Brothers in arms: Morocco, Egypt, Saudi-Arabia and Iran’s involvement in Africa 1977-1978 This article focuses on two crisis on the African continent, the Moroccan intervention during the Shaba crisis of 1977-1978 and the Ethiopia-Somali conflict of 1978 (Ogaden wars). The invading rebels from Angola were destabilizing the Zairean regime of Mobutu Sese Seko. The direct Moroccan military intervention prevented a collapse of Mobutu’s rule. In 1978, Saudi-Arabia and Iran cooperated regarding the Ethiopia-Somalia conflict. This article seeks to shed light on the motivation of the three monarchies and Egypt to cooperate and intervene in these African wars. It will analyze the modes of cooperation, the motivation behind it and the interaction with the US during these crucial years of the Cold War. It places the interventions within the larger Cold War context. The article argues that the underlying motivation of the rulers lies partly with their anti-communist stance. The domestic leftist threat to Iran and Morocco served partly to explain the strong anti-communist rhetoric. These came at a time of relative reduction of American interventionism during the early Carter administration. Middle Eastern states, among them Egypt, Iran and Saudi-Arabia were linking up with Morocco and France to fill the void left by the US. The Shaba crisis in Zaire is one of the first intervention in which there is cooperation between Saudi-Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and France on the African continent. The article seeks to shed new light on the intelligence cooperation taking place between Iran, Saudi-Arabia, Egypt, France and Morocco. The support to Somalia is the second major operation when these countries worked together. The article draws from archival records in France, the UK, the US as well as official and opposition newspapers in Morocco. In doing so, the analysis adds to the existing Cold war studies on Zaire and the Ethiopia-Somali conflict, by explaining how non-Western actors behaved and what motivated this behavior. It helps in understanding the cooperation taking place between leaders in the Middle East and North Africa. As such it enrichens the historiography of these two important episodes on the African continent by linking North African and Middle Eastern states with interventions in the Global South during the Cold War.

With the recent change of the US security policy on the one side and China’s rise as a global economic power on the other side, a lot of academic debate has focused on the power transition theory: seeing China as a rising power and the USA as the status quo power the question is how the global power dynamic between China and the USA will develop? This paper explores the ramifications for China of the US withdrawal from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). From the Iranian side, the aim of the JCPOA was to have the Iranian economy integrated into the world economy, which would help Iran overcome an ever-increasing economic crisis and turn Iran into an attractive market as well as an important exporter of oil and gas. For USA and the international community, the overall aim was to avoid Iran being capable of developing nuclear weapons and avoid that the international crisis and conflict of the Iranian nuclear program would lead to an open war. Many states and companies also expressed a significant interest in the opening of the Iranian economy, giving them access to the market, to investments, and to the import of Iranian oil and gas. China has increasingly expanded its economy investments towards The Persian Gulf. China’s increasing economic interest in Iran was slowed down before the JCPOA because China did not want to challenge US security policy in The Persian Gulf. After the JCPOA, China again increased its activities with Iran. How will China react after USA in 2018 withdrew from JCPOA and resumed sanctions on Iran? Although unilateral sanctions, USA has made it clear that third parties who continue dealing with Iran will be punished, which has already led to a halt for activities for many European companies in Iran. Will China fill in the void? Will China challenge USA by increasing its trade with Iran? The public statements in China are ambiguous. Studying China’s economic policy in Iran after the renewed US sanctions can give us more clear indications of how the rivalry between China and USA will develop, making it possible to analyze the global power dynamics between the status quo and the rising power. The paper is based on research, public documents, and interviews during study trips to the Middle East and China.

This paper brings an International Criminal Law perspective to the conference and explores a topic of importance in the Middle East: the alleged commission of international crimes by Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State. This paper answers these questions: Were international crimes committed within the conflicts in Syria/Islamic State/Iraq? Are the leaders of Syria and the Islamic State implicated? Is there a path for prosecuting these crimes in the International Criminal Court (ICC)? The thesis of this paper is: International crimes were committed in the Syria/Islamic State/Iraq theater and the leaders of Syria and the Islamic State are implicated. Furthermore, it is possible for the ICC to acquire jurisdiction. While neither Syria nor the Islamic State (as a State) are parties to the Statute of Rome, this paper will explore avenues for holding the two leaders accountable for the alleged crimes. (The paper also addresses the dichotomy of international v. non-international conflict.) The basis of prosecution rests on three of the four types of crimes included in the Statute of Rome: Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes, and Genocide. The elements of these crimes will be applied to events in the theater and the level of responsibility of the two leaders will be determined. In the case of the Islamic State, the focus will initially be on Crimes Against Humanity, especially extermination and sexual slavery. Additionally, if one is to assume that ISIS did in fact constitute a State as outlined by the 1933 Treaty of Montevideo, charges of War Crimes might also be leveled, to include attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, rape, and sexual slavery. Finally, the question of charges of the crime of Genocide will also be considered. In the case of Syria, it is possible to consider Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes. In the former, murder and other inhumane acts serve as the basis prosecution. In the latter, the crimes of willful killing, destruction and appropriation of property, attacking of civilians, excessive incidental death, injury, or damage, killing or wounding a person hors de combat, murder, attacking civilians, and cruel treatment. Sources will include international conventions and customary law, jurisprudence from the international courts and ad hoc tribunals, accounts and reports of potential and alleged crimes, and journal articles as accepted by legal scholars.

The Franklin Book Programs (FBP) was a private non-for-profit US organization founded in 1952 during the Cold War, subsidized by the United States’ government agencies as well as private corporations. This program initially intended to promote US liberal values and also to create appropriate markets for US books in ‘Third World’ countries (Robbins, 2007). However, from its initial objective of exporting US culture to rival the influence of the Soviet socialism, FBP evolved into an international educational program publishing university textbooks, schoolbooks, and supplementary readings (Laugesen, 2012). As the FBP moved to become the most important organization of the Cold War with a global focus on ‘educational material’, its activities broadened from the ones specifically related to translation to those related to the development of printing, publishing, book distribution and bookselling institutions. Therefore, FBP started to build and expand printing plants; it encouraged library development and more importantly undertook the training of teachers as textbook writers. Using archival study, textual and historical analysis, this paper intends to answer the following questions: What were the social and political conditions that contributed to the establishment of the FBP? What were the cultural, educational and political goals of the FBP and how did these goals shape the FBP’s structure and policies? How did the FBP evolve in the course of its history in terms of its scope and function? How did the FBP affect education and textbooks in the Middle East? What were the ideological goals that US imperialism pursued in the developing countries in the Middle East? How does a dialectical explication of the history of FBP can advance our knowledge of the relationship between state, education and imperialism? Through the historical and archival study of the international role of the FBP (1952-1977) on the print and publication industry and educational policies of the Middle East, my research examines the interrelation between imperialism, state, and education. Criticizing the prevalent understanding of imperialism as an economic system, I will show the ideological functioning of imperialism in its cultural and publication policies in the Middle East. Using a dialectical and historical materialism approach, I will show that the print, the production, and the distribution of a wide range of liberal literacy, educational and school texts throughout the Middle East was a continuation of US anti-communist policies during the Cold War.