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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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A week in the world
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Focus Books Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Anger of a small god
By Peter SnowdonAs the NATO air war against Serbia receded from general consciousness, reports began to emerge of brutal purges within the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA is NATO's, and thus the UN's preferred partner in the rebuilding of the Kosovo province, and KLA leader Hashim Thaci has already named a provisional government with himself as prime minister. The KLA provided NATO forces with invaluable information during the recent air strikes. This, together with their own often ruthless operations on the ground, has enabled them to come out ahead of rival forces in the post-war race for power.
At the same time, a mission led by the United Nations' Environment Programme (UNEP), reported that Serbia had sustained environmental damage on a "devastating" scale as a result of the NATO air raids. Thousands of tons of toxic chemicals were released from more than 80 industrial plants destroyed by NATO bombs, polluting both land and surface and ground water for many miles around. Compounds released in huge quantities include substances known to cause cancer, miscarriages and birth defects, as well as fatal nerve and liver diseases. The report also suggested that bombs containing depleted uranium may have been dropped. The Danube is already acting as a major vector, carrying the pollution throughout the region far from its immediate sources. UNEP's report confirms earlier claims by local environmental groups that the war was turning into an ecological disaster, not only for Serbia, but for the whole of the Balkans. A full-scale UN environmental mission is now scheduled for mid-July, to try and assess the true scale of the catastrophe.
Chile's General Pinochet had an uncomfortable moment on Friday, when the CIA released 27 boxes of material relating to the early years of his dictatorship. Simultaneously, a French court announced that it would be resuming its enquiry into whether the general could be tried in France for crimes against humanity. Pinochet, who is currently in Britain, is already facing an extradition demand from Spain lodged last October. However, observers pointed out that the new material released by Washington was heavily censored -- almost every page carries sections that have been blacked out -- and that while it shows the Nixon administration was aware from the beginning of Pinochet's state terrorism, there is nothing here to directly implicate the general. Just a coincidence, perhaps?
Mozambique enjoyed a rare moment of good news, when the World Bank named it as the fourth country to receive debt relief under its Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. As a result, the country's external debt will fall from $2.7 billion to $1 billion, and the service payments will decrease from $169 million per annum last year, to an average of $73 million over the next six years. Mozambique was widely seen as a litmus test for the seriousness of the HIPC initiative, which has struggled to make much impact, due to a perceived lack of determination on the Bank's part. Yet if the decision to grant relief was largely an attempt by the Bank to save face, there is still a kind of justice to it. Mozambique's economy, exhausted by colonisation and a twelve-year civil war, was virtually destroyed by the export liberalisation reforms imposed by the Bank following the 1992 peace treaty between the government and South African-backed insurgents.
It also emerged last week that French President Jacques Chirac will be including Togo on his next tour of Africa, scheduled for late July. This decision is seen as highly controversial, especially in the light of a recent report by Amnesty International detailing how hundreds of bodies of victims of extrajudicial executions carried out by President Gnassinbè Eyadéma's regime came to be washed up on the country's shoreline. The bodies had been dropped out to sea from an airplane, whence they returned to haunt their murderers. The government of Togo, which has denied the claims, this week hired French lawyer Jacques Vergès, famous for his defence of Nazi war criminals, to institute proceedings against Amnesty for spreading false information. The case will be heard in Lomé, not London, for "technical reasons", Vergès told the press. He also suggested that an international arrest warrant could be issued against Amnesty secretary general Pierre Sané.
In East Timor, pro-Indonesian paramilitaries have stepped up attacks on the UN Mission, which is helping to prepare the referendum on autonomy/independence originally scheduled for 8 August, and already due to be delayed by at least two weeks. Meanwhile, in Aceh, northern Sumatra, separatist guerrillas continue to engage in running battles with the Indonesian military. Aceh was the first Islamic sultanate in Southeast Asia, and was recognised as an independent state by Queen Elizabeth I of England. Official results of June's Indonesian national elections are set to be announced on 8 July.
Acclaimed author Arundhati Roy told a meeting in New Delhi, India, that she was donating the Booker Prize monies she had won for her best-selling novel The God of Small Things to the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), the people's organisation which has been resisting attempts by the state governments of Gujurat and Madhya Pradesh to build a series of dams in the Narmada Valley. Many thousands of people have already lost their livelihoods and homes to a programme whose possible benefits, other than in payoffs and kickbacks, remain so highly speculative that even the World Bank, one of the original sponsors, has withdrawn promised funding for fear of embarrassment.
The Sardar Sarovar main dam is due to fill for the first time during the coming monsoon season, and the NBA has declared a final satyagraha (non-violent resistance campaign). Members began a one-week fast on 4 July, while many villagers have pledged not to leave their homes, but to let the waters come and take them. Besides her donation, Roy, who wrote eloquently of her outrage at what she had learned during a recent trip to the Narmada region in the 4 June issue of Frontline magazine, is one of those leading a people's solidarity march which is to leave New Delhi on 29 July, reaching the Narmada Valley on 1 August.
The CIA documents on the Pinochet regime can be consulted at www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive. Arundhati Roy's essay on the Narmada struggle, "The Greater Common Good", is available at www.frontlineonline.com.
