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Previously: Ethiopia – Poland – Armenia – Persia – Russia I – Russia II – Russia III – India – Britannia – Sweden – Saudi Arabia (Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3) – Vietnam

In the latest in this series, I present to you the geography of the modern Balkans, beginning with Yugoslavia after Ottoman Rule and substantially focusing on the progressive fracture of the country over the last two decades.

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Voting has begun on the historic referendum on independence for southern Sudan (see previous post from October). It seems almost inevitable that southern Sudan will vote to affirm independence.

But where exactly is Southern Sudan? This is the bigger question that most news articles trumpeting the referendum are ignoring. The new border has not yet been precisely drawn, and beyond the local squabbles over grazing rights and water rights is the larger issue as the border will become the new border between Black Africa and the Arab World. The geographical margin is small, but any doubt leaves open the possibility of local violence that could mushroom into something much worse. The key hotspot is Abyei, a town located on the western most light blue box on the map below, and which is representative of a larger problem in what is increasingly likely to be a demarcation creating a new country in Southern Sudan.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and their tribal allies, who are pushing hard for independence, are at loggerheads with the Misseriya nomadic pastoralists backed by the north’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) over Abyei. A 2006 commission failed to demarcate a border between the north and south. This was escallated to a the Permanent Court of Arbitration based in The Hague in 2009, and a border was proposed and welcomed by the SPLM, their allies, and the NCP. But the Misseriya, which fought for the north in the civil war, refused to accept the border and after refusing to budge, the NCP, despite initially approving the settlement, backed out and supported the position of their former civil war partners.

Abyei is close to some of Sudan’s biggest oilfields, but the big cause of the dispute between the local tribes is not oil by water, a vital resource for the nomadic peoples who move their cattle south during the dry season (to a river known as Bahr al-Arab River to the Arabs, or the Kiir River to the southerners). It should also be noted that both sides are heavily armed.

Abyei is just one dispute of many contentious areas in Sudan. Some analysts argue that compromise between the north and south is likely because war will risk the benefit they gain from their mutual dependence on oil revenues and other cross-border economic ties. But as Abyei shows, they will probably have to follow the lead of local tribes (who were, and are, crucial to any confrontation between the north and south. Politics in Sudan, like in everywhere else in the world, is a slave to interest groups.

English film writer Peter Morgan is the mastermind behind three films on the political career of Tony Blair. The Deal examines how Tony Blair managed to take the leadership of the Labour Party away from Gordon Brown. The Queen looks at PM Blair’s relationship with Queen Elizabeth II during the public drama surrounding the death of Princess Diana. And The Special Relationship explores the growth of the relationship between Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.

Morgan is a leftist critic of Blair with an unsympathetic view of the former Prime Minister. That comes out clearly in the first film. However, when placed against figures who appear to be even vulnerable when compared to Blair–Queen Elizabeth and President Clinton–the character looks stronger in the next two films.

Much to my delight, Morgan has said that he has another Tony Blair film in him, which is excellent news — I think that a final film that explores Blair’s commitment to President Bush would be a superb piece of work. Tony Blair as the moral crusader is seen in the end of the third film, where Blair says after the successful ouster of Milosovich: “Let no one ever doubt again the moral justification for invading another country for humanitarian ends.” The film then ends with Clinton warning Blair about working with the Bush administration, and then there is the actual footage of the the first press conference between Bush and Blair in early 2001. When seen after the warm and human relationship with Clinton, the first Bush meeting looks like an uncomfortable and wooden event. Seeing it in as a televised drama would add depth and an understandable narrative to a complicated relationship.

On Friday:

Saudi security forces shot dead a suspected al Qaeda militant and arrested another after one of them opened fire at agents at a checkpoint. One of the two men, who was disguised as a woman, opened fire after their car was stopped at the checkpoint in the central town of Wadi al-Dawasir, said Mansour al-Turki, the ministry’s security spokesman. “We have a strong suspicion it is al Qaeda, but we are still trying to identify the dead man and questioning the detained suspect,” the spokesman said.

On Saturday:

A woman covered in a head-to-foot burqa carried out a suicide bombing in Pakistan that killed more than 40 people. The woman initially threw hand grenades at people heading toward the food center to receive aid before blowing herself up. Forty-three people were killed and more than 60 were wounded in the attack. “If militants use more women for such attacks then it is going to be a very huge problem for the security forces,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, an expert on tribal and militant affairs.

Female suicide bombers are nothing new. But the increase in their frequency in the Islamic world, and the use of female covering clothing for men to use them as disguises, poses a new dilemma for Islamic security forces. In conservative Muslim societies, many women dress in face-covering niqabs or eye-covering burqas, and the sexes are vigorously segregated — which can make it very difficult for an all-male security force to search women for fear of angering conservative sensibilities or fear of accusations of sexual harassment or even breaking laws that require women to remain fully covered in public.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan could learn something from Israel, where security procedures call for a suspected woman to be checked by a female soldier in a screened off area. Of course, for that to happen, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would each have to have female security forces…

In the post-Cablegate world, where both the unauthorised discloser and the unauthorised publisher can apparently spread leaked information without consequence, the US is not the only victim. Indeed, it is with some cruel irony that the same papers who received cables from Julian Assange — who has devoted his life to published confidential material — are now publising leaked information regarding the criminal case against him in Sweden.

Lawyers cry foul over leak of Julian Assange sex-case papers

LAWYERS for Julian Assange have expressed anger about an alleged smear campaign against the Australian WikiLeaks founder. Incriminating police files were published in the British newspaper that has used him as its source for hundreds of leaked US embassy cables.

In a move that surprised many of Mr Assange’s closest supporters on Saturday, The Guardian newspaper published previously unseen police documents that accused Mr Assange in graphic detail of sexually assaulting two Swedish women. One witness is said to have stated: “Not only had it been the world’s worst screw, it had also been violent.”…

I sympathize with Assange, but in promoting the leaking of information with impunity and disregard for its consequences, he has unleashed a monster, that will lash out at everyone and anyone until there is a complete overhaul of the legal regime that draws a line between the preservation of confidentiality and whistle-blowing on improper information.