Investigators for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) have concluded that, due primarily to a lack of effective centralized training and coordination, DOD personnel involved in previous counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations may have violated Americans’ civil liberties when reviewing their financial and other personal records. According to documents recently released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, the department has issued 455 national security letters — subpoenas that allow authorized government officials to examine, without court order, the personal data of American citizens suspected of involvement in espionage, terrorism, and other activities that threaten the security of the United States [...]
Editor’s Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur: a trip that was documented in a diary published in English on World Politics Review and that would see him eventually turning back from the border due to inadequate security conditions. In late October, Pelda returned to the region and crossed the border into Darfur, where he accompanied a Darfur rebel group. The diary of his trip was published on the NZZ Online in German, and World Politics [...]
After the Sept. 16 Blackwater scandal, which drew unprecedented attention to the role played by private security contractors (PSCs) in Iraq, these firms have increasingly come under scrutiny in other theaters of war, such as Afghanistan. But while efforts in Afghanistan to rein in PSCs seem to parallel those in Iraq, they are driven by different dynamics — and have very different implications. Earlier this month, the Afghan parliament, emboldened by the Iraq legislature’s attempt to assert jurisdiction over contractors, drafted a law that could curb operations by private security contractors. Then last week Afghanistan’s Ministry of the Interior (MOI) [...]
