Sudan has been pursuing some eye-catching regional diplomacy in recent weeks. In late-February, Sudan’s ICC-indicted defense minister was in Riyadh, while its oil czar was in Tehran. These visits followed a meeting between Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of an Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Cairo in January, and Bashir’s attendance at the Arab Economic Development Summit in Riyadh earlier in February. Combined, the moves suggest a shift in Sudan’s tactical approach to relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran, one guided by Khartoum’s pragmatic concerns for regime survival. Sudan has had difficult [...]
Late last month, video surfaced of a man in South Africa being dragged behind a police van, sparking an outcry about the state of the country’s police force. In an email interview, Andrew Faull, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Criminology who has written extensively on public policing in South Africa, explained how South Africans view the country’s police, and the police force’s evolution since the apartheid era. WPR: How are South Africa’s police regarded in terms of their efficacy and accountability? Andrew Faull: Data on perceptions of police in South Africa appear at times contradictory [...]
Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has called for a truce with Turkey, with which the Kurdish rebel group has fought for 30 years. In a letter that was read earlier today to crowds gathered for the Kurdish New Year celebrations in southern Turkey, the PKK chief called for a cease-fire and for the removal of PKK fighters from the country. While past truces have been called and then abandoned, the announcement is being greeted with optimism in some quarters. “This is the first time in a long time that there is a serious [...]
