Maggie Steele, the storybook heroine who vaults over the moon, has been attracting thousands of visitors from around the world. So many visitors, in fact, that she’s using a time zone map to keep track of them all.* People are … Continue reading 
By: Kirsty,
on 3/31/2011
The conversation in the new and old media over the last several weeks has been dominated by reports about uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and violent clashes in Bahrain, Yemen, the Ivory Coast, Iraq and elsewhere. In Libya, fighting currently is reported to take place close to strategic oil installations. Because of the scarcity of claims arising out of similar events in investor-state arbitration, political risk insurance claims determinations by the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) can play an important role to develop this area of law and fill these gaps in future investor-state arbitral arbitrations.
OPIC has a long history of dealing with claims under political risk insurance policies arising from political violence. Its first political violence claims arose as a consequence of the rebuilding efforts by the Organization of American States following political strife in Dominican Republic in 1967. Early claims included a 1968 claim arising out of war damage to an extension of Jerusalem airport. Since then, OPIC has addressed political violence claims relating to projects in inter alia Pakistan, Bangladesh, Chile, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Philippines, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Gaza, Colombia and Afghanistan. These claims concerned damages suffered as a consequence of declared war, violent secessions, military coups, civil war, or revolution. The variety of the different situations encountered in OPIC claims determinations provides valuable insight into how political violence can and does affect foreign investments.
One key element that OPIC determinations have spent significant time addressing is attribution to establish who is responsible the underlying act of violence and for what purpose it was committed. Was violence committed by a group that was trying to overthrow the government, was it committed by a group that was under the control of a government? Or was the violence non-political in nature and as such not covered by the OPIC policy?
The OPIC claims determination with respect to the Freeport mining project in Indonesia is perhaps particularly on point for current events. Freeport Indonesia was engaged in mining activities in the area then known as Irian Jaya (now West Papua), a province of Indonesia on the island of New Guinea The area in which Freeport Indonesia operated became part of Indonesia only after negotiations between the Netherlands and Indonesia. A year after Irian Jaya was joined to Indonesia, various dissident groups, known as the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (“OPM”) formed for the purpose of asserting independence.
In 1969, a first uprising took place, which did not damage Freeport Indonesia facilities. In 1976, though, Freeport Indonesia received letters from OPM demanding assistance in a renewed insurrection expected in spring of 1977. That uprising would reputedly be joined by a major invasion of nationalist forces from neighboring Papua New Guinea. An uprising did occur in 1977, including in the area of Freeport Indonesia’s facilities. Government of Indonesia armed forces were sent to quell the insurrection. The military apparently used Freeport Indonesia facilities as a base of operations. During the period from July 23, 1977 to September 7, 1977, Freeport Indonesia’s facilities suffered damage during acts of sabotage and attacks. Because the partisans shared a common purpose to assert independence, OPIC determined that the loosely affiliated OPM did constitute a revolutionary force despite its lack of a clear command structure. OPIC further applied a “preponderance” test, weighing the evidence available to OPIC to establish whether it was more likely than not that the harm done to Freeport’s facilities was the result of
By: Elvin Lim,
on 3/1/2011
American foreign policy elites are now facing the difficult choice of deciding if our short-term goals are in fostering democracy in the Middle East, or in quietly propping up authoritarian allies in the region. Even if policy-makers have a choice, it not an easy one to make. Certainly, in the long run, democracy in the Middle East would likely remove the breeding conditions for terrorism and resentment towards the West, but in the short run, transitioning toward democracy is a highly volatile project and in the meantime our strategic interests in the region could be compromised.
That is why until September 11, 2001, there had been an unspoken consensus that democracy in the Middle East matters less than friends in the Middle East. It has certainly been easier for the United States to negotiate with Kings and dictators than they have with the unorganized masses. We are not alone in taking the path of least resistance. The Soviet Union and the British empire operated on the same principle, prioritizing predictability over democracy. Indeed, almost all the monarchies in the Middle East were created by the British, trying to replicate the balance of power called the Concert of Europe which had prevailed in Europe in the 19th century.
This top-down, and short-term approach to regional order and predictability had its consequences in crowding out the more sustainable, bottom-up approach. The result of imposing an authoritarian solution from above is that whereas countries in the West developed democratic institutions and traditions, countries in the Middle East were developmentally arrested, never allowed to develop the apparatuses of self-rule, including a system of government accountability, a separation and division of powers, codified laws, stable political parties, a free and open media, and an engaged and educated citizenry. The existence of a major resource, oil, made it especially difficult for countries in the Middle East to break out of their arrested development, because leaders propped up by oil revenue spent their energies defending their control of resources rather than fighting for the affections of the people. As a result, most countries in the region failed to develop electorally responsive mechanisms to allocate and check political power. By choosing democracy over predictability and the path of least resistance, the US and the West made it more likely that the Middle East would enjoy neither in the future.
September 11, and the war in Iraq it precipitated, temporarily blurred this conclusion because it appeared that we could seek democracy and predictability at the same time, or at least the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration promised. The relative success of the Iraq war blurred the zero-sum game between democracy and predictability by seeking the latter in the name of the former. But the temporary marriage between our commitment to democracy and predictability in the Middle East could last only as long as our commitment to the former was tentative and calibrated.
The uprisings in Tunisia, however, has put this marriage to the test. As the wave of protest spreads in the Middle East, some neo-conservatives are now realizing that they got more than they bargained for, and the instinct to return to short-term thinking in the US has returned. The US can take on the project of democracy one country at a time — starting for example in Iraq — but it cannot do this in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen all at once. Policy-makers and the elected politicians who appointed them have to worry about the here and now too. And that means thinking about the markets, oil prices, and friendly counter-weights to rogue regimes like Iran, which necessarily become more powerful as the authoritarian regimes around it crumble. With even the King of Bahrain now talking about reforms, and protests starting in the normally
By: Kirsty,
on 11/3/2010
The air freight bomb plot should be understood as part of al-Qaeda’s pervasive weakness rather than its strength. The intended targets, either a synagogue in Chicago and/or a UPS plane which would explode over a western city, were chosen as part of the attempt to re-focus al-Qaeda’s violence back towards western targets and pull the jihad away from the brink.
Indeed, things haven’t worked out the way Osama bin Laden hoped they would.
Quoting such diverse sources as Carl von Clausewitz, Mao Zedong, Vo Nguyen Giap and Peter Paret, al-Qaeda strategists had repeatedly emphasised the pivotal importance of attracting the support of the Muslim masses to the global jihad. For Abu Ubeid al-Qurashi, the absence of popular support meant that the mujahidin would be no more than a criminal gang. ‘It is absolutely necessary that the resistance transforms into a strategic phenomenon’, argued Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, time and time again.
However, despite the open goal handed to bin Laden by the US-led invasion of Iraq and the increased relevance and resonance of his anti-imperial rhetoric from 2003-2006, he failed to find the back of the net. His crow to Bush about Iraq being an ‘own goal’ was decidedly premature. The credibility of bin Laden’s claim to be acting in defence of Muslims exploded alongside the scores of suicide bombers dispatched to civilian centres with the direct intention of massacring swathes of (Muslim) innocents.
Moreover, where al-Qaeda in Iraq gained control over territory, as in the Diyala and Anbar provinces, the quality of life offered to the Iraqi people was a source of further alienation: music, smoking and shaving were banned, women were forced to take the veil, punishments for disobedience included rape, the chopping of hands and the beheading of children. Brutality was blended with farce as female goats were killed because their parts were not covered and their tails turned upward.
In the end, bin Laden’s ideology, which relied first and foremost on a (poetic) narrative of victimhood, became impossible to sustain. Bin Laden’s project is profoundly moral. He casts himself as the defender of basic freedoms. He eloquently portrays his jihad as entirely defensive and al-Qaeda as the vanguard group acting in defence of the umma. He maintains that all the conditions for a just war have been met.
In reality, however, all of his just war arguments – about just cause, right authority, last resort, necessity, the legitimacy of targeting civilians – are based on one fundamental assumption: that al-Qaeda is defending Muslims from non-Muslim aggressors. As such, it is essential that (1) al-Qaeda stops killing Muslims and (2) al-Qaeda starts hitting legitimate western targets and the regimes which enable the alleged western encroachment.
The emergence of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in January 2009 can be viewed as part of this end (much as the al-Qaeda-affiliated GSPC in Algeria formed in opposition to the moral bankruptcy of the GIA). Their publications favour targeted violence such as political assassinations and attacks within US military barracks such as that perpetrated by Major Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood. Their most high-profile operations have been an assault on the US embassy in Sana’a, an attempt to assassinate the Saudi security chief Mohammed bin Nayef, and the bid by the ‘underpants bomber’ to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
In Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQIP) have internalised lessons from Iraq and are seeking to keep the population and the tribes on side. Their statements articulate the political and social discontent of the populace. The leadership seems to subscribe to bin Laden’s argument that violence must be used strategically and not w
By: Lauren,
on 11/2/2010
Yemen is Oxford’s 2010 Place of the Year. As we’re sure you very well know, Yemen is on the front page of many newspapers now because of the increased influence of Al Qaeda and the recent bombing attempts that emerged from the small middle eastern country. However, the decision to choose Yemen as the POTY was made long before any of these developments reached our ears. Below, geographer Harm de Blij explains just why we found this country to be of particular interest not just in the year past, but as we look ahead. You can follow Yemen in the news here.
International tensions have a way of thrusting small, faltering states into the global spotlight. When suicide bombers attacked, and very nearly sank, the American warship U.S.S. Cole in 2000 in Yemen’s south-coast port of Adan (Aden), this remote country on the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula drew the world’s attention for the least desirable of reasons. Once seen as a promising if fragile experiment in Muslim-Arab democracy and as a destination for adventure tourism, Yemen suddenly found itself at the center of concern about the threat of Islamic militancy and terrorism.
Yemen occupies a small, peripheral sector of the Arabian Peninsula, but its population very nearly matches (and by some estimates exceeds) that of its vast neighbor, Saudi Arabia. The country as it is seen on the map today, its boundaries with Saudi Arabia still contentious, is the product of a 1989 merger between two neighbors, the populous, tribal Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) in the northwest, bordering the Red Sea, and the communist-inspired People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen), facing the Gulf of Adan, in the south and east. This agreement, which took effect in 1990 to create the Republic of Yemen with its capital at Sana’a in the northern interior, soon collapsed in a political crisis that precipitated a civil war in 1994. South Yemen announced its secession, North Yemen’s forces advanced into the South and captured Adan, culpable politicians were killed or exiled, and the state was restored.
The physical geography of Yemen displays rugged, deeply incised mountains in the North, where ephemeral streams flow westward to the Red Sea coast and disappear eastward into interior deserts, and lower relief in the South, where coastal topography is also rugged but interior desert plains are more extensive. Much of the craggy, arid countryside lies remote from Yemen’s meager road system and effectively beyond the reach of its government, creating refuges for rebels and bandits who ambush officials, kidnap tourists for ransom, and, more recently, set up terrorist bases. As in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, relief, remoteness, and cultural traditions combine to protect jihadists.
Yemen’s relative location creates additional challenges. Its territory (about the size of France) includes the sizable island of Socotra in the Gulf
By: Michelle,
on 11/1/2010
It’s a place that seems to be on the brink of collapse, and even as we prepared to make this announcement, Yemen again emerged as a home base for terrorist plots. The stakes are high and the future is unclear for Oxford’s 2010 Place of the Year.
According to geographer Harm de Blij, author of The Power of Place and Why Geography Matters, “In the modern world of terrorist cells and jihadist movements, Yemen’s weakness spells opportunity.” Regional conflicts like the Houthi rebellion in the north and revival of the southern secessionist movement diminish the power of the government. Terrorist bases now reside in the remote countryside, posing a familiar dilemma for the United States: Is shoring up the country’s army and police worth the risk of increasing Al Qaeda protection and loyalty? At the same time Yemen stands to be the poorest country in the Arab world, nearly depleted of its leading export, oil, while facing a water shortage experts say is heighten by the country’s addiction to qat, a mildly narcotic leaf.
Once a promising experiment in Muslim-Arab democracy, Western opinion now recognizes Yemen to have all the features of a failed state. Obscured by the attention of the political geography, is what de Blij calls “a Yemen that might have been.”
To hear more from de Blij on Place of the Year be sure to check in tomorrow!
Yemen at a glance:
Population: 22,858,000
Capital(s): Sana’
Government: Multiparty Republic
Ethnic Groups: Predominantly Arab
Languages: Arabic
Religions: Islam
Currency: Yemeni rial= 100 fils
Cash crops: coffee and cotton
President: Ali Abdullah Saleh
And now for the runners-up…
Greece
Haiti
Gulf Coast (of the United States)
the Eyjafjallajokull volcano
Mexico
Seaside Heights, NJ
California
Rio de Janeiro
Wall Street
The Gulf of Aden (“Pirate Alley”)
OUP Employee Votes:
“I’d go with Mexico. A fascinating failing state in which our stake couldn’t be greater, and compelling for all the reasons the other places mentioned might be interesting (or in crisis) individually–you have natural disaster (or the ongoing potential thereof), man-made disaster, social unrest, crime (and how), political chaos and corruption, etc. Whatever you do, don’t pick Seaside Heights, N.J., though I’ve nothing whatever against the place.” -Tim Bent, Executive Editor, Trade History
“Haiti—so we don’t forget the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their families and homes and way of life.” -Jessica Ryan, Copyediting Lead
“Eyjafjallajokull. It’s perfect in that it had a world-wide impact, or close to it; it was hard to pronounce; and it was the proverbial flash-in-the-pan issue.” -Niko Pfund, VP and Publisher
“You totally made up that v
By: John Mark Boling,
on 2/4/2010
Arguably the most fascinating and least known country in the Arab world, Yemen is once again in today's headlines as it struggles with a secessionist movement in the south and faces international pressure to crack down on a resurgent al Qaeda.
In Tim Mackintosh-Smith's Yemen:The Unknown Arabia, originally published by Overlook in 2001 and now available in paperback, Tim Mackintosh-Smith explores the history and culture of this country. Writing with an intimacy and depth of knowledge gained through thirteen years among the Yemenis, Mackintosh Smith is a companion of the best sort: erudite, witty and eccentric. Crossing mountain, desert, ocean and three millennia of history, he portrays a land where men chew leaves and camels live on fish; where men wear pinstriped lounge-suit jackets on top, skirts below, and wicked curved daggers in the middle; a city that seems to have been baked, not built, of iced gingerbread. In this book, Yemen is a part of Arabia, but it is like no place else on Earth.
