Unraveling the violence in Kazakhstan

There were several high-profile violent incidents in 2011 in Kazakhstan, including several bombings, shootings that targeted police, and a protest turned clash that resulted in a number of deaths. Some of the perpetrators reportedly had links with radical religious groups. An overlooked aspect of the violence is how it is reported in Kazakhstan. There are active, competent media in Kazakhstan, which are largely unknown in the West. An examination of these incidents using the media in Kazakhstan can provide a unique insight into what took place. While Western sources quickly blamed radical religious groups with international connections, media in Kazakhstan have found that there are other reasons for the violence.     

Army reconstruction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 2003–2009

Since the peace agreements of 2002–2003 which ended the second war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, reconstruction of the army has been an inherently political process, in common with other attempts to carry out security sector reform (SSR). This article briefly sketches out the Congolese army's history, then attempts to fill a gap in the literature on Congolese SSR by detailing what can be found of the actual structure and shape of the present army. The efforts that have been made to reform the army are then examined, followed by a conclusion which examines the major issues and possible ways forward.     

Baixa do Cassang: Ending the abuse of Portuguese Africans

On 4 January 1961 in Baixa do Cassange, in the north of Angola, the blacks who worked in the cotton fields began a strike. The army with air support was called to quell the rebellion, and the article emphasizes the importance of air support tethered to the ground forces, particularly in a remote and vast area of operations in the tropical rainy season. In this case, the support originally came in the form a squadron of Lockheed PV-2 Harpoons from Luanda, some 300 kilometers away. These open-ocean reconnaissance aircraft and their crews were ill-suited for the task. When this became apparent, four small Auster D5/160s were relocated from Negage to Malange, among the ground forces. The Austers flew reconnaissance missions over the troubled zones, dropped provisions and messages to the advancing ground forces, and served as a backup communications link. When the strike ceased after three weeks, the Austers assumed a humanitarian role in support of the starving population. The conclusion is that air support to ground forces is indispensable, must be properly tailored to the job, and must operate as an integral part of the ground forces.     

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.     

山区农村消防工作现状与发展策略初探——以湖南湘西自治州为例

广大农村的安全可持续发展是当前经济社会发展和扶贫攻坚战略实施的一项重大课题.以湘西自治州山区农村消防工作为研究对象,对其消防工作发展现状和存在的突出问题进行了认真思考,在此基础上就如何解决当前山区农村消防工作的瓶颈性问题提出了意见和建议.     

基于三粒子纠缠态的量子安全直接通信协议

提出了一种新的三粒子量子安全直接通信协议。通信过程利用decoy光子来检测窃听,保证信道安全。发送方将秘密消息编码在不同幺正操作上,通信双方通过Bell基和Z基测量可直接传递秘密消息。由于所有粒子都用于传输秘密消息,且传输一次可获得两比特信息,该协议具有较高的量子比特及量子密码协议效率;三粒子纠缠态的制备是已实现技术,该协议具有实际操作的意义。此外,该协议在量子信道中也是安全的。     

从王安石变法看政策执行的必备要素

政策的执行是一项系统性工作,其中领导者的综合素质、直达基层的领导骨干、及时高效的反馈机制、牢靠的群众基础以及周密配套的实施方案,都是政策执行的必备要素。讨论政策执行的必备要素,对于政策的执行乃至当前的改革,都具有非常重要的现实意义。     

Steady-state analysis of load balancing with Coxian-2 distributed service times

This paper studies load balancing for many-server (N servers) systems. Each server has a buffer of size b ? 1, and can have at most one job in service and b ? 1 jobs in the buffer. The service time of a job follows the Coxian-2 distribution. We focus on steady-state performance of load balancing policies in the heavy traffic regime such that the normalized load of system is λ = 1 ? N^?α for 0 < α < 0.5. We identify a set of policies that achieve asymptotic zero waiting. The set of policies include several classical policies such as join-the-shortest-queue (JSQ), join-the-idle-queue (JIQ), idle-one-first (I1F) and power-of-d-choices (Po d) with d = O(N^α log N). The proof of the main result is based on Stein's method and state space collapse. A key technical contribution of this paper is the iterative state space collapse approach that leads to a simple generator approximation when applying Stein's method.     

中美网络空间的博弈与竞争

随着中美实力差距不断缩小和信息技术的发展与扩散,网络安全成为中美新的竞争点和摩擦点,中美在网络安全问题上展开新一轮的博弈,具体体现为网络空间治理权之争、中美网络安全战略博弈和网络技术优势的夺取。     

Cyclic scheduling in robotic flowshops with bounded work‐in‐process levels

This study addresses cyclic scheduling in robotic flowshops with bounded work‐in‐process (WIP) levels. The objective is to minimize the cycle time or, equivalently, to maximize the throughput, under the condition that the WIP level is bounded from above by a given integer number. We present several strongly polynomial algorithms for the 2‐cyclic robotic flowshop scheduling problems for various WIP levels. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 58: 1–16, 2011