News Round-Up - 31 December 2012

• Syria's special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has said that if there is no political solution to Syria it will be "transformed into hell," likening the potential situation to Somalia.

• After meeting with AU chairman Thomas Boni Yayi over the weekend, CAR's President Francois Bozize has said he is ready to form a national unity government with the Seleka rebels that have taken much of the country in recent days.The Seleka alliance has accused Bozize of failing to honour the 2007 peace agreement.

• The Pakistani Taliban have executed 21 of the 23 policemen kidnapped last week in Waziristan in a dawn raid.  The policemen were government-allied paramilitaries recruited from local tribes.  For more on the reprisals carried out in Waziristan in response to drone attacks by the US in the region, see Declan Walsh's piece in the New York Times.

• In Iraq, a car bomb has killed 3 and injured 21 in Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad.  It is thought that Shiite pilgrims may have been the target.

• AP has reported that violence in Afghanistan dropped overall in 2012, though more Afghan troops were killed and there was a threefold increase in uniformed Afghan troops killing their foreign allied counterparts.

• Israel has allowed building materials for private sector into Gaza for the first time in five years.  Up until now many private contractors had been relying on smuggled materials from Egypt.

• Obama has signed into law a five-year extension of the FISA Amendment Act which allows the government to monitor communications where one of the parties is located overseas.  

• In the blogosphere, an interesting debate has started on comparisons between the Newtown bombings and drone strikes.  See here for Kevin Jon Heller's piece at Opiniojuris, and here for Benjamin Wittes's piece over at Lawfare.

Crisis Group Louise Arbour's Top 10 Conflicts for 2013

In an article over at Foreignpolicy.com Louise Arbour of International Crisis Group sets out 10 conflicts which Crisis Group believes are the biggest coming threats for 2013. The list does not claim to be exhaustive or even prioritised. 

Many that could credibly have made their way onto the list - like the "drug-related violence in Mexico and the "ongoing trauma in Somalia" - have been left off.  Rather the list seeks to highlight "a mix of the obvious risks and those we believe are bubbling beneath the surface."  

Those are:  Sudan, Turkey/PKK, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria & Lebanon, the Sahel, Central Asia, DRC, and Kenya.  

The full article can be found here.

News Round-Up - 28 December 2012

• The ICTR has a new registrar, Bongani Majola, who is a former deputy prosecutor of the tribunal.

• The NY Times carries a piece on life under Islamist rule in Northern Mali, where at least 14 people have had their feet cut off since the takeover last Spring.  Last week the UNSC passed a resolution authorising military intervention in Mali.  

• The Washington post has published an interesting report on the CIA's little-known Global Response Staff, which employs contractors to provide an "unobtrusive layer of security for CIA officers in high-risk outposts."

• It is reported that UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council have issued statements condemning armed attacks in several towns in the Central African Republic by the Sedeka coalition rebels

• Hamas has banned Palestinian journalists in Gaza from working with or giving interviews to the Israeli media.  Israeli journalists have been banned by their own government from entering Gaza since 2006, purportedly for security reasons. In the West Bank, President Abbas has said he will disband the Palestinian Authority and hand over authority to Netanyahu if there is no move to renewing peace talks after the forthcoming Israeli elections in January.

• Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov has said that Russia has invited head of the Syrian National Coalition, Ahmed Mouaz al-Khatib to talks regarding Syria's political future.  The invitation comes amid a round of intense diplomatic efforts to end the war in Syria.

News Round-Up - 27 December 2012

• At the ECCC, Florence Ndepele Mwachande Mumba of Zambia has been appointed as the sitting judge of the Supreme Court Chamber. She formerly served as a trial chamber judge at the ICTY and as an appeals chamber judge in the joint ICTY-ICTR appeals chamber. Phillip Rapoza of the USA, who served as a judge on the Special Panels for Serious Crimes in Timor-Leste, has been appointed as the Supreme Court Chamber's reserve judge. 

• In Syria, the Assad regime's military police chief has defected. Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Jassem al-Shallal was reported as saying that he decided to leave when the regime deviated from its mission to protect the country and turned into “a gang for killing and destruction.”

• Three people have been killed and six more injured in a suicide bomb attack outside a US Base in Khost in eastern Afghanistan. The base is known to host CIA operatives tracking terror suspects in Pakistan. The Taliban have claimed credit for the attack.

• In Pakistan, there have been attacks on police stations in the town of Darra Adam Khel in the north-western part of Pakistan, in which two policemen have been killed and a further 22 are missing. The Pakistani Taliban, who are believed to be responsible, also announced today their conditions for a ceasefire with the Pakistani government.

• It is reported that the European training mission to Mali, mandated by Security Council Resolution 2085, is to be headed up by General François Lecointre who has previously served served in Djibouti, the Central African Republic, Rwanda, Gabon and Bosnia.

• In the Central African Republic, the Seleka rebel coalition has seized at least 10 towns and is closing in on the capital city. In spite of demands for help, the French government is so far refusing to intervene.

Color of War - Richard Mosse

In this series of striking photographs, the extraordinarily talented Richard Mosse uses infrared film to capture the "Hobbesian state of war in Congo." For him, Congo is "the most beautiful place I have been in my life - and I've traveled a lot."

The bitter contrast between war and the breathtaking natural beauty that often forms its backdrop is one that those of us involved in international criminal law are probably all too familiar with.  Mosse manages to convey this juxtaposition - beauty and war - without a word.  

For more on Mosse's work in Congo, see here.

Syria: Cluster Bombs and the Threat of Chemical Weapons

This short video from the NY Times shows the effects that Russian-made cluster bombs are having on the civilian population in Syria:  

In the video, one rebel warns that the regime will soon resort to chemical weapons.  Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov has reportedly stated that Syria's chemical weapons have been consolidated at one or two locations and are under control "at the moment."

Syria is one of just six states recognised by the UN that has not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) (the others being Angola, North Korea, Egypt, South Sudan and Somalia).  Nor is Syria a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), which  currently has seventy-seven state parties. 

ICL News - 21 December 2012

• The ICC Appeals Chamber rejected the OTP's request for a suspensive order regarding Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui's release from detention following his acquittal earlier this week, finding that in the absence of any strong reasons in support of the ordering of suspensive effect, Mr Ngudjolo's liberty interest must prevail.  

• The ICTR has sentenced former government minister Augustin Ngirabatwareto to 35 years for his part in the 1994 genocide, marking the end of the last ICTR trial.  9 accused remain at large.

• Vladimir Putin has stated that Russia is "not preoccupied" with the fate of the Assad regime, signalling Russia's waning support.

• The NY Times has reported on the Syrian regime's  use of cluster bombs against civilians.  Cluster bombs are the subject of an international ban on account of their inherent imprecision, though neither Syria nor the US are party to the treaty in question. 

• The UNSC has unanimously approved a two track resolution to help recapture the north of Mali which is controlled by Al Qaeda linked groups. 

• Salam Fayaad, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, has called for a boycott of Israeli goods in response to Israel's refusal to transfer tax revenue to the West Bank.  Israel's refusal came after Palestine successfully bid for observer state status at the UN last month.  

• Fighting has broken out in the Tana Delta in Kenya where at least 28 people are said to have been killed in a clash between the Orma and Pokomo communities.

• Libyan Ambassador to the UK, Mahmud Nacua, has said that the government will hand over all files related to the Lockerbie bombing of 1988 which killed 270 people.