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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Banging the drum
By Peter SnowdonOn Saturday, Russian troops entered the independent republic of Chechnya for the first time since the disastrous war of 1994-96. This invasion follows a week of brutal aerial bombardment, modelled on the now classic US-NATO approach to international justice (complete with satellite video-clips to be broadcast ad nauseam), in which countless civilians have been killed, and much of what remained of the republic's infrastructure destroyed (whole sectors of the capital Grozny were razed in the first war, and have never been rebuilt). The weekend, however, saw fierce ground fighting in the northern border region. So far, Russian losses seem to have outnumbered those of the Chechens by a substantial margin -- thus raising fears of a repetition of the tragedy of the last war, in which some 100,000 people lost their lives.
The official pretext for this extraordinary violence is the series of "terrorist" bomb attacks in September on Moscow apartment blocks, in which more than 300 people died. Cynics, however, have not been slow to cast doubt on the official attribution of the blasts to Central Asian Islamist groups, preferring to see them as a sinister publicity stunt mounted by a weak, yet ruthless, government with one eye on December's legislative elections, and the other on next June's presidential contest. Since it has long been rumoured in Moscow that the 1994-96 war in fact began as a battle over pipeline fees between a Russian oil company with strong Kremlin connections and the Chechen mafia, the cynics' version should perhaps not be entirely discounted. Arch-manipulator Boris Berezovsky, whose interests include the occasional oil company, and who only recently finished putting together Yeltsin's new Unity coalition group, withdrew from public life last week, reportedly so that he could convalesce from hepatitis. Elsewhere in the soap opera that is Russian political life, Yeltsin's wife Naina could be seen appearing on prime-time television to protest the innocence of her daughter and son-in-law, who are currently embroiled in a financial scandal.
Chechen sources claim that more than 600 people died in last week's bombing campaign. Over 110,000 people have already fled the country, taking refuge in the impoverished neighbouring republic of Ingushetia -- a number the Ingush government predicts could well treble in the coming days. Nevertheless, Russian sources continued to deny Monday that large-scale land war was imminent, insisting instead that their aim was simply to seal off the Chechen borders and prevent the infiltration of "terrorists".
Last week found the German-speaking peoples in typically schizophrenic mode. The people of Austria rewarded Jörg Haider's racist neo-Nazi Freedom Party with second place in the country's general elections and 27.2 per cent of the vote, while the Swedish Nobel committee awarded this year's literature prize to Günther Grass, Germany's most celebrated living novelist and a long-standing left-wing activist. Grass, who achieved international fame with his first novel, The Tin Drum, published in 1959, was a close friend of Willy Brandt, but resigned his membership of the Social Democratic Party in 1992 in protest at the adoption of a repressive policy on political asylum.
The close of India's marathon five-week general elections Sunday were marked by violence in a number of states, in particular Assam, Tripura and Manipur in the north-east, where separatist insurgents who have been fighting long-running wars against the federal government had declared an election boycott. Other victims fell casualty to shoot-outs between supporters of rival political parties. In all, 39 people were reported dead. Final results will not be announced until 20 October, due to the need for repeat ballots in a number of constituencies, where the first round of voting was marred by floods, fraud or the murder of one or more candidates.
Exit polls over the first four weekends of voting had suggested that the alliance led by the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) could win a clear majority. However, this week's polls in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, suggested a last-minute resurgence for the Congress (I) party, led by Sonia Gandhi, the widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Should they come to power, the BJP is threatening to ban women's NGOs from receiving foreign funding, on the grounds that the organisations have been using the money to engage in illegal "political activity" during the election campaign. Representatives of 10 groups who are currently under investigation by the interior ministry responded that the move was simply retaliation for an advertisement which, under the caption, "They Don't Respect Women," had singled out a number of BJP leaders for recent statements justifying the Hindu "custom" of sati, in which widows burn themselves on their husband's funeral pyres, and condoning wife-beating and dowry payments. The attack on the NGOs is simply the last stage in a campaign of intimidation directed against the women's movements, among other civil society groups, throughout the election period.
It wasn't a good week for women in Africa, either, as fundamentalist Muslim groups in Niger protested their government's decision to sign the UN Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), claiming that it contradicts the teachings of Islam. In Sierra Leone, the international organisation is proving unpopular too. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which three months ago signed a peace agreement with the government ending (fingers crossed) eight years of civil war, refused this week to consent to the proposed deployment of 6,000 UN peace keepers.
Nor was it a good week to go to prison -- at least not in Turkey, where a wave of riots swept through jails, while the media accused the prison authorities of mistreating inmates and colluding with the local mafia, whose activities have been known to make The Godfather look like an early Walt Disney cartoon. Venezuela wasn't a good place to be arrested, either, as 13 prisoners died in violent protests against detention conditions, despite recent reforms to the criminal code which have seen 2,200 convicts released in the last few weeks.
Meanwhile, as former British prime minister, war-monger, strike-breaker and experimental-electroshock-therapy enthusiast Margaret Thatcher prepared to address a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference on the theme of "General Pinochet -- the Briton's Friend", the United States decided to grant political asylum to Chilean journalist Alejandra Matus. Chile has been (nominally) a democracy for 10 years, but Pinochet's allies in the military continue to wield undue power over the country and its people, and human rights abuses are still regularly reported. The General, meanwhile, is still detained in Britain awaiting the outcome of hearings to determine whether or not he will be extradited to stand trial in Spain for crimes against humanity.
A president of quite a different sort is also presently detained in England against his will. Julius Kambarage Nyerere, former president of Tanzania, was admitted to St Thomas's Hospital, London, on Friday, where, as of this writing, he was critically ill on a life support machine. Nyerere, the "Conscience of Africa", did more to make the non-aligned movement a reality, and to construct a genuine alternative to the American vision of the future of the world, than almost any other politician of his generation. He was diagnosed with chronic leukemia last year, but continued to play an active role in the politics of the African continent until last month.
