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Published 3rd December 1999

Vol 40 No 24


The blue helmets return

Weak mandates and lack of resources have hobbled UN operations - new missions in Congo and Sierra Leone face the same constraints

In Africa, a dozen wars are simmering, affecting more than 200 million people, and the United Nations is committing itself to an unprecedented series of peacekeeping and monitoring operations. The blue helmets are heading for Sierra Leone; a mega-mission is being prepared for Congo-Kinshasa; there is heavy Western pressure to keep a foot in Angola's door; further - much further - down the line, plans must be made for a mission in Eritrea-Ethiopia. And, delayed again until December 2000, the UN is due to hold a referendum on Western Sahara. UN intervention failed miserably in Angola, Rwanda and Somalia. Why are the interveners back?


Pharaoh's frown

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

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The new government is riding a nationalist wave but still needs to win political credibility

Egypt is in the throes of a nationalist backlash, a reaction to claims in the Western media, particularly in the United States, that the co-pilot of the airliner which crashed on 3...


Mubarak's men - new and old

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The ruling party barons remain unchanged: some have been around since President Gamal Abdel Nasser's day. The new faces are mainly technocratic and junior: gradualist and market-or...


Tarnished gold

Confusion in the markets, muddle at the top and elections ahead

The peaceful march by oppositionists to a rally at Accra sports stadium on 25 November has put the country's wobbly economy back at the political centre-stage and President Jerry J...


Lousy legacies

President Obasanjo's good start is being threatened by poverty and ethnic nationalism

Street fighting over control of a local market in the old capital, Lagos, in late November, in which over 100 people have died, started just as President Olusegun Obasanjo's govern...



Pointers

Tandja wins, ok

The former ruling party pulled it off again: Mamadou Tandja of the Mouvement National pour la Société de Développement polled 59.9 per cent of the vote in the military-run presiden...


Going to the dentist

Abdelkader Hachani was murdered by a lone gunman on 22 November as he waited to see an Algiers dentist. He was the leading Islamist at liberty, nominally number three in the banned...


Hostile homeland

The opposition's swift rejection of the 25 November agreement between the National Islamic Front and Umma Party has surprised both signatories. National Democratic Alliance leaders...