The formation of postcolonial states in Asia, Africa and the Middle East gave birth to prolonged separatist wars between separatist groups in the periphery and the new, still insecure central governments. This book explores these liberation wars, aiming to provide new insights into their roots and evolution. Rather than focusing on the causes of conflict, the book focuses on the governments’ and insurgents’ strategies and policies. The book’s central argument is that we could best understand these strategies as having been shaped by the struggle against European colonialism. The practices and roles that emerged during that period survived into the postcolonial era, moulding the identities, aims and strategies of both governments and rebels. Therefore, the book suggests that theories of practice and roles in international politics serve as a sound theoretical framework for the empirical analysis of the case studies. The book examines two cases of postcolonial separatist wars: the conflict in Northern Iraq between the government and Kurdish separatists and in Southern Sudan between black separatists and the government in Khartoum. The analysis of these two cases relies on extensive field and archival research. Thus, the book sheds new light on the history and nature of these separatist conflicts.

Though constitutional drafting is a national affair, it is not isolated from the international legal setting in which it is embedded. Sometimes, the process of drafting itself may be directly governed by international law (for example, a United Nations mandate). On other occasions, constitutional design may be influenced by incentives generated by international law (such as EU membership). Either way, the creation of a new constitution invariably requires reflection upon the status and role of international law in the normative hierarchy of a country. Using Sudan as a case study, this chapter explores the significant role played by international law in the drafting of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the Interim National Constitution of 2005.

The chapter analyzes upstream-downstream issues in the Nile river basin. The large increase in population in the future and the resulting push for development will increase demand of the Nile flow in upstream riparian countries where headwaters are sourced. Variability in temperature and precipitation due to climate change will impact the heavily populated areas the most, which in the case of the Nile, is at the Delta in Egypt. This will have a deep economic impact as Egypt is the most prosperous country along the Nile. However, the increased development and engineering upstream will affect how much of the Nile is available at a specific time for Egypt. These tensions are already seen in the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. An agreement still has not been reached as countries are struggling with sharing ownership of the river. If sufficient flow is not released to Egypt, saltwater intrusion in Egypt can endanger current groundwater storage, pushing the country to invest in more desalination.

This chapter explores the influence of public opinion on official policy towards detention, by looking at the cases of two leaders removed in the 1880s from Egypt, which was neither a colony nor a protectorate, but was under de facto British control after the invasion of 1882. The first case involves Ahmed Urabi Pasha, the Egyptian nationalist leader whose removal from power was the aim of the invasion. Given that the invasion itself represented a political volte-face for Gladstone, and in view of the support Urabi had attracted from influential Britons, the British wanted to ensure that Urabi was seen to have a fair trial in an Egyptian court. They consequently used their influence to broker a settlement under which Urabi was expelled from Egypt, and lived in voluntary exile in Ceylon. By contrast, in the second case, that of the Sudanese leader and notorious slave trader Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, the Foreign Office and Colonial Office were content to hold him in detention under an ad hominem ordinance at Gibraltar, at the behest of the military. With no political supporters to defend his case in London, the British authorities had no qualms about detaining him without trial.

The chapter surveys the literature and approaches that deal with the economics and politics of managing internationally shared water resources (aka transboundary water). Principles that are relevant to the analysis of management of shared international water are discussed and demonstrated. One aspect that is unique to international water is the use of agreements between all or part of the riparian states that share the basin. The chapter introduces several means by which cooperation among the riparian states is defined and calculated, using the information embedded in the treaties that they signed. The chapter provides also an example, applied to the case of the Blue Nile Basin, of the effect of using certain allocation methods on the welfare of the river basin riparian states, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt, and its effects on the stability of their allocation agreement.

This chapter leverages a within-case variation in the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), a rebel organization that operated in a country that neighbored Eritrea at the same time as the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) from Chapter 5. The SPLM/A initially articulated less transformative goals, and despite knowing about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) governance, refused to introduce any elements of it, consistent with expectations. In 1994, however, the SPLM/A articulated a new set of moderately transformative objectives and correspondingly introduced governance initiatives that more closely approached, but did not replicate exactly, the CCP’s strategy, also consistent with expectations. The SPLM/A in conjunction with the EPLF and Eritrean Liberation Front cases in Chapter 5 offers a comprehensive test of the theory using the full range of variation in the independent variables (transformativity of rebel goals) and the corresponding range of the dependent variable (rebel governance strategies).

Sudanese national governments have attempted to forge Sudan as an Islamic state for much of its postcolonial history. Southern Sudan, with its long exposure to Christian mission work, rejected this agenda and waged two civil wars against the state. Josephine Bakhita, Sudan’s first Catholic saint, stood at the epicenter of this maelstrom. This chapter investigates Bakhita’s sociopolitical significance in recent Sudanese (and South Sudanese) history. Born in the nineteenth century, Bakhita was enslaved in her youth but, once free, eventually became a Canossian sister. Pope John Paul II injected her life and legacy into calls for human dignity to be respected in a context rife with abuses that included slavery and religious persecution. Her name continued to carry resonance after the war through Radio Bakhita, a station that became linked with attacks on expressive freedom. Bakhita’s afterlife shows how a religious figure can be injected into campaigns against secular social ills and become a symbol linked to different abuses in the same space in different times.

At the height of its political power between c.350 BC and AD 350, the Royal City of Meroe was a cosmopolitan trade hub and a melting pot of external influences. In addition to controlling vast regions of land and ruling through the imposition of Kingship sanctioned by a complex religious system, the sovereigns of the Kingdom of Kush built on the economic success of their predecessors by ensuring a flow of trade goods and exotic items through their capital for hundreds of years. Local industry, providing essential objects such as weapons and tools, as well as luxury items, also played a paramount role at Meroe, with external and local influences visible, notably in the ceramics found at the site. Meroitic material culture and the industrial remains provide key insights into the past interconnectedness of the wider region as well as local traditions and innovations. This chapter examines what the Meroitic material culture and iron technology tells us about Meroe’s place and connections within its immediate and more distant landscapes, and how network analysis can help position it in this geographical framework.

This final chapter presents two case studies, one where the veto was utilized while atrocity crimes were being committed, and one where the veto was threatened (expressly or implicitly) while atrocity crimes were being committed. The first case study traces climbing death tolls and growing recognition that mass atrocity crimes were occurring in Syria, while Russia, sometimes joined by China, invoked the veto on thirteen separate occasions. The vetoes blocked recognition of crimes, investigation of crimes, prosecution of crimes, as well as other measures. That a significant number of resolutions that would have condemned regime and/or opposition crimes failed to pass or were significantly delayed could not have failed to send a metaphorical “green light” to the perpetrators; thus, the vetoes are partly responsible for the still unfolding human tragedy. The second case study traces climbing death tolls in the early 2000s while the Sudanese military and Janjaweed militia committed mass atrocity crimes against the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa, and other ethnic groups in the Darfur region of Sudan. These crimes likely constituted genocide, and, at minimum, war crimes and crimes against humanity. During the key years when the crimes were occurring, China blocked by threat of the veto: initially, any imposition of sanctions on the Government of Sudan, and, permanently, any oil embargo, as well as peacekeeping that was not consensually negotiated with the Government of Sudan. Eventually, a hybrid peacekeeping mission was agreed to and deployed, but only after the height of the killing had occurred and with a weakened mandate. The Security Council’s delays and tepid approach to sanctions and peacekeeping, which significantly increased the death toll, are at least partly attributable to Chinese threats (both express and implied) to use the veto.

The Statute entered into force on 1 July 2002. Judges, the Prosecutor and the Registrar had been elected by mid-2003. After signing the Statute at the end of 2000, the United States moved to a position of hostility towards the Court, then became more mellow as it determined that its vital interests were not threatened. The Prosecutor developed a strategy of encouraging ‘self-referrals’, whereby Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic sought the Court’s assistance in prosecuting anti-government forces. This led to the initial trials of rebel leaders from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Security Council referred the situation in Darfur, Sudan to the Court but provided no further assistance in apprehending suspects, including the President, Omar Al-Bashir. Using proprio motu authority, the Prosecutor undertook cases of post-election violence in Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire. For the first decade of its activity, the Court’s attention was essentially confined to the African continent. A malaise developed in Africa and a few African States attempted to withdraw from the Statute. By then end of the 2010s, concerns were being expressed about the future of the Court, with calls for major reforms.

Chapter 4 describes the inherently political character of international justice and shows the working paradox between the UNSC and the ICC. The UNSC is the institution that allows the ICC to gain jurisdiction over states that have not ratified the Rome Statute, and this chapter asks whether international treaties such as the Rome Statute apply to states who are not signatories. The example of Libya is studied in detail to highlight the ways in which a non-ICC member chose to engage the Court by introducing an admissibility challenge and how the Court’s response to the challenge showed the inconsistency of its ruling, which also brings back the political dimension of international justice.