Counterterrorism Strategy in the Sahel

The GSPC—more recently titled Al Qaeda in the Maghreb—has maintained a small but significant level of terrorist unrest in the countries of the Sahel for a number of years. Although GSPC activities have been rather small-scale, they have added to the host of other security failures plaguing the region. The United State has begun devoting more attention to the regional security gaps and has started to implement an overall strategy in response. The more broadly-based approaches to dealing with security, economic, and political problems show promise, but only if the United States and regional countries maintain their focus on the long term.     

Nomads,Islamists, and Soldiers: The Struggles for Northern Mali

Mali has been faced with a series of uprisings by its Tuareg over a number of years. Although each of these rebellions was ended by a cease-fire, the Malian government never succeeded in instituting longer term peace agreements. The 2012 Tuareg rebellion has presented even more significant security threats. The environment in northern Mali now is marked by multiple armed groups, with multiple competing agendas. This complex situation, with Tuareg rebels, Islamists with varying goals, and local militias, with a pattern of varying levels of cooperation and conflict, will at best be very difficult to resolve in the long term. Combined with an almost complete security vacuum in northern Mali on the part of the government, this situation could be intractable even with external intervention. At the same time, the focus on counterterrorism in northern Mali may not be conducive to a long-term resolution of what in reality is a much more complicated security environment.     

Holding Collectives Accountable

This article argues that there is a need to understand better the legal origins of collective responsibility, as well as to provide additional material for further judicial interpretation of this form of responsibility. For the purposes of this article, collective responsibility refers to the form of individual criminal responsibility that holds individuals accountable for the criminal purpose or objective of a group where they acted in concert with others or otherwise contributed to the fulfillment of the common criminal plan. To spur on further inquiry into the subject of collective responsibility specifically, this article examines the contribution of the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) to the development of this mode of liability and discusses how it is relevant today. In order to provide sufficient background information on this subject matter, this article begins by presenting an overview of the evolution of collective responsibility from Nuremberg to where it stands in practice at the ICC. Finally, the article will demonstrate how the Commission’s diplomatic exchanges in tandem with cases under its supervision contributed to early formation of customary international law and how these historical events are important today.     

The successful DNA typing of samples following a thermal cycler power loss

An approach for generating DNA profiles when critical samples have been consumed and a power outage occurs during the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification reaction is described. This study demonstrates that a complete and accurate DNA short tandem repeat profile can be obtained: (1) when single source DNA samples are amplified for 26, 27, or 28 cycles using the Profiler Plus and COfiler Amplification Kits after an interruption in amplification, (2) from mock samples when PCR amplification has been interrupted early (after five cycles) or late (after 18 cycles) and the sample is subjected to an additional round of amplification, even after incubation of the sample at room temperature overnight, and (3) from nonprobative casework samples interrupted after approximately 18 cycles of amplification, an overnight incubation at room temperature and subjected to one or two additional rounds of PCR amplification for approximately 26 total cycles. Samples interrupted before five completed cycles and subjected to additional PCR cycles yielded variable results.     

Trust,regulation, and market efficiency

Building from the interest-group theory of regulation, we posit that trust alters the payoff from regulatory rent-seeking relative to profit-seeking. Trust reduces the costs of productive economic exchange by lowering transaction costs, thus raising the cost of rent-seeking behavior. In addition, trust increases political accountability, discouraging politicians from creating regulatory rents. We therefore hypothesize that trust reduces the extent of business regulation while simultaneously facilitating market efficiency. To test that hypothesis, we construct an overall business regulation index measuring procedures, time, and cost along eight dimensions of doing business in a country. The empirical results reveal that trust negatively relates to business regulation but positively relates to market efficiency. Interaction and split-sample results further indicate that trust and business regulation are substitutes. Collectively, the findings reported herein suggest that business regulation itself is not the root cause of market inefficiency, but rather lack of trust is the dominant factor.