Pour une localisation optimale des centres de transbordement intermodaux entre réseaux de transport: formulation et extensions

La localisation des centres de transbordement où s'opère le changement de mode ou de réseau de transport intervient de façon déterminante dans la compétitivité du transport multimodal. L'objet de cette contribution est de discuter cette problématique en l'envisageant sous l'angle particulier de la théorie de la localisation. Ainsi, la localisation de centres de transbordement entre réseaux est définie comme un problème de type discret qui cherche à localiser des unités (équipements techniques) permettant le transfert dun réseau à un autre avec pour objectif de réduire les coûits de transport totaux. Une formulation mathématique de ce problème, reposant sur de la programmation linéaire en nombres entiers, est proposée et argumentée. La souplesse de cette formulation autorise plusieurs extensions qui peuvent être combinées de manière à représenter diverses situations rencontrées dans la pratique.     

The UN and the African Union in Mali and beyond: a shotgun wedding?

The United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) have collaborated in building a viable African Peace and Security Architecture and have worked together in a number of armed conflicts over the past decade. Examples include the peace operations in Burundi and Somalia, and the hybrid peace operation in Sudan's Darfur region which is perhaps the most prominent illustration of this collaboration. Although the UN Security Council authorized the intervention in Libya, which was approved by leading regional organizations (the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Gulf Cooperation Council), it was opposed initially by the AU although the three African states in the Security Council voted for it. Relations cooled as a result and have grown colder still as the UN snubbed the AU and its initial efforts to engage in post‐conflict stabilization in Mali. While the AU sought to prove itself as a capable security provider and partner on the continent with its operation AFISMA, France's Opération Serval and the UN's peace operation for Mali, MINUSMA, bypassed the African Union. This article explores the underlying fault‐lines between the two organizations by examining interactions between the UN and AU since the latter's launch in 2002, but focusing on the Mali case. The fault‐lines emerging from the analysis are different capabilities, risk‐averse vs risk‐assuming approaches to casualties, diverging geopolitics and leadership rivalry.     

Islamist violence and regime stability in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia, homeland of Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers of September 11, 2001, experienced low levels of internal violence until 2003, when a terrorist campaign by ‘Al‐Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula’ (QAP) shook the world's leading oil producer. Based on primary sources and extensive fieldwork in the Kingdom, this article traces the history of the Saudi jihadist movement and explains the outbreak and failure of the QAP campaign. It argues that jihadism in Saudi Arabia differs from jihadism in the Arab republics in being driven primarily by extreme pan‐Islamism and not socio‐revolutionary ideology, and that this helps to explain its peculiar trajectory. The article identifies two subcurrents of Saudi jihadism, ‘classical’ and ‘global’, and demonstrates that Al‐Qaeda's global jihadism enjoyed very little support until 1999, when a number of factors coincided to boost dramatically Al‐Qaeda recruitment. The article argues that the violence in 2003 was not the result of structural political or economic strains inside the Kingdom, but rather organizational developments within Al‐Qaeda, notably the strategic decision taken by bin Laden in early 2002 to open a new front in Saudi Arabia. The QAP campaign was made possible by the presence in 2002 of a critical mass of returnees from Afghanistan, a clever two‐track strategy by Al‐Qaeda, and systemic weaknesses in the Saudi security apparatus. The campaign failed because the militants, radicalized in Afghan camps, represented an alien element on the local Islamist scene and lacked popular support. The near‐absence of violence in the Kingdom before 2003 was due to Al‐Qaeda's weak infrastructure in the early 1990s and bin Laden's 1998 decision to suspend operations to preserve local networks. The Saudi regime is currently more stable and self‐confident—and therefore less inclined to democratic reform—than it has been in many years.     

English Regionalization and Sustainability: Towards the Development of an Integrated Approach to Strategic Environmental Assessment

Central to this article is the suggestion that modern planning and development frameworks in England are currently at a potentially productive, although problematic turning point. Whilst on the one hand the UK is attempting to make the legislative and institutional changes necessary to facilitate the process of regionalization and devolution, it is at the same time facing the challenge of ensuring the necessary levels of inter-agency cohesion and integration required for the delivery of the meta-objectives at the heart of sustainable development. Of particular concern for the English regions is the increasing complexity of organizational relations, the fragmentary nature of provisions, the potential mismatch between the need to preserve environmental welfare and at the same time ensure regional economic competitiveness, and more fundamentally, the failure to provide an appropriate mechanism for the evaluation of sustainable development goals. In the light of these challenges, the authors highlight the value of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) as a mechanism for improving the environmental quality of decision-making and make recommendations as to how the regional level of decision-making can provide an effective platform for the development of an SEA system which is capable of reconciling the sustainability conflicts derived from different tiers of decision-making. Within this discussion, suggestions are made as to the manner in which current ideas for introducing sustainability appraisal for Regional Planning Guidance should be amended.