Africa

Barack Obama's got a new point man in Sudan. On March 31 the U.S. president announced that Princeton Lyman, a retired ambassador with a diplomatic pedigree as distinguished as his name, will replace J. Scott Gration as his special envoy to the war-torn country. Lyman's credentials are strong. He has been working the Sudan file since last August, so he will hit the ground running.

In late February I posted a piece on CNN.com titled "Al Qaeda the loser in Arab revolutions" making the point that Osama bin Laden must be watching the events in the Middle East unfold with a mixture of glee and despair.

Glee, because overthrowing the dictatorships and monarchies of the Middle East has long been his central goal. Despair, because none of the Arab revolutions has anything to do with him.

In September 2007, U.S. soldiers raided a desert encampment outside the town of Sinjar in northwest Iraq, looking for insurgents. Amid the tents, they made a remarkable discovery: a trove of personnel files -- more than 700 in all -- detailing the origins of the foreign fighters al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) had brought into the country to fight against coalition forces.

Current trends suggest that a major energy transition is unlikely before 2020. It is only after that date that trends such as the exhaustion of cheap oil or China’s conversion to a consumer society might raise prices enough to trigger long-term changes.

As protesters from Benghazi to Sanaa risk their lives in the name of democratic freedoms, while Bush-era stalwarts cry victory for the "Freedom Agenda" and their opponents note that freedom in Egypt and Tunisia came from within, it is worth remembering two things: that the right to vote is worth such sacrifice, and that it is far from a guarantee of freedom.

Ten days ago, a besieged Arab leader decided to crush his country's democracy movement. First, he called in 2,000 foreign troops to suppress the uprising. Then he declared martial law and cut off phone and Internet services. At dawn he deployed tanks to clear the streets and ordered his forces to arrest or shoot anyone who tried to resist. Government troops surrounded and seized a hospital used by demonstrators to treat their wounded. Medical personnel were prevented even from taking away the dead bodies.

Some commentators love the Libya war; others hate it. But most agree that it's profoundly unnatural that we were pushed into it by… France. Welcome to the post-American world. In the age we're entering, most of the time, the choice will no longer be between humanitarian interventions controlled by the United States and humanitarian interventions where other nations take the lead. The choice will be between humanitarian interventions where other nations take the lead and no humanitarian interventions at all.

The Sudanese government is preventing aid organizations from delivering food and health services to hundreds of thousands of people in the conflict-ridden Darfur region of the country, according to one of the largest remaining groups there.

The crackdown has left displaced populations at risk of disease and malnutrition as the government increases military operations in the area.

Catholic Relief Services was forced to suspend its work in West Darfur state after the government told it to leave Jan. 20, the organization’s country director, Darren Hercyk, said in an interview.

The internet's contribution to the uprisings in the Middle East has been the subject of vehement (and mostly futile) debate. Ultimately, this argument will be settled by historians, not by technology gurus with half-baked theories. Instead we would all be far better off trying to understand how developments in the Middle East will soon reshape the internet itself.