The Ilisu Dam Project
Turkey has plans to build a massive dam on the Tigris river that would displace an estimated 55,000 people, submerge a 10,000-year old city, and could reduce water flow to neighboring Iraq and Syria by approximately 50%. Water disputes have troubled relations between the riparian countries for years. Existing Turkish dams on the Euphrates have [...]
Crisis on the Border
I spent a month wandering around the desert of Eastern Chad where a quarter million Darfur refugees are sustained by international aid agencies. European troops had just arrived under UN mandate to mount a peace-keeping mission to protect aid workers, locals and refugees from bandits and violence spilling over the border with Sudan. Darfuris fled a conflict over basic resources in Sudan 6 years ago, to a country already struggling with its own limitations, ushering Eastern Chad into a conflict of its own. The situation remains critical.
