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This article provides an ethical evaluation of the CIA's use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV's) to target so-called terror suspects and insurgents. It utilises Christian informed deontological and virtue-ethical criteria to assess this practise. These criteria include just intent, charity, proportionality, moral consistency, truthfulness, mercy, courage and prudence. The article concludes that the UAV target programme is morally problematic. The United States' 'kill not capture' policy as exemplified in the use of 'signature' strikes defies the virtues at stake. By using UAV's as tools for preventive warfare, utilising armed UAV's that are weapons of war outside areas of armed conflict and disregarding the principles of transparency, last resort and proportionality, the United States is employing UAV's in a morally illegitimate and imprudent way, and is setting precedents that might have dire consequences for global peace and the security of future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Brasileira de Estudos Urbanos e Regionais is the property of Associacao Nacional de Pos-Graduacao e Pesquisa em Planejamento Urbano e Regional and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The literature on the transnational dimension of civil wars points to transnational ethnic kin as an important catalyst that initiates and sustains civil wars. Ethnic ties that transcend national boundaries, these studies argue, intensify the conflict by providing sanctuaries as well as human and material resources to the rebels. In this study, I argue that the same transborder ethnic ties make it more difficult for the government to achieve a decisive victory and contribute to outcomes more favorable to rebels. These networks can help create a more balanced relationship between an ethnic group and a previously antagonistic state by increasing the political, economic, and military costs of repression for the government. An analysis of ethnic civil wars starting and ending between 1950 and 2006 demonstrates that civil wars fought by ethnically mobilized rebel groups are more likely to be negotiated and settled in favor of rebels who have ethnic kin in a neighboring country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents information on Nigeria's social conditions and the inability of the ruling government to tackle the Islamic militant group Boko Haram. It mentions President Goodluck Jonathan's silence on the kidnapping of 250 school girls by Boko Haram and the military's neglect in acting towards retrieval of the missing girls. The media attention to the issue forced the government to request international help which was responded to by countries including France, the U.S., and China in addition to Great Britain. It also discusses Nigeria's efforts with it partners to fight terrorism by Boko Haram in Sahel region.

"Most Algerians seem fed up with the violence that has plagued their country and have little use for those who try to keep the flame of insurgency alive."

Illegal organizations, like mafia syndicates, gangs, and insurgencies, are often highly cohesive and hostile toward the outside world. Such groups cultivate a particular form of “anti-social” capital, which relies on ingroup bonding and limits outgroup bridging for the purpose of commissioning illicit acts. We argue that experiences within the group leave members with varying intensities of anti-social capital, and that higher intensities lead to significantly weaker relationships with political institutions and civil society, even many years after they exit the group. We test this theory using survey data from 1,485 former members of insurgent and paramilitary groups in Colombia, along with insights from 68 qualitative interviews. We find strong evidence that anti-social capital has individually varying and sticky effects on former members. These effects are pervasive and intense, and exhibit surprising and counterintuitive properties: former members of pro-state militia with higher levels of anti-social capital are systematically less likely to trust political institutions, while members of peasant-based insurgent groups with high levels of anti-social capital are less likely to participate in their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article uses a collective-action framework to study the mobilization of the Arrow Boys (AB), a community defense militia in South Sudan. Drawing on general collective-action explanations, this article argues that the mobilization of the AB was facilitated by two factors: (1) a strong overlap of the fighter's private and the community's public benefit and (2) close social relationships and expectations within the community. The article supports these theoretical claims by, first, examining the scope conditions under which the AB formed and, second, drawing on individual interviews with AB members from Western Equatoria in South Sudan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present paper is to analyse why and how urban insurgencies affect the counterinsurgency effort, which are the leavers that the insurgents use to get the upper hand and negate the state's power. A comprehensive understanding of these factors leads to a better understanding of the phenomenon of urban insurgency. Another target for this paper is to present the broad conceptual frame of insurgencies and urban insurgencies in particular for people wanting to get in contact with this topic. This research intends to analyse a few factors that influence an insurgency in an urban environment and say how and why these factors affect the counterinsurgency effort.. Within the urban insurgencies, the forces fighting these insurgencies are shaped and influenced by various factors that are more or less under their control. Urban military tactics in conjunction with political means have to react to unexpected events caused by insurgents, thus leading to a chess like structure of events in which each player reacts to the movements of the opponent. A proactive attitude from both sides sometimes leads to a stalemate that can protract the conflict for years. Combating this kind of danger requires a joint effort from all of the state's branches and structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the commune and communal state in Venezuela, focusing on the development of communism in the region since the Comunero Rebellion in 1781. Other topics include the impact of decolonization on the communal state, the relationship between the commune and the state, and the role of insurgency in developing the commune.

While studies of the motives for intentional insurgent violence against civilians are now common, relatively little academic research has focused on the impact of victimization on conflict processes or war outcomes. This article addresses this gap in the literature. Specifically, the authors examine the influence of civilian victimization on bargaining between the regime and insurgents during a civil war. A curvilinear relationship between the level of civilian victimization used by insurgents and the likelihood that conflict ends in negotiated settlement is posited. The probability of settlement is highest for groups that engage in a moderate level of civilian killing but declines at particularly high levels. A competing risk analysis using monthly conflict data on African civil wars between 1989 and 2010 supports this argument. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article describes and analyzes executions of European Spaniards committed by the insurgent army during the Mexican War of Independence. Although it was part of a major repertoire of subversive expressions of violence, assassination of gachupines had a special signification because it was an almost literal translation of one of the objectives of the insurgency. It is a crucial issue not only for a better understanding of the process of Mexican independence, but also of the construction of national identity. El proposito de este articulo es describir y analizar las ejecuciones de espanoles peninsulares que llevaron a cabo las fuerzas insurgentes durante la guerra de independencia de Mexico. Aunque formo parte de un repertorio mayor de expresiones de la violencia subversiva, el asesinato de gachupines cobro una significacion especial en la medida en que fue la traduccion casi literal de uno de los objetivos declarados de la insurreccion. Se trata pues de un tema crucial no solo para entender de mejor manera el proceso de la independencia mexicana, sino tambien el de la construccion de la identidad nacional. Keywords: War of Independence, Mexico, Violence, Gachupines, Assassination, Tumult, Executions, Terror, Retaliation, Rumor. Palabras clave: Guerra de independencia, Mexico, Violencia, Gachupines, Asesinato, Tumultos, Ejecuciones, Terror, Venganza, Rumor.

In May 1980, one of the most tragic events in the history of modern South Korea took place. This was the violent repression of civilian demonstrations in the south-western city of Kwangju, during which over 200 people were killed and hundreds more wounded and tortured by the South Korean government of General Chun Doo Hwan. Now, over 20 years later, the uprising has taken on a new national significance and legitimacy and is being (re)interpreted as the major catalyst for democratic reform in South Korea. The recent 'official' reinterpretation of the uprising has meant that it has become the subject of extensive memorialisation by the Korean state. This paper looks at the process by which the Kwangju Uprising has become reinterpreted, memorialised and subsequently contested in the late 1990s in Kwangju city through a number of 'sites of memory' (memorial sites), including Mangwol-dong Cemetery, where the victims of the uprising are buried.

The Catholic League in Nantes was a movement for urban defense led by a majority of the municipal elites. It was not simply a defensive movement against a predatory crown, but was the culmination of a resurgence of urban autonomy originating in the crown's inability to defend the city against external threats, both Huguenot military forces and royal army commanders active in the province. The League in Nantes was an urban and not an aristocratic movement, although the two were allied. The municipal elites joined with the duke of Mercoeur's personal rebellion for their own purposes and on their own terms. There was little social conflict in the city, where the majority of elites supported the decision to rebel. Finally, there were important religious overtones to the rebellion, which was framed in sacred language, although religious radicalism was not the prime motive of revolt. Nantes did not share the extremism of the large cities of Paris, Toulouse, and Troyes.

Somalis in British Somaliland rebelled against an attempt to control locusts by poison in 1945. An examination of the resistance reveals the place of religion and pastoralism in nationalist movements.

Why do some armed groups commit massive wartime rape, whereas others never do? Using an original dataset, I describe the substantial variation in rape by armed actors during recent civil wars and test a series of competing causal explanations. I find evidence that the recruitment mechanism is associated with the occurrence of wartime rape. Specifically, the findings support an argument about wartime rape as a method of socialization, in which armed groups that recruit by force—through abduction or pressganging—use rape to create unit cohesion. State weakness and insurgent contraband funding are also associated with increased wartime rape by rebel groups. I examine observable implications of the argument in a brief case study of the Sierra Leone civil war. The results challenge common explanations for wartime rape, with important implications for scholars and policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is an exercise in the hermeneutics of suspicion—against ethics as propounded by some on the Left. It focuses on the deployment of ethics as a means for relating responsibly to the other, dealing initially with the problematic proposals of Terry Eagleton and Judith Butler. More promising are Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, who question this concern with the other. I go further, exploring how the other is constructed and arguing that ethics produces the other through its own discourse, concealing both its relations with alternative discursive productions of alterity and its socioeconomic connections. Moreover, ethics has good reason to conceal its socioeconomic connections, which are persistently of the ruling class. These connections emerge by investigating the etymological minefield ofethikos,ethosandmos, via Aristotle. With the senses of custom, habit, and accepted social norms, ethics emerges as a ruling class ideology, which leads to the final question: can ethics as a ruling class term be appropriated and filled with different content, or are other terms needed, such as unethical and unmoral? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the occurrence of grassroots insurgencies around the world as of November 2012, with a focus on popular uprisings in Latin America and Gwangju, South Korea, and the international occupy protest movement. Topics include the mobilization of mass strikes by indigenous peoples, reactions against neoliberalism and its economic austerity measures, and student protests and insurgencies. Additional information is presented on attempts to privatize natural resources in Peru and Ecuador, ethnocentrism, and direct democracy.

Between 1949 and 1951, the Communities Liaison Committee (CLC), an unofficial body comprising leaders from the main Malayan ethnic communities, served as a prototype for elite intercommunal conflict resolution during a very challenging period amid an ongoing communist insurgency. Drawing upon previously inaccessible primary sources, this article reassesses the CLC's work towards resolving divisive issues such as Malay economic backwardness, federal citizenship, national identity, education and language in Malaya. This article argues that the CLC played a significantly bigger role than previously recognised and influenced government policy considerably. Equally importantly, it entrenched the concept of consociationalism, which was to shape the Malayan political landscape long thereafter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The theory of population-centric counterinsurgency rests upon the untenable premise that the population within a theater of operations is fixed in place. By showing that people tend to move away from contested rural areas towards the relative safety and prosperity of counterinsurgent-controlled areas, this article demonstrates that this crucial premise is empirically false. Furthermore, a theory of counterinsurgent resource deployment, population movement, and incumbent strategic ineffectiveness is presented. Ultimately, the application of counterinsurgency resources actually dislocates the population from their place of residence and causes them to move into cities. When the urban areas' ability to absorb newcomers is overwhelmed, localized negative externalities emerge and can give rise to crime and insecurity. Such increased insecurity then creates an incentive for the counterinsurgency to retrench its resource use into the cities. As more physical territory is conceded to the insurgency, the relative strategic effectiveness of the counterinsurgency declines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Military engagement of insurgents risks destruction of religious monuments and historic structures, and political and economic instability that follows armed conflict enables looting of antiquities. In combination, threats to cultural structures and movable cultural patrimony compromise cultural security. This article explores the potential of the art market for open-source intelligence assessments of cultural security. A comparison of the market value of artifacts of different ethnic origins provides a measure of the risk of looting of cultural patrimony by geographic region. Intelligence assessments of the relative desirability of cultural artifacts by region of origin can inform strategic planning to mitigate looting in conflict zones and to alert security services to emerging threats of trafficking in cultural patrimony. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How do the organizational features of rebel groups participating in civil wars affect the likelihood of the resumption of conflict after a civil war has ended? As many scholars have noted, peace duration is a function of the extent to which rebel groups stick to the deal. However, occasionally a rebel group fractures, and the conflict resumes as a result. Using a combination of existing data on civil conflicts and characteristics of the settlement agreement, along with original data on the characteristics of the insurgent organizations implementing the agreement, we test the effect of the organizational features of the rebel group on the duration of the peace settlements that occurred after the end of the cold war until 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the incorporation of civilian and military activities. It mentions that counterinsurgency (COIN) can be considered successful if the needs of the contested populations were addressed while defending people from insurgents. It states that COIN is the most complex and demanding type of warfare wherein the role of military forces is extensive. It adds that COIN is also consists of nonmilitary participants like nongovernmental organizations (NGO) and United Nations (UN).

Do China's mandarins have anything to fear from the winds of freedom that have blown away Arab autocrats? The short answer is no-for now. The Chinese government has performed for its people, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty during the same length of time Hosni Mubarak reigned in Egypt. Though many in the West would like to think so, it is not likely that the rising middle class in China will one day also fill Tiananmen Square in protest. In the immediate future, the chaos and economic drift that will now engulf the liberated Middle East will remind them again that China was right not to go down the path of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika in Russia. And it is not as if they will have a chance. The authorities are determined never to allow any two people who vent virtually on the Net to meet in the street. In this section, we discuss the impact of the Arab revolt-and lack of it-on China's system of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War. It states that the civil war commemorations depicts the plasticity of historical memory and how it is applied to resolve present-day dilemmas. It explores the connection between historical memory and mass social insurgencies, depicted during the civil war.

The Niger Delta region of Nigeria has been engulfed by oil-related conflict for over two decades now, and concerns pertaining to Nigeria's national security, economic stability, and global energy security have been brought to the fore of global discourse. This paper reflects on the character and dynamics of oil turbulence and in particular the transformation of the conflict from a community protest against oil industry operations to insurgency and the counterinsurgent responses by state security forces. The article indentifies the availability of arms, endemic corruption, state violence, patterns of corporate practice, and the politics of oil revenue distribution as central to the origins of the contemporary crisis. The paper interrogates the amnesty program and draws attention to incomplete disarmament, poor post amnesty rehabilitation, and political contradictions as possible threats to its success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nearly collapsed system of governance in Somalia has culminated in a state of anarchy with ugly humanitarian repercussions, especially on innocent civilians. The geneses of the Somali conflict are territorial and political disputes exacerbated by foreign interventions in the conflict. Since the problem in Somalia is political and not military, the Somali crisis does not require a military solution. The solution to Somalia's problems is the Somalis themselves who should resolve their differences and end the conflagration in their country. As a minimum, three steps are necessary to resolve the crisis in Somalia: reconciliation, reconstruction and reassurance. To this end, the international community, particularly the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), has the responsibility to create a secure space for dialogue and reconciliation. To achieve this, there is a need for a carrot-and-stick approach whereby the insurgents are counselled on the damage they are causing to their own country and warned about the consequences of their activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In certain separatist conflicts there is a greater likelihood of external mediation if the political ‘redefinition’ of the state insisted upon by the insurgents undergoes a revision, from secession to self-determination, understood as a variant of autonomy. In the same vein, although it may not happen concurrently, insurgent movements become more amenable to external mediation if and when opposing governments revise the preferred conflict outcome from a military defeat of the insurgents to a ‘containment’ of the movement. These two developments — a revised demand from the insurgents for how the state should be defined and an altered military strategy adopted by the government — can serve as ‘objective referents’ helping external parties to identify a ripe moment in the conflict and initiate mediation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Afghanistan's current difficulties are in large measure the product of a troubled history and a troubled geographical location. These have combined to produce a debilitated state, open to meddling from a range of external powers, that has now experienced decades of trauma. The current insurgency that afflicts the country is sustained by the sanctuaries in Pakistan from which the Taliban operate. Unless and until there is progress on this front, the situation in Afghanistan will remain stalemated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In September 2007 Israel’s security cabinet approved a ‘hostile entity’ classification for the Gaza Strip and intensified its economic and diplomatic blockade of this Hamas-controlled region. Taking the ‘hostile entity’ classification as a point of entry, this paper examines the construction of Gaza as an insurgent zone, a liminal space within which Israel’s executive discretion has authorizing force. Central to this process, it argues, is a blurring of lines between the civilian and combatant—the elimination of a purely civilian space. This paper begins with an analysis of the discursive strategies employed to collapse the space between the civilian body and battlefield in Gaza. It then turns to an examination of socio-spatial practices mobilized around the ‘hostile entity’ classification, foremost Israel’s sanctions policy, and argues this counter-insurgency strategy entails regulation and management of the Palestinian body combined with the active subjugation of Palestinian life to the power of death. Centrally, this paper attends to the relationship between geopolitics and violence at the scale of the (Palestinian) body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I adopt an auto/biographical method and a critique of abstract social theories to explore how the neoliberal restructuring of universities interacts with the gender order. Many universities are being remoulded as businesses for other businesses, with profound effects on internal relations, the subjectivities of academics and students, and practices of education and scholarship. Yet I doubt if we can understand this, nor resist the deep corruption, through grasping neoliberalism's dynamics alone. A longer memory and a more concrete analysis are needed. Today's intense individualisation impacts on pre-existing social relations, which inflect it unpredictably. From my own experience, I evoke the baseline of an older academy, gender-segregated, explicitly patriarchal and privileged in class and ethnic terms. I stress the feminist and democratic gains of the 1960s and 1970s. I sketch the (neoliberal) strategies that undermine or redirect them. I write this, hoping that the next episode can be written differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Africa Spectrum is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The international intervention in Afghanistan has contributed to entrenched state weakness and rising insecurity. Despite increased references to the need for reconciliation with the Taliban and a political solution to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, few specifics have been offered by academics or policymakers. Building on research into conflict resolution and an analysis of the composition and motivation of the insurgency, this article addresses this gap by asking whether conditions are currently “ripe” for a negotiated settlement, how “ripeness” may be achieved, and, once achieved, how a political settlement might best be pursued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a unique theory of insurgent group behavior using a fuzzy-set approach. In contrast to arguments that place the culpability of insurgent group violence toward noncombatants in the arena of natural resource endowments or the distinctive nature of contemporary conflicts, the author uses a component of qualitative comparative analysis to show that the presence of "active rivalry" is critical in determining the type of behavior insurgent groups will display with regard to local populations they claim to represent. The use of fuzzy-set analysis is uncommon in conflict studies yet proves to be a valuable alternative to standard statistical tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To test claims that postcolonial civil violence is a common legacy of colonialism, we create a dataset on the colonial heritage of 160 countries and explore whether a history of colonialism is related to indicators of inter-communal conflict, political rebellion and civil war in the years 1960-1999. The analysis provides evidence against sweeping claims that colonialism is a universal cause of civil violence but finds that some forms of colonialism increase the risk of some forms of civil violence. Specifically, the findings support claims that inter-communal violence is a common legacy of colonialism--especially of British colonialism and colonialism by minor colonial powers--but suggest that a history of colonialism has only a limited impact on political rebellion and civil war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do individuals participate in weak-against-strong resistance, terror, or insurgency? Drawing on rational choice theory, many claim that individuals join insurgent organizations for self-interested reasons, seeking status, money, protection, or rewards in the afterlife. Another line of research, largely ethnographic and social-network based, suggests that prospective fighters are driven by social identity—they join out of an allegiance to communal values, norms of reciprocity, and an orientation toward process rather than outcome. This article tests these two lines of argument against each other by directly linking values orientations in a refugee camp to professed willingness to participate in resistance or rebellion in two different contexts. Professed willingness to participate in resistance, and especially in violent rebellion, is positively correlated with communal orientation and negatively correlated with self-enhancement values. The strength of correlation grows—negatively for self-enhancement and positively for communal orientations—as anticipated sacrifice increases. Results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on the causes of civil war seeks to identify whether group grievances, or opportunity for organisation, motivates rebellion. Similarly, scholars debate whether ethnicity matters in civil war due to group grievances or the opportunity to mobilise. We introduce the lack of empowerment rights, defined as social, political and economic empowerment directly and conditionally in models of civil war onset using novel methods and data. We find no direct effect of repression of rights on war, but higher ethnic fractionalisation increases the risk independently. Nonetheless, higher levels of repression condition the effects of ethnic fractionalisation in ways that maintain peace. State policies that dis-empower people under conditions of high fractionalisation actually reduce the chance of civil war. We do not find that high fractionalisation is only related to lower level armed conflict as some have suggested, but it seems to explain onsets of civil wars above 25 deaths but lower than 1,000 and conflict measured above 1,000 deaths for the period of study that our data allow. The conditional effects of repression and ethnic fractionalisation explain onsets at both levels of war. Our findings are generally unsupportive of the view that grievances due to lack of ethnic group rights drive civil war, but it seems that the opportunity to mobilise does.e [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]