Editor’s Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur. Over 200,000 Sudanese refugees live in eastern Chad, having fled the violence in Darfur. The region likewise serves as staging grounds for the Darfur rebels fighting against the Sudanese government. During his three weeks traveling in the region, Pelda kept a diary, which provides a portrait of the Darfur conflict that is perhaps unrivaled in its detail and nuance. In daily installments through the beginning of August, World Politics [...]
The Turkish nation delivered its verdict last week, even taking Erdogan and his supporters by surprise. Turkey’s parliamentary elections on July 22 resulted in a decisive victory for Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, of the Islamic-rooted party AKP. The AKP’s 47 percent of the vote has reaffirmed the party’s place as one of the most powerful political parties in the history of Turkish elections, claiming an even larger share of the vote than was realized in 2002. “Democracy has passed a very important test,” Erdogan said in his victory speech, amidst bursting firecrackers and showering balloons at his Ankara party headquarters. [...]
Earlier this year, the French General Secretariat for National Defense (SGDN) reaffirmed a warning to French policymakers that the ubiquitous BlackBerry represents a potential intelligence vulnerability when used to transmit sensitive information. The BlackBerry is a handheld computer developed by the Canadian firm Research in Motion (RIM) that allows users to forward electronic messages sent via the Internet (email) to the device. According to French sources, the main SGDN concern is that the security framework used by the BlackBerry to transmit email is vulnerable to interception by British and American intelligence. As a result, the French government restricted its use [...]
