中女性形象的塑造具有一定的时代意义、社会意义和文化意义。     

The objectified female body and the Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria: Insights from IDP camps in Abuja

ABSTRACT

Scholars have written extensively on the multiple roles and functions of female bodies. Their depictions in areas such as reproduction, sex, oppression and empowerment, peace and protest, weakness and strength, among others, have been examined through the ages. In addition, the objectification of female bodies in terms of rape, mutilation, forced pregnancy, physical assaults and forced labour within the domestic sphere and the society at large have been articulated. One notable gap in the literature in this regard has to do with a focus on the emerging trends in which armed groups are exploitatively engaging female bodies in their activities. This study, therefore, relies on interviews with Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) in Durumi and Lugbe camps, Abuja, two officials of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working with displaced persons in the selected camps, development partners, documents, and published sources to examine the diverse ways in which the Boko Haram group has objectified the female body (as objects of sexual gratification, procreation, propaganda and profile enhancement, care-giving and gatekeeping as well as weapons of suicide bombing) and the socio-cultural factors fuelling their actions toward females in the northeastern part of Nigeria.