Violence

"By James M. Dorsey

EGYPT’S MILITARY council, backed by Islamist and secular political parties, has upstaged the 25 January celebrations of the anniversary of the protests that ousted President Hosni Mubarak even before the party gets underway. The military pre-empted plans by the revolutionary youth and militant soccer fan groups whose mass protests early last year forced Mubarak from office by announcing that they would organise their own celebration together with the Muslim Brotherhood on Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

The military’s co-opting of the celebrations is certain to dash hopes of the protesters to exploit the anniversary to launch what they call a second revolution that would force the armed forces to immediately relinquish power. Instead, it is likely to seal their defeat in a country that has grown tired of demonstrations, still largely reveres the military despite its brutal response to anti-government protests late last year and wants to see tangible results of its revolt.

The military’s move also signals the primacy of electoral over contentious politics in post-autocratic transition societies with the backing of the Brotherhood, which emerged as Egypt’s foremost political grouping with some 40 per cent of the vote in the first post-Mubarak elections. The Brotherhood’s backing of the military celebration is significant given its demonstrated ability to fill Tahrir Square and mobilise opposition against the military if it wanted to.     

The military is sending a stark message not only to Egyptian youth and soccer fan groups that established political organisations with well-oiled party machines rather than newly emerging political forces will shape the country’s future. The message is also to protesters elsewhere in the region that unless they can match their mobilisation and street skills with the art of electoral politics and backroom horse trading they too will be relegated to the sidelines of history.

Much of the youth and soccer groups’ criticism of the post-Mubarak transition rings true even if does not resonate with a majority of the population. They accuse the military of subverting a promised transition to real democracy in a bid to preserve its political and economic perks and interests and employing to do so the same if not worse repressive measures than the Mubarak regime. Scores have been killed in protests since Mubarak’s downfall, thousands injured and some 12,000 people, including activists, bloggers and soccer fans dragged in front of military courts.

The one joker in the military’s plans to upstage the youth and soccer fan groups and give them the death knell is the spectre of violent confrontation during the celebrations. Fear of a repeat of the bitter street battles that took place between security forces and soccer fans in November and December last year could persuade many Egyptians to steer clear of Tahrir Square on 25 January. Egypt’s military ruler, Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi issued a thinly veiled warning to the youth and soccer fan groups days before the 25 January celebrations that Egypt faced unprecedented “grave dangers” but that the military would protect it. The statement, echoing Mubarak’s tactic of distracting attention from domestic issues by invoking an alleged foreign threat, was contrived to rally public opinion against the protesters.
   
A failure to rally the masses would dent the military’s efforts to maintain the high ground and would boost revolutionary moves to thwart its plans. Nonetheless, the youth and soccer fan groups are on treacherous ground. They have lost much of the popular support they enjoyed in the run-up to and immediate aftermath of Mubarak’s ousting. Their refusal to surrender Tahrir Square in favour of traditional politics has won them few brownie points with the public. Their marginalisation is compounded by the fact that men and women perceived to be honest and of faith have emerged victorious in the election, raising hopes that government will be free of nepotism and corruption.

Revolutionaries in other Middle Eastern and North African societies in transition may well conclude from the Egyptian experience that it is a fatal mistake to simply topple an autocratic leader and not to push for the ultimate uprooting of a failed system. It promises to make transitions even more contentious and could inspire the kind of resilience and determination displayed by protesters in Syria who have refused to give ground to a ten-month old brutal government crackdown that has already cost some 5,000 lives.

Protesters across the Middle East and North Africa like their counterparts in other parts of the world have mastered the art of seemingly leaderless revolt and exploitation of new technology. However, the lesson of Egypt is that they will also increasingly have to harness the skills of traditional politics and face up to the reality of realpolitik to ensure that they not only win a battle but also the war.
   
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.
"

"By James M. Dorsey

Sudanese students are demanding the fall of President Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir’s government in growing daily demonstrations that come 15 months after student protests nearly forced the African Football Confederation to deprive Sudan of the hosting of an African soccer tournament.

Like in February of last year, attempts by security forces using tear gas have only boosted the demonstrators’ ranks with other population groups joining the week-old protests that erupted after the government announced spending cuts.

Hundreds of Sudanese of various walks of life joined the students after Friday prayers chanting the Arab world’s all too popular slogan: “The people want to overthrow the regime.” Mr. Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Sudanese crackdown against rebels in the Darfur region.

This week’s protests have already lasted longer than last year’s and it remains to be seen whether the eruption will fizzle out as it did last year. The killing by security forces of a student last year proved insufficient to give the protests the momentum witnessed in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere in the Arab world.

The student protesters were born largely after the popular revolt in 1985 that forced then President Jaafar al Numeir from office.
Nonetheless those protests, that like in Egypt last year prompted the military to step in and replace the disliked leader are one of the few, if not the only ones, in which an Arab leader was forced out of office by popular will prior to the current wave of revolts sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. That revolt led to Sudan for a period of time becoming the first country ever to be effectively ruled by a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate rather than a democracy.

What makes this round of protests different from those last year is the fact that they feed on government measures intended to reduce a $2.4 billion budget deficit fuelled by last year’s secession of South Sudan that robbed Sudan of three quarters of its oil production that effect the pocket book of every Sudanese. The measures include lifting subsidies for fuel, and increased taxes and custom duties on luxury products.

Disagreement over the price that landlocked South Sudan should pay Sudan to pump its oil to northern ports has prompted the newly created nation to shut down production and brought Sudan and South Sudan to the brink of war.

Some analysts suggest that the myriad problems Mr. Bashir faces rather than popular discontent that struggles to maintain momentum the absence of a viable alternative to the disliked president could ultimately prove to be his downfall. "But an economic crisis, armed conflict along the borders, a stalemate with South Sudan on sharing the oil yield and a malfunctioning political system might all render a popular uprising unnecessary, and cripple the government from within," said Sudanese analyst Nesrine Malik in an article in The Guardian.

If Darfur is one of Mr. Bashir’s problems, Darfur United, the region’s fledgling soccer team made up of survivors of the vicious battles against Bashar-backed forces who live in refugee camps in neighbouring Chad is happy to contribute its bit. The team plays in a bid to offer a violence-ridden and destitute region a ray of hope, keep it on the world’s map and serve as a reference point that allows a far-flung refugee Diaspora to maintain contact. Newly formed with the support of an American NGO, singer Macy Gray, National Basketball Association Tracy McGrady and Adidas, Darfur United earlier this month participated alongside Kurdistan, the Western Sahara, Provence, the Tamils and Northern Cyprus in the 5th VIVA World Cup for nations world soccer body FIFA refuses to recognize.

“Soccer united people. It keeps Dafur on the international agenda. Competing in VIVA in Kurdistan is more important than winning. We are now part of the world,” said a Darfur United player putting a good face on the fact that his team ended at the bottom of the tournament.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a consultant to geopolitical consulting firm Wikistrat. "

This paper traces the development of the concept of the outgroup as a biological threat, and the relationship of this concept to the practice of genocide. The biopolitical discourse which emerged in the modern period made the practice of genocide conceivable, and constructed genocide as justifiable and as necessary. Two developments in the modern period are highlighted: firstly, the conception of the boundaried and ethnically homogenous nation-state, and secondly, new biological theories about race, and about the spread of disease. Discourse emerging from the biological sciences dehumanised outgroups both literally and metaphorically. This dehumanisation, in combination with the ideal of the homogenous nation-state and the new technologies of population, provided a justification and a motivation for genocide, and a model of implementation. Conceptions of the nature of dehumanisation as a process are examined, with specific reference to the role of language and metaphor, and to concepts of hygiene, purity and contamination. Particular attention is paid to eugenics and Social Darwinism, to the role of physicians in genocide, and to the relationship between medical and military vocabularies. The features of this discourse, its persistence, and its commonality in otherwise widely different genocidal episodes, are exposed through an examination of four twentieth-century genocides (Armenia, Nazi genocide, Cambodia, and the former Yugoslavia).

The Quit India speech is a speech made by Mahatma Gandhi on August 8, 1942, on the eve of the Quit India movement. He called for determined, but passive resistance that signified the certitude that Gandhi foresaw for the movement is best described by his call to Do or Die. His speech was issued at the Gowalia Tank Maidan in Bombay (now Mumbai), since renamed August Kranti Maidan (August Revolution Ground). However, almost the entire Congress leadership, and not merely at the national level, was put into confinement less than twenty-four hours after Gandhi's speech, and the greater number of the Congress leaders were to spend the rest of the war in jail. Many years later, Martin Luther King, Jr., would mimic Gandhi in his "I Have A Dream" speech that promoted nonviolence and equality of races. Gandhi made this speech to help India gain Independence.

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

The study of violence is generally androcentric in its focus, with emphasis on men and their pursuit of resources, power, and prestige. Neglected is the role and motivations of the women in violence, and this is especially true in raiding. With the analysis of over sixty Ancestral Pueblo human remains from La Plata Valley as a case study, this study is focused on the relationship between the women in the culture and interpersonal violence. The basic questions that this project addresses are: (1) Does the pattern of trauma vary and are there certain individuals who are at more risk within the culture (i.e., appear “beaten down”)? (2) Are there certain portions of the culture that appear to have worked harder during their lifetime (i.e., been “worked to the bone”)? (3) What can the differential patterning of pathology, trauma, and early death across the population reveal regarding the roles of men and women in raiding societies? In order to answer these questions several categories were evaluated according to age and sex. These factors include non-lethal injury (especially trauma to the head), mortuary status (e.g., burial position and grave goods), and muscular stress markers or enthesopathies. The results of this analysis present a picture of inequality within the La Plata population with obvious morbidity differences between women of varying status. The results of this study found that were two groups of women living in La Plata. The local women who lacked cranial trauma, received a culturally appropriate burial, and showed little evidence of muscular stress markers. The women that may have been obtained from raids had cranial trauma, were thrown haphazardly into abandoned pits, and possessed clear signs of having worked hard throughout their lives. This study looked closely at the relationship between women, work, and violence, and results suggest that the local women living at La Plata may have been attempting to reduce their own morbidity risks by both sanctioning and supporting the subordination of captive women obtained in raiding activities. The captive women (having been beaten and worked to the bone) benefited both the local men and women at La Plata. This study shows the complex ways that structural violence works, the potential for gender based functional differences in violent behaviors, and the ways that violence becomes culturally normalized.

This editorial introduces and contextualizes five scholarly papers on ‘Violence, Memory, and the Dynamics of Transnational Youth Formations.’ The topic of this special issue is conceptually organized around theories of postcolonial and diasporic citizenship and probes the extent to which these theories have shaped the discursive field of ‘youth formations’. We outline how an emerging scholarly field on youth cultures, youth activism and youth political organizations has responded to the new challenges of globalization and transnational mobilization. As experiences and memories of violence give shape to these mobilizations as well as the social imaginations characterizing youth movements, this special issue takes an interest in drawing connections between different youth formations. In establishing such a comparative lens, we contribute to ongoing discussions in Sikh Studies on youth issues in relation to violence, discrimination and transnational mobilization.