http://www.booksandideas.net/Malcolm-X-and-the-Search-for-the.html

This biography of Malcolm was more than a decade in the making. It was written by Manning Marable, who died on April 1, 2011, shortly before the publication of his reevaluation of Malcolm’s life and politics. Marable was one of the foremost scholars of Black politics in the United States. Here Marable has crafted a compelling intellectual history of Malcolm in which he shows how Malcolm’s thoughts grew out of social and religious movements that first emerged within the black community during the nineteenth century.

A Critical Reevaluation

Marable structures his reevaluation of Malcolm X’s life, as a critical deconstruction of Malcolm X’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As told to Alex Haley.  Marable’s reevaluation required questioning the redemption story that forms the heart of The Autobiography. The story of the Autobiography, fashioned in partnership with the liberal republican Alex Haley and released after Malcolm’s death, often falls into motifs of decline and then salvation, which date back to earlier slave narratives and stories of Christian redemption, examples ranging from Olaudah Equiano to Frederick Douglas.  When Malcolm agreed to work on the Autobiography in 1963 his objective was to present to the reader “the transformative power of the apostle Elijah Muhammad, who had taken him from a life of criminality and drugs to one of sobriety and commitment” (p. 260). In contrast, Marable historicizes Malcolm’s intellectual development, showing not only the disjunctions but also the commonalities between Malcolm’s earlier beliefs and his later insights. Marable also firmly locates Malcolm’s ideas within the wider African American intellectual tradition.

http://www.booksandideas.net/Malcolm-X-and-the-Search-for-the.html

The Quest for All-encompassing Theories

Enshrouded in the fog of the present, observers turned to competing theories about the nature of great politics within the labyrinth of international relations, to define the sources and to prognosticate the longevity of Western ascendency at the end of the Cold War. Arguments about the durability of the Pax Americana and the triumph of liberal democracies in general were initially framed as a contest of ideas between the triumphalism of Francis Fukayama, best articulated in his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, and his fierce debate with his critics from within the political science community, Samuel Huntington and John Mearsheimer. [1] On the one hand, Fukayama argued that the success of an alliance of liberal democracies, which emerged out of the wreckage of the Second World War, in their decade long struggle with Communism showed decisively that a fundamental truth of human nature was the quest for freedom and the realization of respect for the individual, and that these values could best, and perhaps only be actualized in capitalist, liberal democracies. One of the core implications of Fukayama’s argument was that the very human quest for self-realization would inevitably compel individuals, and consequentially whole societies, to build liberal democratic states, which shared a universal set of core values out of which a new harmonious and cooperative international order could be constructed. [2]

http://www.booksandideas.net/Energy-a-Lens-on-World-Politics.html?lang=fr

http://africanarguments.org/2012/05/23/the-bad-news-over-badme-why-ethiopia-won%E2%80%99t-back-down-on-eritrean-border-by-michael-woldemariam/

For several years, combat along the tense Eritrean-Ethiopian frontier has been entirely rhetorical. This changed on March 16^th, 2012 when the Ethiopian government boldly announced that it had crossed into Eritrean territory in an attack on three military installations. Citing Asmara’s role in the January death and abduction of European tourists in Ethiopia’s Afar region, Ethiopia’s retaliation  represented the first direct military confrontation between Eritrea and Ethiopia since the 1998-2000 border war.

Coincidentally, these events came one month before the 10^th anniversary of the delimitation decision of the Eritrean Ethiopian Boundary Commission. The EEBC was the product of the Algiers Accord, which formally ended the Eritrean-Ethiopian war by referring the border dispute to arbitration. The EEBC’s findings should have been the final chapter in the bloody border row between the two countries, but instead, gave the dispute new momentum.  The crux of the problem was that Ethiopia rejected the EEBC’s decision when it realized that Badme, the small piece of disputed territory that triggered the border war, and which it had acquired at a high human cost, had been awarded to Eritrea. Addis later accepted the decision “in principle,” but demanded negotiations on the normalization of relations before it would permit the disputed border to be demarcated (and return Badme to Eritrea).

Looking at events since January 2012, it has at times been hard to tell if we are witnessing a simple pricing dispute or a total divorce between the newest neighbors in northeast Africa.

There is some truth to Alex De Waal’s recent statement at the Royal Africa Society that “it all looked so good just over a year ago.”[1] A year ago there was a euphoria of independence, but few hard decisions had been made about the future relationship of the Republic of Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan. Omar al-Bashir, and a cadre of his close associates within the National Congress Party, surely believed that they would be rewarded with a peace dividend for their decision to allow the South to progress smoothly towards independence; while, the leaders and people of South Sudan, nestled securely within the warm glow of international applause celebrating the victory of their liberation struggle, undoubtedly believed that the exercise of sovereignty was the first step on a long journey towards a better standard of living and national self-respect.

When partition occurred on the 9th of July 2011, it appeared as though the pro-partition factions in both countries, which became dominant with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord in 2005, had won an overwhelming victory in each of their respective political spheres. Sure negotiations about the future relationship between these two countries had been an abysmal failure, but it was still hoped for, perhaps naively, that mutual self-interest and the general good will of the international community, earned as a result of the increased confidence that a permanent solution to a conflict, which in its most recent manifestation had raged from 1983 until 2005, would finally be found.

Yet peace dividends for both sides proved either ephemeral or short lived.  The mutual economic gains that the original framers of the CPA hoped would push both sides to make painful compromises on difficult issues, such as the contested areas of the border, were instead undermined by the persistence of uncertainty.

Ongoing tensions between North and South Sudan have undermined the initial successes both states enjoyed as the fulfillment of the CPA’s terms came into view. For South Sudan, these success initially came in the form of attracting increased levels of foreign direct investment.[2] While for northern Sudan, success was most clearly defined through the favorable resolution of a number of its geostrategic dilemmas.  This process began a few years ago with a rapprochement between Khartoum and N’Djamena, and it accelerated last year following Khartoum’s support for the rebels who overthrew Qaddafi’s regime. Khartoum’s support was rewarded later by the expulsion of Khalil Ibrahim from Libya, and his subsequent assassination, which then weakened the Justice and Equality Movement.[3]

The strengthening of the Republic of Sudan’s relationship with its western neighbors, as well as, the close relationship between Khartoum and the Eritrean Government, meant that after partition, officials in Khartoum initially expected to enter into a period of stability within their Eastern and Western peripheries.[4]  And if negotiations with South Sudan over the disputed border areas were successful, there was a possibility that Khartoum could have stable borders for the first time in decades.  In the visions of leaders in Khartoum, stability would be translated into prosperity by accompanying a flood of investment into the neglected agricultural sector.

Yet, it was not to be. Following partition, instead of a peace dividend, both Sudan and South Sudan are suffering through the aftershocks of a severe post partition economic penalty.  The new state of South Sudan inherited 75% of the petroleum reserves, but the North retained the majority of the petroleum exporting and refining capacity. While the continued economic interdependence of both countries on one another was always going to be tricky, there were reasons to hope that the obvious complementaries in the economic interests of both states would lead to continued cooperation.

However, while before partition the failure of “the new Sudan” project, which emphasized reforming state institutions and political culture in order to make a unified and pluralist country feasible, appeared to be in the interest of both the ruling NCP and SPLM, in practice the death of a unified state has presented difficult and still unresolved dilemmas for both parties.[5] One the one hand, the ruling SPLM has been at pains to define its relationship with African peoples still stranded in northern Sudan, in particular the armed populations of the Nuba Mountain and Blue Nile State, many of whom fought bravely for a new Sudan during the last civil war. While, Khartoum has found it incredibly difficult to securely resolve its economic dependence on South Sudan.

Eckart Woertz of Princeton has argued that the NCP decided shortly before the signing of the CPA that it would prefer a smaller Sudan, one located perhaps from El-Obeid to Gedaraf and excluding the southern provinces, than to lose political power.  However, it is also becoming evident that Khartoum underestimated the changing dynamics of the political marketplace.[6] Partially as a result of past experience, and partially out of arrogance, ruling elements of the NCP continued to believe that they could reach private or semi-private accommodations with individual Southern Sudanese politicians, as governments in Khartoum have traditionally done with individual leaders from the periphery since before independence in 1956. The assumption was that greed would continue to allow for mutually profitable transactions to take place, even after partition was agreed upon between members of the NCP and the SPLM.

However, leaders in Khartoum underestimated the extent to which the nature of the political sphere occupied by the two countries of Sudan and South Sudan had changed. In particular the cost for the NCP of forming individual bargains with southern leaders has risen dramatically. Rising costs can be traced to two points of origin. The first is related to the strengthening of an independent national political sphere in South Sudan, which effectively competes with the long dominant Khartoum political marketplace. The growth of a sovereign political sphere has made it harder and harder for politicians in the south to reach the sorts of often lucrative private accords with northern political factions that were negotiated with  an older generation of politicians, such as Joseph Lagu and a younger Riak Machar. For example, the expression of southern popular will made it impossible by 2010 for Silva Kiir to conceive of running for the presidency of a united Sudan or of continuing to serve as a vice-president to Omar al-Bashir, despite the offer of personal rewards and the belated opening up of the civil service to southerners.[7] It also made it increasingly difficult for Southern politicians to back down in the face of provocations, such as the recent dispute of Heglig, which may have initially been started by forces outside of the direct SPLA chain of command, or on economic issues such as the decision to quickly introduce a separate currency, and to take a hard line on negotiations over petroleum revenues.[8] Adding to the resilience of the Southern bargaining position has been a feeling that as victors in their liberation struggle, that they now enjoy widespread support throughout the international community, support which strengthens both their diplomatic and military position.

In addition, East Africa, as a political and economic community bolstered by IGAD: The Intergovernmental Authority on Development, and EAC: East African Community, offer a dynamic alternative to Khartoum around which the Republic of South Sudan is reorienting itself. Uganda’s recent offers of military assistance, and the potential viability of the Lamu pipeline and economic corridor, pointing to the Indian Ocean coast of Kenya, only highlight the feasibility of Juba’s long sought reorientation.

All of this has left Khartoum vulnerable, unable to pursue its traditional bargaining strategies, and unsure of the military balance between the SAF and the SPLA. To make matters worse the Arab Spring could not have occurred at a worse time for Khartoum, weakening traditional allies such as Egypt, and occupying possible supporters such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar with battles in frontiers that are considered more vital to their interests.

Recently, Gerard Prunier suggested that the best course of action for both parties might be an open and full scale war, and the logic behind his suggestion is clear, if callous.[9] Essentially, his position is that the balance of power between the two sides is unclear, and even further more, it is beginning to appear that while South Sudan may be viable without Khartoum, a Khartoum that does not have friendly relations with its increasingly restless peripheries may not be viable at all. His solution is regime change, though such a solution would have been the most viable in 2010, if the SPLM could have been induced into an alliance with the opposition parties of the Democratic Alliance to govern a united Sudan. Today, as the examples of Ethiopia and Eritrea demonstrate, even the rise to power of a party as closely aligned to Juba as the SPLM-N in a separate state may not resolve the conflict.

The intolerability of the current situation for Khartoum was revealed by Omar al-Bashir himself, when he said “Either we end up occupying Juba or you end up occupying Khartoum, but the boundaries of the old Sudan can no longer fit us together, only one of us has to remain standing.”[10]

However, before the terms of peace can reliably be established two questions must be resolved. The first is the relative strength of Khartoum and Juba, and in many ways the ongoing hostilities are a way for each side to feel out the other’s strengths and weaknesses. The second is the establishment of the viability of South Sudan’s incorporation into an East African economic zone and the construction of the Lamu pipeline. There are doubts about how it will be funded, but if it is viable, then the leverage  by which Khartoum can bargain with the South will dramatically shrink, even more than it already has.[11]

It is in this climate that a certain pessimism has set in amongst Middle East watchers. Over drinks at one of New York’s cooler than thou bars: Bathtub gin,[3] I recently met two friends of mine in town from Geneva.  One of whom has now settled in New York doing publicity, the other a former al Jazeera reporter and now a thriller writer, who was happy to engage in tales about her most recent trip to Beirut. The punch line she delivered in no uncertain terms, a consensus opinion of the Beirut nightlife scene, was that not only is Syria going to hell, but so is the whole Middle East, and in many ways it was hard to argue that 2012 will be kind to the region. Undoubtedly, the aftershocks of 2011 will continue to be felt, and outside of the widening of the political sphere, which was not a small achievement, few if any of the cleavages in the region have been bridged. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues to fester, as does a rising awareness of sectarian differences within societies, as well as, political cleavage between states. One reaction to political change has been the strengthening of political organization, such as the Gulf Cooperation Community, devoted to resisting change rather than facilitating it. Add to all of these concerns, the very likely possibility of failed states taking shape in Syria and Yemen, added uncertainty in Israel’s security environment and an American attempt to redeploy its forces towards Asia, and continued volatility is all but assured.

The question then is not whether or not the Middle East will be tumultuous in 2012, I believe we can rest assured that it will be, but whether or not their will be a catastrophic event. Catastrophe is perhaps an overly vague term, so lets be a bit more specific. I believe the odds are better than not that there will not be inter-state conflict in the Middle East in 2012. The two most likely locations of interstate war are Israel-Lebanon, see 2006, or Israel and Iran with or without American support. Yet both conflicts while potentially related are unlikely to breakout into out right war, because the consequences and costs have become too high.

And the rhetoric in support of war appears to have reached truly unprecedented levels amongst some constituencies in the United States. For an truly outrageous example, see the story of the publisher of a Jewish newspaper calling for Obama’s assassination.[4] The intellectual consensus amongst the policy making elite appears to be opposed to the outbreak of open conflict.[5]

In order to understand why the smart money remains opposed to war with Iran lets turn to one potential scenario of how such a conflict might play out.

Because the consequences of an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites have been played out over and over again by strategists, it is possible to turn to a number of very detailed accounts of how such an event might unfold, in order to build our own sketch of how such a conflict might develop. One of the best, though now slightly out of date scenarios, was conducted by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy under the direction of Kenneth Pollack in February 2010.[6]

Though a lot has changed during the intervening years.  In particular, there has been the escalation of a major covert war inside of Iran, Syria is in civil war, and while Iran has not begun a clear nuclear weapon program, the sophistication of its nuclear energy program has become clearer as has the amount of popular support the program enjoys.[7]

The new year began with the Obama Administration and its European allies pushing for the adoption of sanctions targeting Iran’s oil exports. These sanctions were designed to prohibit transactions with the Central Bank of Iran. Intelligence officials believe that these sanctions could reduce Iran’s revenue by more than a third.[8] Already on the eve of European Union sanctions on the imports of Iranian crude oil Iran has suffered from rising inflation. The Iranian rial this year has lost 40% of its value, and even more critically, wild fluctuations in the value of the Iranian currency have made it hard for many businesses to survive.[9]

Pollack and David Milliband both argue that the possibility of a miscalculation is incredibly high, and that as the covert war escalates and an increasingly aggressive posture and signals are adopted, the likelihood of an unintended conflict grows.[10] There is an incredible amount of truth in the assumption that without serious restraint–after all four scientists have been assassinated in the last year and our involvement with dissident groups attempting to overthrow the regime has grown–the possibility that we could find ourselves in a situation where we are fighting an open war will continue to grow.

Yet, the events of the last year have made the conditions for such an attack less auspicious not more so. In order to understand why we must examine a scenario of how such an event would likely play out.

A limited attack by Israel would seriously degrade Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, but it would not be able to destroy Iran’s ability to retaliate or to reconstitute its program. To prevent Iran from reconstituting its nuclear program would take a sustained series of assaults over many months, a pattern that is surely unrealistic.  A strike by the United States directly from its forward positions in the Persian Gulf would be more likely to destroy a significant part of Iran’s command and control structure, as well as its military capacity, but even then it is doubtful that the regime could be overthrown through an air campaign alone or that the Iranian military could be decimated.  Additionally, the likelihood of the United States launching an air campaign against Iranian targets during the remainder of 2012 without direct provocation is extremely low.

The best case scenario for an attack against Iran would include surgical strikes against Iran’s nuclear energy or weapon facilities and then rely on deterrence to prevent Iran from escalating the conflict. The goal would be to ensure a contained conflict largely on terms dictated by the aggressor. However, an equally or perhaps more likely scenario foresees Iran responding to a strike against its nuclear facilities by retaliating either directly or through proxies, forcing an escalation of the conflict and denying the aggressor the right to define the boundaries of the conflict. The most likely strategy for Iranian policymakers to change the terms of a conflict in which they are conventionally over-matched, would be for them to export the conflict from a purely Iranian field of combat to new arenas. The four possible arenas in which Iran could spread conflict are the Levant (Lebanon and Syria), the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan. A direct escalation in the Persian Gulf would bring about a uncontrolled and dramatic escalation in the conflict, particularly an overwhelming response by American forces stationed in the Gulf. Escalations in Iraq and Afghanistan would also primarily target American forces, and while extremely aggravating to American interest, an escalation in violence in these regions would take a long period to sufficiently impact the United States.

The scenario concocted by the Saban Center focused on how the conflict would escalate from an air assault over Iran into a possible ground war in Lebanon. The trigger being Hizbullah’s or other Iranian proxies decision to assist Iran by launching wave after wave of rocket attacks against northern Israel. Building on the lessons of 2006, we know that Israel cannot counter such attacks through an air campaign alone. Nor would a limited invasion of southern Lebanon suffice. Though given adequate time, punitive measures short of a major ground campaign might eventually compel an end to the barrage against northern Israel, it is extremely unlikely that the Israeli public would tolerate an the necessary period of insecurity for such an outcome to be reached. Therefore, it is extremely likely that the Israeli Defense Forces would feel compelled to enter Lebanon, engaging in a major land campaign. In 2010, the Saban Center predicted that such a move would result in an unpredictable quagmire, for which the IDF would be poorly prepared. A military occupation would be extremely taxing, and the international attention would make it very difficult for the IDF to operate freely. The possibility of atrocities might invite the involvement of additional regional actors, the most problematic of which would be Turkey.  The IDF is essentially built as a strike force, and the likelihood of an early or decisive victory in an extended Lebanon campaign is quite low, yet, eliminating rocket fire or decimating Hizbullah would require a substantial period of occupation.

Since 2010, the outlook for the success of an Israeli campaign in Lebanon has severely darkened. Even though Assad’s regime in Syria was the major conduit through which Iranian support passed to various groups in Lebanon, the regime’s very dictatorial and highly centralized nature made it vulnerable to deterrence. It had always been assumed that Hafez, and later his son Bashar, wanted to survive, and therefore could be counted on to prevent a massive escalation of conflict in Lebanon, and assuredly the spread of conflict to Syria. Yet, one wonders whether a weakened Assad regime in Syria could prevent a major war in Lebanon from spilling across the border? And if it would still be in Syria’s interest to limit conflict in the Levant? The possibility of an expanded arena of conflict, which includes not only Lebanon but also Syria must be a nightmare for IDF military planners. The strain of a pacification campaign would pose unpredictable obstacles to both the Isreali military, but also the Israeli economy, and the lack of a centralized government or military complex to deter would neutralize the overwhelming conventional superiority of the IDF.

The importance of resolving the Syrian dilemma for Israeli military and intelligence planners was recently recognized by the wily former Mossad chief Efraim Halvey in a New York Times column last week.[11] Halvey, who for years was the primary interlocutor between the Israeli government and King Hussein of Jordan, argues that the Assad regime is finished and that a return to the old devil’s bargain of stability in exchange for support for the personal rule of the Assad family cannot be reconstructed. Halvey goes on to argue that the battle now is not just a battle to get rid of Assad, but to assure a stable Syria that is friendly to Israel and hostile to Iran. A concern for Israel, because he rightly points out that it is very possible for Iranian influence in Syria to outlast the regime.

However, even under the most favorable circumstances for Israel, such a scenario will take time, perhaps months to become clear. Civil War in Syria appears to be on the horizon. A good friend of mine, Karam Nachar recently declared in a talk at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, that the “Tahrir Square moment” has passed in Syria, and that the time of armed struggle has arrived. In addition there are daily reports of arms flooding into the country and the development of more sophisticated attacks. Even in Libya months after the fighting ceased the problem of militias and establishing a strong government remains, how much worse will it be in Syria during the coming months.

The unpredictability of politics within the Levant make it extremely unlikely that Israeli military planners will risk igniting a tinderbox in their own region.  The consequences of war are becoming harder and harder to figure with each passing month, and the allure of a strike on Iran rest entirely in the aggressor being able to control the terms of conflict and to define the arena of battle. It is very likely that aside from the ongoing covert war within Iran there will be very little appetite during the remainder of 2012 for a sharp escalation.

Critics of the resolution have focused their attention on the veracity of the SMG’s claims, and by extension, the fairness of the UNSC 2023. While the truth of Eritrea’s activity in the HOA remains difficult to discern, it is clear that the UNSC resolution was somewhat arbitrary: Al-Shabaab has a number of external supporters, of whom Eritrea is likely the most marginal. But the discussion of “fairness” is beside the point, as such principles, though often invoked in international politics, are rarely of consequence. Power matters on the international stage, and for Eritrea, it is a commodity in short supply.

Intellectually, there are two more interesting questions that need to be considered. First, what will be the effects of resolution 2023 on Eritrea and the region? Second, given that UNSC sanctions are rare (only 11 UNSC sanctions regimes are currently in place), how was the resolution passed? In this post, I focus on the former.

The Ambiguous Resolution

The conventional wisdom about UNSC 2023 is that the resolution lacks teeth, particularly when compared to its original draft (which would have installed the most far-reaching sanctions regime currently on the books). Beyond a call that member states demonstrate “vigilance” in ensuring that revenue from Eritrea’s mining sector is not used for nefarious purposes, and new strictures that prevent the use of extortion in the collection of Eritrea’s diaspora tax, the resolution does little to modify its predecessor, UNSC 1907.

Yet this view must be squared with the reality that the Eritrean government fought tooth and nail, to the eleventh hour, to prevent the resolution’s passage. If UNSC 2023 was a paper tiger, why did it cause such alarm in Asmara? Surely, for a government whose reputation was already in tatters, public image concerns did not loom large.

The real threat that UNSC 2023 poses to the Eritrean government is rooted in the resolution’s ambiguity.  In mandating that member states shall “undertake appropriate measures” in regulating Eritrea’s mining sector and collection of its diaspora tax, UNSC 2023 provides national governments free reign in targeting Eritrea’s primary revenue generating activities. Since “appropriate measures” are never defined , nor the circumstances under which these “appropriate measures” may be deployed, Eritrea could face an avalanche of national level regulation that severely curtails its freedom of action. (Note: Even if further action is not taken by UN member states, the resolution creates so much uncertainty that the effects on foreign direct investment are likely to be significant).

Indeed, there is ample precedent for this sort of scenario, which is a key reason China and Russia were reluctant to support 2023. UNSC 1973, an ambiguous resolution that authorized member states to protect Libyan civilians during the recent civil war, was liberally interpreted by western governments as a legal justification for regime change. In this sense, what makes UNSC 2023 so dangerous to Eritrea, is not what it officially sanctions, but what it fails to proscribe.

The relevant point here, is that when one peers beyond the public posturing of concerned parties, there is ample reason to believe that UNSC 2023 could have a severe impact on the way the Asmara conducts its business.

An Eritrean Shift?

The logic of UNSC sanctions, in most cases, is to generate some change in behavior on the part of a target state. Will UNSC 2023 spur a rapprochement between Eritrea and its regional and western critics? Will Eritrea bend to pressure?

The empirical record of UNSC sanctions is mixed. The collective weight of sanctions eventually prompted Qadaffi to take partial responsibility for 1989 bombing of Pan Am 103. But the current hand-wringing over the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs suggests that UNSC sanctions don’t always produce their intended effects.

The point raised earlier is important. If UN member states use 2023 as an opportunity to produce national level regulations curtailing the Eritrean government’s ability to generate revenue, then there will be real incentive for Eritrea to change its behavior. This could produce a diplomatic thaw, and possibly, an end to Eritrea’s isolation on the world stage.

However, if UN member states fail to take further action, UNSC 2023 will have produced the worst of both worlds: the resolution will create more hostility in Asmara towards neighboring countries, the UN, and major international powers, while failing to provide a compelling motive for Eritrea to curb its alleged destabilizing activity in the Horn of Africa.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/29/syrian_activist_speaks_out_from_hiding

Why were we so often wrong and caught off guard? What about the ways in which we see the world has held true and what has been proven false? One way of getting at this problem is to refer back to the questions and assumptions we asked about the revolutions and uprisings of 2011 during the year that has just ended. We have to ask how and why we framed our discussion of the events of 2011 in the ways we did? 

Reviewing our questions and assumptions can help us to create a mental map showing the different ways in which we thought about how the events in Tunisia were connected to the events occurring in Egypt and Yemen or Uganda and London. Has it been a year of contagion, the falling of a new Berlin Wall in the Middle East, or a return to the youthful and left wing revolutions of 1968? Can Occupy Wall Street’s origins be traced back to the example of the restless and brave citizens of Tahrir Square, or does the slogan we are the 99% have its roots solely in the United States. Perhaps, the quest to confront the 99% has its origins in the growing inequality which is stalking the rich countries of the world, the occupy movement and its slogans acting as a countervailing force to the political pressure put forward by the rightward leaning Tea Party.

In February 2011, the question on the mind of my partner Mike Woldemariam and myself was whether or not the revolutions blazing across the Arab World would spread to Africa, and if not why not?  Revolutions were spreading across North Africa like a contagion. Of course, the commonplace wisdom was that it was just a matter of time before the revolution spread into the Arab East and across the Sahara into Africa. And why not? It was assumed after all that the revolutions and uprising were the products of poverty and authoritarianism. Despite the African Renaissance, a phrase used to describe the dramatic rise in the number of African democracies and in the growth rates of African economies over the last decade, it seemed obvious to ask and easy to answer the question: whether or not the countries of sub-Saharan Africa were similar to the countries in revolt, suffering from poverty and autocracy in abundance?

One of the earliest framings of the Arab uprisings was as an epic battle between civil society and the state. This juxtaposition fit nicely with our narrative about the uprisings being the result of a natural and inevitable struggle between the people’s desire for democracy and the frustrations of those yearnings at the hands of a corrupt and venial elite.

Yet, the failure of the uprisings to spread south of the Sahara, and instead the intensification of protests in southern Europe, began to call this line of analysis into question. A second challenge to the idea that a united civil society was standing against the regime came from the fracturing of the Syrian, Libyan and Yemeni revolutions. The longer conflict continued the more apparent it becomes that the dominate fault lines were not necessarily between the state and civil society, but within society itself. The fallacy of a united civil society has been amply illustrated by the ongoing political drama in Egypt. The fight over who will eventually rule in Cairo has  exposed the lingering divisions between the Liberals and Islamists, the military and businessmen. The existence of these divisions is hardly surprising, yet the ways in which new coalitions were readily forming between old members of the regime and the different factions of the opposition points to the extent to which it was impossible to draw a firm line between an oppressed civil society and an oppressive state.

The London riots, the increasingly shrill political debates taking place in the United States, and parts of Western Europe also made it increasingly difficult to characterize the uprisings as a simple preference for democracy over autocracy.

Other attempts were made to make comparisons between our present year of discontent and years past. Analogies have been made ranging from 1989 and the end of Communism to 1968 and even 1848.

Yet as Robert Service’s insightful op-ed in the New York Times reminded us today historical analogy as the root of explanation is inherently fraught with difficulty.[1] Because, do we really understand what occurred in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe from 1989 until 1991? Was there a popular uprising or did the elite simply lose the will to govern? When so much about even the recent past remains unclear, how useful a guide is it to understanding an uncertain present?

And what should we make of the recent unrest in Russia and China?

Writers like Immanuel Wallerstein have posited that the unrest that we are currently witnessing is analogous with the unrest that swept across much of the world in 1968. What Wallerstein calls the “1968 current.” He writes that first, the revolutionaries of 1968 were protesting against the inherently undemocratic behaviour of those in authority. A misuse of authority that was present at all levels of society. The 1968-revolutionaries were also against vertical decision-making and in favour of horizontal decision-making – participatory and therefore popular.[2]

Yet in some ways it is scholars such as Lisa Wedeen talking about Syria today who have raised some of the most interesting questions about the revolutions taking place in the Arab world currently. She poignantly asks why now? Why have states like Syria, Egypt, Russia and Spain faced such prolonged periods of unrest now? Regimes such as those in Syria and Egypt had for years focused on mediating between different social groups, surviving only because amongst the often fractious stakeholders the regime itself was the least hated party. Proof that this model is not completely discredited for the time being, the monarchy in Jordan has been able to survive in its role as a mediator between different social forces that are mutually unacceptable to one another.[3]

But what changed in Syria, Libya and Egypt? Speaking at the Davis Seminar at Princeton University Lisa Wedeen posited that the regimes’ embrace of neo-liberalism meant that the ways in which the regimes interact with other social actors has shifted. Regimes like the those in Egypt and Syria began to move away from directly controlling the means of production and the economy in their respective countries to standing as a guarantor of private property; however, it was gained.[4] Similar arguments have been made about the evolution of the Russian state under Putin as Wedeen is making about the Syrian state under Bashar al-Assad.[5] These changes resulted in increased economic growth, the enrichment of elements of the elite and the incorporation of new elements of the rising middle classes into the regimes’ power structures. But the question remains to what extent the state’s increasingly indirect interactions in the daily lives of its citizens means that its ability to mitigate social conflicts has been reduced?

Acknowledging the global nature of the unrest, but still left with the mystery of its most serious manifestations taking place in southern Europe and the Arab world one is left to wonder if the best place to turn for an explanation is not still the well worn truisms of Samuel P. Huntington in Political Order in Changing Societies.[6]

His first principle is the most startling. Huntington argued that the largest difference between states is not whether or not a state is a democracy or an autocracy, but rather the degree to which a state is governed or governable. Governability, according to Huntington, was related to the maturity of a state’s political institutions.

This starting point may help us understand why democratic Ireland has been able to withstand severe fiscal austerity while Greece has not. Similarly, it may help us to begin to understand the differences between the ways in which regimes in Libya, Egypt and Jordan for instance have dealt with challenges to the legitimacy of their respective political systems.

The second insight learned from Political Order is that political stability is a variable, which is largely independent from other factors such as economic growth or social liberalization. In fact, reforms in both of these areas may actually be politically destabilizing.

The third factor, and the one which I believe has the most bearing on the current situation, is that after a period of sustained economic growth, societies which have not enjoyed similar rates of development in their political system are particularly vulnerable to the plague of political disorder, particularly during periods of economic slowdown or rising social tensions. The severity of the disorder in Arab countries such as Libya, Egypt, Syria and Yemen can in large part be explained by preexisting problems in their political institutions. For instance, even as Egypt, Libya and Syria began to liberalize their economies, each political system had failed to fully institutionalize the relationship between their ruling families and the rest of the political system. Though each of these political systems possesses different characteristics, which in part explain the different outcomes in each society, the failure to institutionalize the relationship between the palace and the rest of the political system allowed space for inter-regime fracturing to occur, once these regimes were confronted with an economic slowdown and social unrest.

Similarly in the countries of southern Europe, particularly in Italy and Greece, the deepening of the European common market and the adoption of the Euro meant that rapid economic growth was possible, slowed only by the global economic downturn in 2008 and the looming financial crisis.[7] Yet weaknesses in both the European Union’s political and economic infrastructure and the domestic political institutions in those two countries have exacerbated the crisis.

One of the looming stories of 2012 will be whether Russia will suffer a similar fate or if Putin’s political circle will be able to reconcile itself with the rest of the Russian political system to present a united front in the face of rising social unrest and possibly declining commodity prices.

ولم يستبعد الطيب ارتفاع حجم الاستثمارات القطرية إلى نحو 4 مليارات دولار أميركي، متوقعا في الوقت ذاته أن تلعب استثمارات قطر دورا محوريا خاصة في قطاعات الزراعة والصناعة

http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F2C87B28-1E96-46B8-9B74-49DF6AFD2E45.htm?GoogleStatID=9

Or just witness the recent references to Omar El-Bashir in Condelezza Rice’s memoirs. In the excerpts released to the press, Secretary Rice says of El-Bashir that, “he looked as though he was on drugs.”[1] When the image of El-Bashir as a buffoon is combined with his status as a fugitive from the International Criminal Court: wanted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of genocide, it becomes easy to dismiss El-Bashir, and by association the ruling NCP, as little more than an incompetent, backwards and irrational ruling junta with no strategic vision–except, perhaps, of the most vindictive and vicious nature, usually directed against its own citizens. (None of this is to argue that the NCP has not committed horrible crimes, usually against its own people, or even that Bashir’s regime has governed well.) Yet, the solidification of caricatures is always dangerous, especially when the caricature itself becomes the explanation.

In the months since South Sudan became independent, the northern economy has plunged into a tailspin.  In candid comments on World Food Day, the British ambassador to Sudan Nicholas Kay highlighted the seriousness of the current situation. Writing in October Kay mentioned that:

In Sudan, the past month has seen a further half a million people fall into food insecurity. The international community, including the UK, aims to feed5.2 millionSudanese this year. Food problems are the result of both natural forces – poor rains– and man-made causes, such as conflict. The continuing refusal of the government to allow international aid into conflict-affected states of Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan makes the impact on civilians worse. The wars there continue with no end in sight. Civilians suffer while leaders sacrifice lives rather than sit around a table. Miscalculation, pride and an exaggerated sense of strength bring suffering to tens of thousands. In the very states that should be planting and growing food for much of Sudan and South Sudan, the fields are abandoned. The bitter seeds of future hunger have been sown.

You don’t have to travel to the periphery of Sudan to find hunger. Daily life in Khartoum is increasingly hard. Since I left on holiday at the end of August, many food prices have risen sharply: cooking oil from 25 SDG to 33 SDG for 3 litres; a chicken from 14 SDG to 18 SDG; rice from 7 SDG to 9 SDG a kilo; bread from 20 cents to 25 cents. I’m no mathematician, but it looks like rises of 20-25% in one month. Little wonder Khartoum has seen protests in the last few weeks.[2]

Kay’s candidness naturally caused a storm of government protests in the Sudanese press, as the Ambassador put the blame for Khartoum’s economic recession on bad policy making and a return to belligerent behavior in the border states of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile Province.

All true, but what would a successful economic policy for the government in Khartoum look like? Kay gives a hint when he emphasizes the economic ramifications of the continued fighting in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States: food.

Food. In order to understand the political and economic implications of this single word we have to turn to the competing economic narratives at work in Khartoum today, and how these narratives have changed since Independence in 1956.[3]

Investigating these narratives is one way of judging the magnitude of Khartoum’s political errors in the lead up to and after South Sudan’s succession without becoming trapped by the standard assumption that the leadership in Khartoum is always utterly incompetent.[4] There may after all be a method to the madness.

Why did Sudan break up? Or more accurately, assuming that there was anything that Khartoum could do to prevent Sudan’s break up, why was the July 9 separation of South Sudan from the Republic of Sudan such a whimper.  Khartoum’s loss of upwards of 75% of the roughly 490,000 barrels of oil produced daily in both countries has been read by commentators as a foreseeable and unmitigated defeat for the North.

Yet, if one believes that for the foreseeable future the export of hydrocarbons remains the only viable basis of the economies of both South Sudan and the Republic of Sudan, then intense (and with signs of a global economic downturn building) unrelenting pressure has just been placed on the Republic’s economy. Pressure, which in the face of the South’s hard-line position in regards to the amount of revenue it is willing to share from its oil proceeds, shows no signs of being alleviated. So why has Khartoum not done more to alter its predicament?

After all, it is natural to assume that unless someway is found to relieve the pressure on the North’s economy there will inevitably be a return to hostilities. And sure enough, on the 11th of November, Bloomberg News quoted Salva Kiir accusing Khartoum of plotting to invade the South, in particular of targeting a takeover of the oil wells in Upper Nile Province along with government backed rebels. These accusations followed recent reports of a bombing raid on a refugee camp in Unity state.[5] The accusations resonate in South Sudan in part because they echo the North’s original strategy of dividing the Southern Nationalist movement by supporting various southern rebels during the Second Civil War. The most famous of which were Riek Machar’s fighters.[6] The gains from this strategy originally allowed Khartoum to develop the oil fields in Upper Nile Province. Yet, the very similarities between the scenarios put forth by Southern leaders, and their own master narratives about the Second Civil War, should give outside analysts pause. Can the Sudanese Armed Forces really believe that an invasion of the South would result in anything besides further and utter humiliation?

Another potential wild card is the SPLM-North, the continuation of which serves to highlight the ways in which short of the “New Sudan,”  South Sudan potentially remains an eternally expanding project. Because, if South Sudan is the state of the African peoples of Sudan, then where do its borders end? Are there not African communities in the North? Alternatively, if the state is not defined ideologically, but as a collection of ethnic communities, then the South’s potential internal fault lines are unending.

A real question will be the extent to which the Southern leadership desires to or is even capable of successfully marginalizing the supporters of the SPLM-North. In order to do so the SPLM will be forced to surrender tons of the movement’s ideological armour.  The answer to this question will have an out-sized impact on future prospects for peace between the two neighbors.

Yet, I am optimistic about the prospects for peace. The case for a return to a full-scale war, begun by Khartoum, rests overwhelmingly on the assumption that Sudan’s economic planners still believe that their economy can rely on the oil sector to propel its growth. Yet, at 500,000 barrels a day there has never been enough oil to fund the adequate development of both North and South Sudan, let alone to support the stressed northern economy in the face of a protracted and bloody war. A war that even in more favorable conditions, in the late 1990s, ate up as much as 80% of Khartoum’s annual budget.

Development requires peace. And, there is a wide consensus within the northern elite about this point. A consensus strengthened by the still palpable feeling of war fatigue in Khartoum and other cities throughout the North. Recently, widespread riots in northern cities only underlined the extent to which the SAF cannot hope to mobilize the population in the ways that were necessary to prosecute the last civil war.  Plus, as Alex De Waal and Julie Flint point out, so many of the troops who fought in the 1990s originally came from Darfur, and what are the prospects of this traditional source of manpower  being available for a new war in South Sudan.[7] The announcement of a new rebel alliance in Darfur on the 13th of November only confirmed that Khartoum will face continued problems in that region in the near to medium term, whatever the talk of progress.[8]

Some members of the armed forces and sections of the NCP, who monopolized the profits from the oil sector within their own patronage networks, may harbour hopes about sustaining Sudan’s oil economy. However, a large constituency within the military and within the NIF has for years, since the signing of the CPA, believed that the cost of integrating the South with the North, either as a result of continuing military occupation or through large-scale transfers of wealth, was too high.  Witness the campaign for separation led by the pro-government newspaper al-Intibaha,  or the willingness to cast the South off by Islamist politicians such as Hasan Al-Turabi. A man who after the 1989 coup, along with other officers within the military, justified the escalation in the civil war during the 1990s as a crusade. Still, the idea that the South is not a blessing, but a burden is hardly new. It has been expressed by northern politicians for decades.

So what has changed? Today, an alliance between the Umma party and the DUP, whose traditional networks of patronage were largely marginalized in the oil economy of the 1990s, and the peace camp within the ruling coalition, finally posses the upper hand. The result has been the creation of a powerful constituency to re-imagine the Sudanese state and economy.

The prospect of a long and sustained international boom in food prices holds out the promise of finally reviving Sudan’s agricultural sector,  making it a secure foundation for the northern economy. The way forward has been led by enterprising and multinational companies, such as the DAL Group, and interest and investment from other Arab countries has made the idea that Sudan could soon become a bread basket appear tantalizingly real once again. This dream has been seen before, most recently in the 1970s, but also right after the Second World War, but it has usually lost out to a focus on the export of a single commodity be it cotton or later oil.

An adverse international investment climate over the next few years, and the possibility of a world recession, will make the transition to an agricultural economy more difficult for Sudan. But with the support of the international community, Sudan does not need to have an economic rationale to return to war.

Then how do we explain the continuing patterns of belligerence of the SAF and Omar El-Bashir?[9]

One, the secessionist coalition is firmly opposed to the continued life of the “New Sudan” idea.  There will be no more concessions. Second, here Ambassador Kay hit it on the head: South Kordofan and Blue Nile State’s rich agricultural lands are vital to Khartoum’s attempts to adjust its economy away from the oil sector.[10] And consequentially, any further withdrawals from land in those two states can only be offset by South Sudan’s concessions in the energy sector.

If international investment is available to fund Sudan’s transition away from an economy dominated by the energy sector to one based on food production, and Khartoum is allowed to retain sufficient territory to make such a transition attractive, then the prospects for peace between the two Sudans will remain strong from Khartoum’s perspective.