Since taking office, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has articulated a new paradigm to structure Western engagement with Africa. This paradigm dispels the idea that Africa is a sick and helpless continent for the West to rescue and instead calls for robust European-African partnerships to manage Africa’s genuine challenges of violence, poverty, and corruption. True to his reputation as a man of action, Sarkozy has already transformed these ideas into practical policies, and the result has been a flurry of promising and innovative diplomatic initiatives concerning Africa over the past two months, especially vis-à-vis the ongoing tragedy in Darfur. If one [...]
MEMORIES AND MEMOIRS — At a farewell dinner for departing British ambassador Sir David Manning in Washington Friday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warmly recalled how she and Manning had worked together during the Iraq war: Rice as national security adviser to President Bush, and the ambassador as her counterpart at 10 Downing Street. But this harmonious picture doesn’t quite match the one Manning painted in the New Statesman magazine, claiming that the Bush administration sometimes failed to inform Prime Minister Tony Blair of key decisions on Iraq, or failed to take into account British objections. For example, Manning insists [...]
The arrest earlier this month of three Islamic radicals suspected of planning attacks on American military installations in Germany has again called attention to the southern German towns of Neu-Ulm and Ulm. The alleged leader of the trio, Fritz G., comes from Ulm. As Roland Ströbele of the local Neu-Ulmer Zeitung reports, the twin cities on opposite banks of the Danube have in recent years become a bustling hub of Jihadist activism. NEU-ULM/ULM, Germany — And once again the trail leads to Neu-Ulm. One of the three presumed members of an Islamic terror group arrested earlier this month in Germany [...]
