Rebel Forces Research Articles

Prosecutor v. Charles Ghankay Taylor (SCSL)

On September 26, 2013, the Appeals Chamber for the Special Court for Sierra Leone (Special Court) unanimously upheld the Trial Chamber’s conviction of Charles Ghankay Taylor, the former President of Liberia, and affirmed his fifty-year sentence for aiding and abetting rebel forces in Sierra Leone that perpetrated brutal crimes during the civil war in Sierra Leone. The Appeals Chamber’s judgment followed an almost four-year trial that included testimony from 115 witnesses, including Taylor himself—who testified in his defense for seven months—and celebrities such as British model Naomi Campbell and U.S. actress Mia Farrow, who the Prosecution called to show that Taylor knowingly handled blood diamonds. Taylor is the first head of state that an international or hybrid tribunal has convicted since the Nuremberg trials.

Dabiq: IS's Apocalyptic 21st Century Jihadist Manifesto

Despite formidable adversaries including fellow jihadists, IS has beaten them by resorting to brutal asymmetric and conventional warfare. The Iraqi and Syrian Government have failed to stop them. Opposing jihadists and rebel forces in Syria have persistently lost territory before their rapid advance. Analysis of the Islamic State indicates that the group has a professional military organization and its operations are carefully planned and well financed [3]. IS has a reputation for meticulous reporting of its battlefield attacks whose veracity has been verified by independent analysis [4]. The terror organization’s strategy aspires to occupy territory along the Tigris and Euphrates River Basins controlling key resources (water, oil, food). Dams, oil wells and grain storage bins are particularly coveted by the group. No terror organization has been so forthright in the reporting of its strategy or aims. It has pursued its warfare and economic strategy in a rational and persistent manner.

The United Nation’s Responsibility to Protect Civilians from Massive Human Rights Violations in Light of the Intervention in the Libyan Crisis in 2011

The international community was criticized when it decided to intervene, as in Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and when it did not intervene as in Rwanda. It was against this background that Kofi Annan argued, in September 1999, in the defense of the individual sovereignty over state sovereignty. He asked, ‘if humanitarian intervention is an unacceptable attack on sovereignty, how can we respond to cases as Rwanda or Srebrenica?’In this sense, with the recovery of Francis Deng’s 1996 “sovereignty as responsibility†concept, it would be possible to abrogate the categorical imperative of traditional sovereignty, allowing the international community to intervene when the state fails in its responsibility to protect its people against genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes of war and against humanity.The study looks at the creation, development and eventual adoption of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) norm, from an idea promulgated in the 1990sto the development of the norm, and to the eventual adoption of a heavily restricted yet poignant principle at the 2005 World Summit. There is considerable debate over the status and scope of the Responsibility to Protect. On balance, most observers and states believe that it remains a political commitment and has not yet acquired legal force.The purpose of this study is to critically examine the UN’s responsibility to protect civilians in light of the intervention in the 2011 Libyan crisis. The responsibility to protect has been central in the discussion of how to deal with the Arab spring revolts that gave rise to civil war in Libya. In Libya, with the help of an UN authorized NATO intervention, the Gaddafi authoritarian regime ended and the former rebel forces are now leading the transitional process. Taking in to account the events in Libya, many have questioned whether the concept of R2P was used not only to protect civilians, but also to fulfill a desire, from the beginning of the mission, for regime change. However, the study argued that it was very difficult to enforce the very intents and objectives of Resolution 1973, because it was obvious enough that Gaddafi was prepared to continue to slaughter his people in a civil war to retain power. Thus, even if some argued that the NATO intervention in Libya acted beyond Resolution 1973, nevertheless, the study strongly argued that the intervening forces have indeed stopped Gaddafi from marching on Benghazi and saved thousands of lives.

Anger Management with Art in Northern Uganda

These workshops arose out of a request from a Ugandan colleague, who had been working with victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) war 1988-2004, started by Joseph Kony and rebel forces. She and her colleagues felt some direct work on anger would be helpful. Most of the anger being expressed has arisen from people’s experiences in the LRA wars. Boys and girls were abducted and recruited into the LRA army and taught how to kill; they suffered beatings and watched brothers and sisters die at the hands of the LRA. If they were able to escape, they returned home only to find that often their parents had been killed by the LRA and their houses burnt down. Clearly any short-term training could not remove the causes of the huge anger that has built up. So the focus of this training was to introduce strategies of handling anger so that people did not make things worse for themselves. Case studies and examples of participants’ art work are included. The article also reflects on the relevance of such work in cultures where both art work and therapy are not very usual or available, and whether such work can be sustainable. Key words: conflict, Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), trauma, Uganda, war

The Syrian Crisis and Superpower Politics: The Way Forward

The Syrian Crisis and Superpower Politics: The Way Forward Ebenezer Agbeko Abstract This essay asserts that to effectively degrade and ultimately destroy the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and to topple the Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the international community led by the United States ought to put combat forces on the ground and push for instituting a Libya-style No-fly Zone over Syria at the United Nations Security Council. The essay makes the case that the No-fly Zone and the combat forces will not only give meaning to the weapons provided to the moderate Syrian rebel forces to fight ISIS and Assad’s regime ouster by protecting them from the regime’s air onslaught, but also by quickly ending the stalemate. The international coalition should put pressure on both Russia and China, allies of the Assad regime to do away with superpower politics and support passing a strong resolution in the Security Council on Syria that will facilitate the effective resolution of the Syrian crisis. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/jgpc.v2n2a4

Full circle: two decades of NATO intervention

For all its shortcomings, the intervention of the NATO alliance in the struggle of Libyan rebel forces to overthrow the regime of Muammar Gaddafi was a remarkably cost-effective multilateral effort in regime-change by military force. The use of air power to support insurgent forces in Libya, combined with the refusal to commit NATO ground troops, resembles the final iteration of the alliance's intervention in the serial wars of the Yugoslav succession, 1991–1999 and has little in common with the decade-long effort in counterinsurgency and nation-building in Afghanistan following the events of 11 September 2001, other than a measure of humanitarian benefit to the target population in each case. This article will argue that the nature of the Libyan intervention reflects above all the exhaustion of the alliance's enthusiasm for expeditionary humanitarianism over the course of the past 20 years, due above all to the cost and complexity of its mission in Afghanistan. In effect, NATO practiced in Libya the art ...

Confronting Africa's Sobels

ABSTRACT: While the phenomenon described in this article may appear to be an African problem, the Western world's increasing involvement in fighting terrorists make it one that America's military forces might encounter. Unfortunately, it could add a significant layer of complexity to US operations as American troops attempt to differentiate allies from enemies. In Africa, sometimes they are one and the same. ********** Sobel, a portmanteau of soldier and rebel, appears to have been coined in Sierra Leone during the 1990s. This was a period marked in parts of West Africa by fighting over conflict diamonds, also known as blood diamonds, when government discovered how lucrative it could be to serve as soldiers by day, rebels by night or, as the villagers called them, sobels. On closer examination, it can be observed that the relationship between the of the Sierra Leonean Army and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the rebel group which during the country's civil war occupied large portions of diamond-rich land, changed over time, thus making the phenomenon more like the phenomena. Unfortunately, the presence of sobels is often an indication that a war is profitable for both rebels and soldiers, providing them with an incentive to lengthen the conflict to maximize their earnings. With neither side able to score a decisive win, both sides profit. Meanwhile, the rural population, essentially held hostage during the conflict, is often terrorized so as not to intervene. As an example, the RUF started not only to amputate people's hands, but to publicize such mutilations as a way of preventing people from casting ballots and putting a political end to unpolitical brutalities. Though Sierra Leone appears to be where the sobel neologism originated, variations of the soldier-by-day, rebel-by-night phenomenon can be found in many parts of Africa (and, indeed, in other parts of the world). By studying the phenomenon and its variations, it is possible to determine what factors influence government to join rebel forces, ways to dissuade them from joining, and, if they do join, possible ways to induce them to return permanently to government service. While the phenomenon described within these pages may appear to be an African problem, the Western world's increasing involvement in fighting terrorists on that continent make it one America's military forces might encounter. Unfortunately, it could add a significant layer of complexity to US operations as American troops attempt to differentiate allies from enemies. In Africa, sometimes they are one and the same. Background to Sobel: The Sierra Leone Civil War Sierra Leone's civil war started in 1991, when the RUF, led by Foday Sankoh, and backed by Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, launched an attack in a diamond-rich area in Eastern Sierra Leone. (1) Though ostensibly the RUF's raison d'etre was to oppose the corrupt government, it morphed more into a group of bandits and less a band of revolutionaries. As for Taylor, who later would become President of Liberia, his interests from the outset appear mostly financial. The war lasted eleven years, during which time both the RUF and the army were responsible for heinous atrocities against civilian populations. Estimates of the number killed range upwards of 50,000. (2) It took foreign intervention, in particular the country's former colonial power, the British, to help end the war. Atrocities as a Contributing Factor There were many factors which led to some of Sierra Leone's becoming sobels, including several socioeconomic ones discussed later. A significant driving force, however, was the civilian hatred of the army because of the atrocities the committed fighting the RUE The soldiers, when willing to hunt down the RUF--an inconsistent process as the army was sometimes afraid of direct combat with the rebels--often had difficulties locating their enemy. …

Syrian Cultural Property in the Crossfire:

Syrian Cultural Property in the Crossfire:

Becoming cruel

Appetitive aggression – a rewarding perception of the perpetration of violence – seems to be an adaptation common to adverse conditions. Children raised within armed groups may develop attitudes and values that favour harming others when socialized within a combat force. Combatants who joined an armed force early in their lives should, therefore, perceive aggression in a more appetitive way than those who were recruited later. We interviewed 95 former members of armed groups operating in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Those combatants that were having higher levels of appetitive aggression were those who joined a rebel force earlier in life. Surprisingly, neither the amount of military training nor the amount of time spent in the forces had a significant effect on the level of appetitive aggression. Our results show that when civil socialization is replaced by socialization within an armed group early in life, self-regulation of appetitive aggression may become deficient, leading to a higher propensity towards cruelty.

A glimpse of the Libyan civil war

Introduction: The Libyan civil war was an armed conflict in the North African state of Libya, fought between forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and rebel forces. It lasted for a total of eight months and six days (15th February to 23th October 2011). The war resulted in the death of Muammar Gaddafi and the overthrow of his government. Anti-Gaddafi forces took control of all major Libyan cities and interim control was assumed by the National Transitional Council.

The State Capture Onset in Ethiopia: Humanitarian Aid and Corruption

The first part of this paper shows that a substantial part of the money that aid agencies gave to feed the 1984-5 Ethiopian famine victims, including those raised by Band Aid were siphoned off by the Tigrayan Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF) to buy military weapons. I also use newly found evidences, interviews and testimonials accumulated over many years to show that famine aid scamming by the TPLF had gone beyond using humanitarian aid to purchase military weapons and feed the Front’s red army. I show how humanitarian aid, as a resource in the midst of extreme scarcity, has enriched some quarters, fuelled corruption and intensified and prolonged conflicts among the warring factions of Ethiopia and legitimized the rebel fronts’ operations. Humanitarian aid lured the Fronts, particularly the TPLF, to parade hundreds of thousands of peasants to Sudan, which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of them (due to overcrowding, disease epidemics, lack of regular food supplies, poor water and sanitation problems, and from being exposed to targets for bombing). The documents I examined, the interviews that I conducted and the testimonials I have gathered over many years indicate that the refugees were abused by the TPLF both during their trek to the Ethio-Sudanese border which took 4-6 weeks and within the refugee camps. According to some ex-TPLF veterans, (and their claims to be indirectly proved by the written work of foreign nationals), a good portion of the humanitarian food aid was not made available to the starving peasants of Tigray. Their statements regarding this issue are indirectly corroborated by the field and research work of foreign nationals. By all these three counts, according to them, the TPLF has committed crimes against humanity. The documents I examined and the interviews and testimonials I gathered also indicate that donors and aid agencies knew that the Relief Society of Tigray (REST) was the flip-side of the same coin (that is, the TPLF) and aid agency personnel knew a portion of the humanitarian aid that they were providing was being diverted for military purposes by the Fronts, indicating a violation of the principle of neutrality and impartiality. There are also indications suggesting that the cross-border interventions by donors and aid agencies were against the multilateral agreements such as the Lome conventions (Duffield and Prendergast, 1994). This shows that the provisions and delivery of humanitarian aid have been used to violate and perhaps diminish the sovereignty of Ethiopia. Looked in a different way, a good portion of the humanitarian aid provided by donor countries to the TPLF and other fronts fighting the Derg regime was in part for the advancement of the diplomatic and foreign policy goals as well as political and military tools of donor nations and aid agencies. It may be for this reason why they cared less about how humanitarian aid was spent, abused or pocketed by the rebel forces. The literature that I examined also provides reasons why the abuse of humanitarian aid would be inevitable in conflict ridden countries such as Ethiopia. And most importantly, the evidence gathered have allowed me to inductively test one of my fundamental hypotheses: that humanitarian aid resources were and still are the sources of predation and capture in Ethiopia and that the culture of corruption and political malaise that we observe in today’s Ethiopia is a byproduct of what the TPLF/EPRDF learned and adopted when it was a rebel front and such a culture of corruption was aided and abetted by humanitarian aid.

South Sudan: from revolution to independence

In July 2011 the Republic of South Sudan achieved independence, concluding what had been Africa's longest running civil war. The process leading to independence was driven by the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement, a primarily Southern rebel force and political movement intent on bringing about the reformed unity of the whole Sudan. Through the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005, a six year peace process unfolded in the form of an interim period premised upon 'making unity attractive' for the Sudan. A failed exercise, it culminated in an almost unanimous vote for independence by Southerners in a referendum held in January 2011. Violence has continued since, and a daunting possibility for South Sudan has arisen - to have won independence only to descend into its own civil war, with the regime in Khartoum aiding and abetting factionalism to keep the new state weak and vulnerable. Achieving a durable peace will be a massive challenge, and resolving the issues that so inflamed Southerners historically - unsupportive governance, broad feelings of exploitation and marginalisation and fragile ethnic politics - will determine South Sudan's success or failure at statehood. A story of transformation and of victory against the odds, this book reviews South Sudan's modern history as a contested region and assesses the political, social and security dynamics that will shape its immediate future as Africa's newest independent state.

Beyond Masculinity: Gender, Conflict and Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Northern Uganda

Masculinity and femininity debates of armed conflict in Africa have always regarded men as fighters and women as passive victims of war. The exclusion of women from the armed forces in most traditional societies originated from the assumption that women are a weaker sex and therefore cannot manage military life. Nevertheless, women in Uganda have voluntarily joined the armed forces, while some of them have been abducted and forcefully recruited into the rebel forces. Notwithstanding the central role women have played in the armed conflict in Northern Uganda, they have been side-lined in the processes of peace negotiation and post conflict reconstruction ofthe region. This paper looks at how masculinity is manipulated in conflict and the role women have played in the conflict, peace process and post conflict reconstruction in Northern Uganda.Keywords · Gender · Post-conflict reconstruction · Transitional justice

French Military Intervention in Mali: Inevitable, Consensual yet Insufficient

This practice note offers an account of France’s military intervention in Mali launched on 11 January 2013. Firstly, it provides an analysis of the events that led up to the dual crisis in the country’s northern and southern regions and to a new wave of armed conflict between government and rebel forces. Then, it is argued that although the French military intervention was framed as inevitable and based on a broad consensus, it will nevertheless be insufficient to address the root sociopolitical causes of Mali´s multidimensional crisis.

Humanitarian Aid Simulation

When health care providers rushed to assist after the September 11 attacks, they were neither prepared nor cognizant of the risk of serious respiratory ailments or blood cancer they were exposed to. When community members and nurses traveled to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, many were not prepared for life in a makeshift camp without potable water and the risk of dengue fever. In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in 2005, emergency staff brought in from around the country were not adequately prepared to deal with anger over racial inequity. As health care and emergency workers, we have a strong commitment to helping when the need arises, and often we are put into the position of not only providing care but also managing or organizing the large numbers of volunteers, government institutions, and community members who also desire to help. We may have the experience or education to triage patients or to provide emergency care for the injured, but we may not have the skills to organize a camp of 50 workers or to negotiate with the military or paramilitary to give us access to the injured in the field. Wemay not have the background that allows us to understand the negotiation, compromise, and mediation skills necessary to convince a warden to allow us access to prisoners in order to evaluate living conditions. We often are under prepared to ensure our own safety. We are more concerned with aiding the injured than with adequately protecting our own health. There is a clear need for training through simulation. Humanitarian organizations provide health care, supplies, and training in zones of conflict around the world. This work is necessary but not without risks. If they are not managed and trained appropriately, aid organizations can cause more disruption, more conflict, and more injuries to the aid workers or the communities they serve. In an environment that includes rebel forces and corrupt

Managing Mistrust

How many peacekeepers are needed to keep the peace? Under what conditions are local governments and rebel forces more willing to cooperate with an intervention force? From a theoretical perspective in which the main role of peacekeepers is to assist local actors in overcoming their commitment problems and mistrust toward each other, it follows that sufficiently robust missions should positively affect levels of cooperation. Furthermore, any effect should be conditional on the local balance of power, that is, the military leverage between government and rebel forces. Relatively weak rebel groups—facing a stronger government—should be more willing to cooperate with larger missions. In the empirical analysis, using newly collected event data on United Nation (UN) peacekeeping operations from 1989 to 2005 in African civil wars, the authors find support for conditional effect of robust peacekeeping: there is more cooperation with UN peacekeepers when the rebels are weak.

To Rule a Ferocious Province: Roman Policy and the Aftermath of the Boudican Revolt

AbstractOfficial Roman action in the aftermath of the Boudican revolt is shown in this article to reveal a strong, persistent intention to allay local anger. Under consideration are such aspects as the Roman policy of official appointments in the region, the deployment of military forces, and the commemoration of the victory over the rebel forces. The conclusion reached takes issue with the widely prevailing view that Roman governance based itself mostly on oppressive measures.

The Revival of the Rule of Law in the Wake of Civil War

Post-conflict governance poses particular challenges to governments and foreign assistance providers. We focus on the question of how — and whether the rule of law is reconstituted in the wake of civil conflict. We find evidence that the state of the rule of law prior to and during a conflict substantially predicts the reconstitution of the rule of law post conflict. We further find that foreign intervention has a positive influence on the rule of law post conflict and that wars which end with a truth or settlement are associated with better rule of law post conflict than those resolved through victories by either government or rebel forces.

Allies and Airpower in Libya

The 2011 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervention in Libya was a success in several important respects: it helped topple Muammar Qaddafi's 42-year-old regime without the deployment of ground forces, with very low levels of collateral damage, and no NATO casualties. (1) The Libyan intervention exploited the synergy of precision airstrikes and local allies fighting on the ground, making the deployment of foreign ground forces unnecessary. The successful overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, following a similar strategy (but with a greater emphasis on Special Operations Forces (SOF)), led a number of observers and analysts to herald the coming of a new way of war, known as the (2) Proponents of the model point to its ability to achieve military success with a significantly lower cost in blood and national treasure than previous conventional operations, lt should be noted that success here refers to operations against the opponent's conventional forces, not to the target state's prospects for long-term stability. In this respect, the jury is still out on Libya, with the government struggling to consolidate its rule. (3) An important debate has emerged regarding the conditions under which the Afghan model is effective and, therefore, the extent to which it serve as a template for future operations. In particular, the author and strategist Stephen Biddle warns against learning the wrong lessons from Afghanistan, arguing that the campaign succeeded primarily due to the parity in military skill of local US allies and the Taliban/al Qaeda fighters. (4) In his view, precision airpower and SOF cannot compensate for a major imbalance in the skill of ground forces. (5) This analysis leads Biddle to claim that, and Iran, for example, are poor candidates for the Afghan model: Who is the trained local opposition in Syria or Iran? (6) It appears that Libya would also be an unpromising candidate for the Afghan model due to the absence of a trained local opposition identifiable at the outset of the intervention. Consistent with this observation, Biddle expressed concern about the viability of the intervention in Libya, expecting that the outcome could easily be a drawn-out, grinding stalemate. (7) Understanding why the poorly skilled opposition prevailed against superior government forces in Libya promises insight on the debate regarding the broader applicability of the Afghan model. This is critical not only for scholarly debates on the evolution of warfare but also for effective policymaking. As the United States tires of fighting drawn-out, troop-intensive wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan, future interventions are likely to mimic the Libyan experience. It is imperative that lessons-learned from the Libyan campaign be incorporated into any informed discussion of policy options related to the ongoing crisis in Syria. The evidence presented in this article provides important qualifications to the main positions in the debate. The existing analyses of the Afghan model assume interventions will be short, which was the case in Afghanistan. The prolonged nature of the Libyan campaign, however, points to time as a critical element of the model. Time affected battlefield outcomes in Libya through two mechanisms. First, it made possible the attrition of Qaddafi's forces through precision airpower--although, airpower did not make close ground combat irrelevant. The process of attrition over time enabled unskilled rebel forces to make substantial progress against his ground forces. Second, time provided breathing room for the fledging opposition force to become more skilled. The primary lesson emerging from Libya is if an air campaign is sustained for a sufficient period of time, depending on the interveners' political will, it has the potential of tilting the balance in favor of a particular side, even if they are initially outmatched. It appears that there is a qualified positive answer to Biddle's question, can the [Afghan] model trump a major skill imbalance? …

THE ACTION AT ZOUTPANSDRIFT, 31 OCTOBER 1914

Nine miles west of Brits, and five miles east of Bethanie, between Pretoria and Rustenburg, the Crocodile River flows past the Langberg. There are several drifts in the vicinity and of these Zoutpansdrift has given its name to an encounter between Government and rebel forces which ended in the surrender of 100 Government troops.