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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 November 1999 Issue No. 456 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 November 1999 Issue No. 456
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A week in the world
Of sanctions and standards
By Peter SnowdonThe build up to the Millennium Apocalypse (sponsors: Exxon and McDonnell Douglas) continues apace. In early November it was Southern Asia's turn once more, as the cyclone which devastated the state of Orissa in India was followed by the worst floods to hit Vietnam this century. (Hands up those of you who remember the flooding along the upper and middle Yangtze this summer which left five million people homeless). Scientists now generally agree that this sequence of calamities can be traced back to the rise in the temperature of the Indian Ocean during 1998.
This week the focus shifted back to the Mediterranean basin, as south-west France was hit by (yes, you guessed it) the worst floods seen this century. The departments of the Tarn, Aude and Pyrénées Orientales received as much rain in 24 hours as they would normally get in a year. French Environment Minister Dominique Voynet, missing the point completely, declared that the devastation was "a natural catastrophe". Twenty two people died and the bill for the damage is expected to run into tens of millions of francs.
Revision: "Natural" disasters are caused by: a) nature; b) the Elders of Zion; c) the industrial-consumer society and its determination to release as much carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere as conceivably possible?
Tragedy also struck Turkey, when an earthquake centred on the town of Duzce, half-way between Ankara and Istanbul, killed 47 people and destroyed countless buildings. Experts said this was a new earthquake, measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The quake which had devastated Istanbul on 17 August, killing 17,000 people, reached 7.4, and has since been followed by literally hundreds of aftershocks.
Tie-breaker: Earthquakes are caused by: a) the divine will; b) the shifting of the earth's tectonic plates; c) the construction of massive dams and reservoirs in geologically sensitive areas, which can provoke unexpected faultline stress at great distances from their site?
Elsewhere, human beings impatient with such indirect methods of imposing suffering on one another as the massive burning of fossil fuels and large-scale infrastructure projects resorted to more forthright tactics. In the Congo, the government of Laurent-Desire Kabila made it clearer than ever before that it was planning an all-out offensive against the insurgents who have been seeking to overthrow the regime since August. If war does break out, it will represent more than just an "internal" conflict. The rebels of the Congolese Rally for Democracy are backed by Uganda, Rwanda and -- according to the regime in Kinshasa -- the United States. The Congolese Armed Forces, for their part, have recently recruited 70,000 new soldiers, who are now being trained by instructors from Zimbabwe, Angola and North Korea. The government is also reported to have ordered over $1 billion-worth of weapons from China. Who said the Cold War was over?
The situation is hardly any cheerier in Burundi, where Western human rights groups are warning of an imminent disaster. Peace talks between the Tutsi-dominated government and mainly Hutu opposition groups are due to resume shortly. But in the meantime, rebels are launching regular attacks on the capital Bujumbura in which hundreds have been killed, while the army is inflicting a reign of terror on the "regroupment camps", including widespread torture and summary executions. In early September, the government ordered more than a quarter of a million people, most of them Hutus, to be forcibly relocated from the regions around the capital into some 50 camps, ostensibly for their own safety. Conditions in the camps are described as "appalling", with most people having no access to shelter or water. Though armed groups do seem to have infiltrated certain camps, the majority of those being singled out for "reprisals" are believed to be civilians.
Last week marked the fourth anniversary of the mass execution in Nigeria of the 'Ogoni Nine' environmental activists, among them the author and campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa. The Nine had played a leading role in the resistance of the Ogoni people against the suppression of their rights and the devastation of their lands in the Niger delta by Western oil companies, in particular Shell, working in consort with the Nigerian government. Protests around the world to mark the anniversary coincided with reports that both Shell (now Royal Dutch Shell) and Elf Aquitaine were thinking of withdrawing from the consortium behind the controversial Chad-Cameroon Oil and Pipeline Project. This would leave Exxon as the sole remaining private stakeholder, along with the government of Chad.
If the $3.5 billion project goes ahead, it will involve drilling 300 oil wells in the Doba basin in southern Chad, as well as constructing a 1,050-km pipeline the length of Cameroon to carry the oil to a tanker moored in the Atlantic Ocean. Environmental and social 'hazards' along the way include the inevitable destruction of rain forests, possible pollution of major river systems and the forced displacement of whole communities. The World Bank is currently considering a package which could see it guaranteeing up to half a billion dollars of financing, while actively marketing the project to the international community as an "anti-poverty" project. The Ogoni people might have something to tell the people of Chad about what this kind of "poverty prevention" entails.
Elsewhere, ordinary people were getting into a trouble of a different kind, as demonstrators in Kabul lashed out against the UN sanctions against Afghanistan which came into force at midnight on Saturday. The US-orchestrated sanctions are intended to punish the Taliban regime for its failure to expel suspected terrorist and public enemy number one Osama Bin Laden. Although the sanctions, freezing Afghan assets overseas and grounding the national airline, are unlikely to have much effect on everyday life, people's patience is fast running out, following a poor harvest and trade restrictions imposed by Pakistan. On Friday, Islamabad was rocked by rocket attacks near to the US government and UN offices. Only one person was injured.
Last week also saw the death of the great American trumpeter, Lester Bowie, who died of liver cancer at the age of 58. Joint founder of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Bowie's work transcended all attempts to reduce him to a "jazz" musician. Long at the cutting edge of the black avant garde, he was equally at home -- and equally iconoclastic -- in Brechtian free improvisation, reinventing New Orleans marches and Motown standards or covering songs by Andrew Lloyd-Webber. Between tours, he would wander the world, earning his keep by playing wherever they'd let him. He once spent a year in Jamaica, just practising. In Nigeria, he was saved from homelessness by Fela Kuti, who gave him both a job and a home. On stage he was inimitable, a black Groucho Marx, with his Pharaonic beard and signature white technician's lab coat. He played the trumpet as though he was trapped inside it, as though he would never fully understand how it worked. But he knew how to work it better than anyone else of his generation. And whatever he played, he was always playing the Great Black Music. There was no one as angry as him, and no one who knew how to make anger sound like so much fun. He was still touring two weeks before he died. He is survived by his wife, Deborah, and six children.
