Diplomacy

"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. "

The paper offers an overview of the general principles and basic features of the Turkish constitutional order aimed at understanding and, when possible, measuring the effectiveness of Turkish constitutional principles (and human rights safeguards) in criminal law and criminal justice matters. In such perspective, the Authors consider the relation between Constitution and ordinary law and the constitutional review, the issue of sovereignty, the role of the state, separation of powers and equality, the constitutional recognition of individual rights and freedoms and their basic means of protection, the constitutional means of protection of individual rights and freedoms (such as judicial review and individual application to the Constitutional Court), the constitutional principles of substantive criminal law (legality, personality of the criminal responsibility, materiality and principle of harm, the principles concerning penalties and measures restrictive of personal liberty), the constitutional principles of criminal procedure. Finally, the paper provides an analysis of the emergency rule in the Turkish constitution, which provides further spaces of legitimation for restrictions of individual rights and liberties.

Diplomatic ambiguity is one of the most interesting kinds of language-use in politics in general, and in diplomacy in particular. Normally, it is taken as a device that buys a temporary agreement at the price of a later verbal and interpretive conflict or misunderstanding. Prior to this study, no comprehensive or theory-guided analysis of this both political and linguistic phenomenon had been attempted. The study focuses on a number of ambiguously phrased peace-agreements, exploring three fundamental parameters in terms of which the concept of diplomatic ambiguity can be framed: language, power, and law. It proposes an argument of relevance to the most prominent schools of thought in International Relations, and closes a visible gap in the existing literature dealing with conflict, diplomacy, international politics, and discourse-related aspects of such politics. Due to its interdisciplinary character and sensitivity to the requirements of practice, it also offers an informative and practicable guide to the practitioners of international relations, diplomacy, politics, and law.

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.

An essay on the the Daniel Mancini incident (the shooting of Indian fishermen by the Italian Marines) and the subsequent strain in the Indian and Italian foreign relations, including the refusal by the Italian governments to deport their marines back to India for trial. Through this dilemma we try to understand the relation between International Relations and coercion - Whether the world today is governed by diplomacy or mere Orwellian Big Brother tactics. This essay went on to win the Westlaw Essay Competition - 2013.

After about ten years of international support for an ineffective counter-narcotics policy thatwas first implemented in 2003, a new poppy diplomacy is needed that finally acknowledges that there are no quick fixes, short cuts or silver bullet solutions to Afghanistan's opium economy. Policy makers should embrace the short term benefits of the illegal opium economy and try to come up with useful, practical and realistic interventions that can help to structurally solve the Afghan opium crisis one step at a time.

The objective of this study is to document the reaction of international students to the 11 March 2011 emergency in order to inform and improve disaster management strategies, both public and institutional. The study is based mainly on a questionnaire survey carried out in August 2011 and follow-up interviews with students and other stakeholders. It describes the background of Tohoku University’s School of Engineering and covers six different stages in the evolution of the emergency: (1) immediate response; (2) taking shelter in Sendai; (3) life in the city during the aftermath; (4) sheltering outside Sendai; (5) coming back; plus (6) an overview of the experience. Major findings include: the process of evacuation and safety confirmation was successful, yet the subsequent phases (2 and 3) went on mostly unmanaged; students relied mostly on secondary sources of information to make decisions, mainly family and friends of the same nationality, most of whom probably were not better informed than the students themselves. Based on the findings, suggestions for future disaster planning are advanced, as well as a discussion on the challenges of information provision during crisis.