In The News

In Dusty Turkish Village, Surfing the Web for Brides

Yigal Schleifer July 14, 2009
The arrival of the internet in Turkey’s rural southeast has had at least one surprising consequence: men in the village of Gokce have started using the web to seek second wives from abroad. Although in the past, Turkish men would travel to neighboring Syria, now they increasingly use Arabic chat websites to attract potential wives from Morocco. Moroccan women make appealing candidates because...

Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology

Christopher Rhoads, Loretta Chao June 25, 2009
The Iranian government, with the help of equipment developed by Siemens and Nokia, is operating an advanced internet monitoring system capable of spreading disinformation, blocking communications, and mining internet data for personal information. The government’s internet monitoring capability, supported by a national telecommunications monopoly, is believed to rival China’s “Great Firewall” for...

Tear Down This Cyberwall!

Nicholas D. Kristof June 23, 2009
As the election-related violence in Iran continues, help for some opponents of the current regime has come from an unlikely source: China, or more accurately Chinese living abroad. “Censorship-evading” software that helped the Falun Gong movement to spread its message is being used by close to 400,000 Iranians wishing to inform the rest of the world about the crisis currently gripping their...

Obama’s Middle East Challenge – Part II

Dilip Hiro June 18, 2009
In this second part of a two part series on Obama’s Middle East challenges, author Dilip Hiro offers a pointed analysis of the Iranian election, detailing its flaws and its possible aftermath. Prior to the election, Iranian opinion polls suggested opposition candidate and former Prime Minister, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, was leading incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Thus it came as a surprise...

Iran Cracks Down on Internet Use, Foreign Media

Christopher Rhoads, Geoffrey A. Fowler, Chip Cummins June 17, 2009
The disputed Iranian election has revealed Iran’s unique approach to internet censorship: controlling bandwidth and centralized blocking of sites. Compared with other countries that have used blanket censoring, either by shutting down access to the Internet or by disallowing certain websites, Iran’s approach is technically more complex and nuanced. Controlling bandwidth allows the internet to run...

Obama’s Middle East Challenge – Part I

Fawaz A. Gerges June 16, 2009
With President Obama’s ground-breaking speech in Cairo and the turbulent Iranian election, the Middle East is witnessing a quickening tempo of history. In the first of this two-part series on Obama’s Middle East challenge, Middle Eastern Studies professor Fawaz A. Gerges analyzes Obama’s speech, which he thinks could prove to be a pivotal moment in Middle East politics. At the least, it shows a...

Pakistan, Taliban and Global Security – Part II

Robert D. Blackwill May 12, 2009
It is a welcome development that the US and President Obama personally are engaged in dealing with the worsening situation in Pakistan brought about by the Taliban insurgency. But such engagement does not go far enough, according to former US Ambassador to India Robert D. Blackwill. To be sure, the US needs to help secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe...