September 1997

Abuses of power by the police in sub-Saharan Africa - rape, torture, extortion, violence - are so common that they cannot even be dismissed as “mistakes” any longer. Now it is not just human rights campaigners who are concerned about the long catalogue of misdeeds. The public have had enough and are starting to build their own barricades and protect themselves - although even this has its own risks.
The police in Africa are losing control. The explosion of armed crime on the continent (...)

With its merger unopposed by the European commissioner for competition and the US Federal Trade Commission, Boeing-McDonnell Douglas is in a monopoly position. This private sector group, which sells half of its production to the army, is determined to subdue its only rival, the European Airbus Consortium, faced with daunting choices. The US is asserting its dominance in the high-tech industries (particularly civil and military aerospace) over its European and Asian counterparts, not least in the sectors targeted by countries with new aerospace industries.

Last June’s legislative elections in Canada has led to a Balkanisation of political representation, with each of the three major parties only winning real support within a small segment of the federation. Of the 155 seats won by Jean Chrétien’s Liberal Party, 103 were in Ontario and they only just managed to survive in Ottawa. The Bloc québécois with 44 seats only exists within Quebec. And the ultra-liberal Reform Party won all its 60 seats, bar one, within the western provinces. This fragmentation will become even more pronounced in 1999 when a new autonomous Canadian territory, Nunavut, is created in the Northwest Territories. This might be followed later, within Quebec itself, by Nunavik, to form a common home to the Inuit, scattered throughout the Arctic

Liberalism is for others. Although it insists on unlimited access for American products from the rest of the world, Washington has not hesitated since the end of the second world war to intervene financially, politically and diplomatically in sectors it considers strategic for maintaining US dominance. Communication is one of these sectors, and the most critical one, from both the industrial and the symbolic point of view, for mastering the ³information society² of the next century.

The land grab is not just taking place in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. It is continuing in Israel too. Wholesale confiscation has always been the name of the game in the Galilee and it still affects the Bedouin of the Negev. With 92% of the land in the hands of state bodies, a debate has now begun over privatisation. But there is no question of land passing into non-Jewish hands. So much for the equality of Israel’s Arab citizens...

Against a background of blast furnaces and molten metal, the muscular young workers cut heroic figures. The legendary city of Magnitogorsk produced the steel for half the Soviet tanks in the second world war. Poets have sung its praises and painters glorified this bastion of the sombre, Stalinist 1930s, a period that was nevertheless full of hope for the future. How does this city, where a whole generation dreamed of creating the ³new man², feel about the changes that have been taking place in Russia since 1991? Some are paying dearly for the chaotic transition under way, others are doing very nicely.

A political earthquake hit Mexico on 6 July with its elections. For the first time in almost 70 years, the Institutional Revolutionary Party lost its absolute majority in the Chamber of Deputies. It also lost several states and the mayorship of Mexico City. In Chiapas, the Zapatista National Liberation Army issued no directives about the elections, choosing instead to withdraw to the sheltering greenery of the Lacandona Forest. From this sanctuary the head of the ZNLA, Sub-Commandant Marcos, sent us this original and geostrategic analysis of the new world picture.

A European import, freemasonry is remarkably widespread in both French and English-speaking Africa, as it is in Latin America and the United States. Freemasonry is often to be found close to the centres of power. Simon Bolivar and President Roosevelt were both masons; and in Gabon, President Omar Bongo is their eminence grise. African freemasons often seek to act as mediators in the frequent crises accompanying the current democratisation of the continent.

For the first time, with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians are gaining legal control over their land. But there are all sorts of problems to overcome in registering and selling land, establishing titles — and preventing forgery.

On 6 July King Fahd appointed 60 new members to the Saudi consultative council (shura), bringing their numbers to 90, only two of whom are Shiites. Set up in August 1993, the council may lack teeth but there is still surprise at the appearance of numerous university graduates as well as a few ³dissidents², known for their outspoken ways. A desire for change is growing. For, despite the oil riches, economic and social difficulties are piling up and the kingdom is paralysed by the king’s fading health and bitter squabbles for the succession. The mystery surrounding the investigation into the bomb attack at Al Khobar on 25 June 1996, in which 19 US soldiers died, casts an strange light on the last days of a reign, as well as Riyadh’s relations with Washington.

After Zaire, 1997 could see the fall of another of the continent’s “giants”, Sudan, where the changing military situation on the eastern borders and in the south is a source of great uncertainty. The fate of the Islamist regime in Khartoum looks likely to depend on the attitude of the new geopolitical bloc that has emerged in East Africa around Uganda (and its ally, the Democratic Republic of Congo), Ethiopia and Eritrea. The situation is being closely watched by South Africa, keen to step in as mediator.

Xinjiang, the vast, partially uninhabited region on China’s western fringe once known as East Turkestan, has been the scene of unrest on the part of the Uighur minority for some years now. In response to a wave of bomb attacks, Beijing is using strong-arm tactics. A solution similar to that on the other side of the border, where the collapse of the Soviet Union was followed by the creation of independent Central Asian republics, seems out of the question despite the aspirations of the Uighurs, who have long been established in Kazakhstan and dream of a state of their own.

A recent European Commission report confirms that, despite efforts to promote sexual equality and all the talk of “choice” and incentives to stay at home and care for the family, more and more women are coming on to the labour market, most of them taking poorly paid jobs. Although women make up a growing proportion of the working population in Europe, they are suffering more than men from the general deterioration in working conditions and complacency about poverty.