YEAR IN REVIEW 1996: WORLD-AFFAIRS: SPOTLIGHT

Spotlight: Mexico, the Painful Changes Rarely had a country turned from a showcase into a basket case in such a short period of time. At the end of 1993, after signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico seemed strong, stable, and poised to enter the developed world. By the end of 1995, the country was suffering the deepest recession in its history, and its political system appeared to be in shambles. What happened over those 24 months was important not only for Mexico, which was paying dearly for any errors it may have committed, but also for the U.S., which as a neighbour bore the immediate consequences of any Mexican crisis. There were no agreed-upon answers about what actually caused the Mexican downfall. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Len, who took over as president on Dec. 1, 1994, claimed that his administration inherited an overvalued peso, which produced an unaffordable current-account deficit of almost $29 billion in 1994. It was this that led to the peso's devaluation, he argued, and to the ensuing economic crisis. Former finance minister Pedro Aspe disagreed, however. The peso was not overvalued, he claimed, as was proved by the fact that exports rose 23% in 1994. Capital did not flee because of economic circumstances. At first, capital left as a response to political events and crimes--most notably the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio, presidential candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), on March 23, 1994. The real collapse, said Aspe, was provoked by the devaluation of the peso ordered in December 1994 by President Zedillo. Mexico's powerful leftist groups disagreed with both views. They argued that the economic crisis was provoked by the economic liberalization engineered by Pres. Carlos Salinas de Gortari from 1988 to 1994. Privatizing state companies and opening the borders to trade were the crucial decisions that weakened Mexico. NAFTA, in their opinion, was the straw that broke the camel's back. It would be hard to argue against the view that the current-account deficit was at least part of the problem. It was true that Mexico's exports were rising in 1994, but the current-account deficit made the country excessively dependent on short-term foreign money. Maintaining this capital flow was not a problem when the country was hailed as a showcase, but the flow reversed when the Colosio assassination generated doubts about Mexico's political future. Aspe was right, however, when he claimed that devaluation had aggravated the problem. The drastic drop in the peso's value, only days after the government had vowed not to devalue, shattered the confidence of investors and savers. It took four weeks for the country to lose $10 billion in reserves after the Colosio assassination--but only two days for the same amount to move from pesos into dollars after the devaluation. Mexico's privatizations and trade opening were probably necessary. During the 1980s Mexico had carried an unsustainable budget deficit, which peaked at 16% of gross domestic product (GDP). The privatizations were a crucial part of a strategy that eliminated this deficit and brought the public sector's debt from 68% of GDP in 1988 to 32% in 1994. A highly protected domestic economy had been maintained for decades, so the trade opening sharply increased imports, but it also generated competition benefiting consumers and promoted exports. Mexico's foreign sales stood at $21 billion in 1988; by 1995 they were forecast to rise to $80 billion. There was no indication that NAFTA, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 1994, either precipitated or accelerated the economic collapse. In October of that year, when the peso was allegedly overvalued, Mexico was already chalking up a trade surplus with its North American partners, the U.S. and Canada. Mexico's deficit was a consequence of trade with East Asia and Europe, where protectionist practices allegedly prevented the importation of Mexican products. On the contrary, a dearth of domestic savings was a major factor in the crisis. During the Salinas administration, improved expectations and the privatization of the nation's banks boosted credit to private companies and individuals. Consumption and investment rose more than income, while savings declined, generating demand for foreign money. In 1995 President Zedillo increased the value-added tax to reduce consumption and reformed the country's pensions system to boost savings. This was expected to reduce dependence on foreign capital and to provide stability to Mexico's volatile financial markets. It would take years, however, for accumulated pensions to provide the kind of long-term capital Mexico needed. This was why political reform became so urgent. The assassination of presidential candidate Colosio sparked the initial bout of capital flight in 1994 because investors saw the country as lacking adequate political institutions. Mexico's traditionally benign authoritarianism, built upon an extremely powerful presidency, had provided stability for decades, but it made the country's entire political structure dependent on the president--and his successor. Reform negotiations involving the three major political parties began in early 1995 and sought to generate a new and more balanced political structure, giving greater power to the legislative and judicial branches of government as well as to municipal and state administrations. The reforms, said to be nearly agreed upon at the end of 1995, were set to change electoral rules that had allowed the PRI to remain in power since 1929 and thus be one of the longest-ruling parties in the world. President Zedillo did not wait for political reform to try to clean the country's fraud-marred elections. In 1995, the first year of his administration, there were five elections involving state governorships. The PRI lost three of them. Traditionalists in Mexico claimed that these defeats demonstrated the weakness of the president, but Zedillo argued that in a true democracy it was normal for a ruling party to lose elections during a recession. It was not easy for a country to change from a closed to an open economy and from an authoritarian to a democratic system at the same time. Every change generates turbulence, of course, and this turbulence was what was seen in Mexico in 1994 and 1995. Liberalizing the economy and democratizing political life would not turn Mexico into a showcase again any time soon, but at least they could generate more solid foundations for building a better future. Sergio Sarmiento, a syndicated newspaper columnist in Mexico, is also vice president for news operations at Televisin Azteca, Mexico's second largest TV network. Spotlight: Native American Cultural Ferment In the United States and Canada, tribal cultures exist in a delicate, somewhat precarious balance relative to the power and interests of the dominant European cultures. Now, however, national policy in both countries seems to be moving in a direction that favours--or at least accommodates--the promotion of Native American heritage. During 1995, for example, several museums agreed to repatriate culturally sensitive objects to tribes. The Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Ariz., stipulated that a wooden False Face mask in its possession was in fact the rightful property of the Oneida Nation in New York. The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago responded similarly to the Oneidas' claim to a shell bead wampum belt and recognized the right of the Pawnee tribe in Oklahoma to possess two other significant pieces in its collection, the Little Elk Standing Village Bundle and the Big Black Meteorite Bundle. Such transfers of culturally significant materials represent a dramatic change in public policy. For many years the American Indian peoples of both the United States and Canada were perceived as a vanishing race--unfortunate, but inevitable, victims of Western civilization's march toward perfection. Today these tribes are not usually depicted as teetering on the brink of cultural or physical extinction. In fact, many members of U.S. Indian tribes and Canada's First Nations actively engage in cultural nurturing and revitalization, including new emphasis on tribal government, identification of stable sources for group economic well-being, and encouragement of the use of indigenous languages. There is also increased concern about the preservation of sacred sites and the repatriation of sacred objects. The Indian policies of the U.S. and Canada have long developed in tandem. In 1883, for example, the U.S. government's Indian Religious Crimes Code virtually outlawed tribal religions and established Courts of Indian Offenses, staffed by cooperative "progressive" tribe members, to aid Indians in "adopting and following civilized habits and pursuits." The following year the Canadian Indian Act banned communal potlatch giveaway ceremonies among Northwest Pacific Coast tribes because the practice was deemed deleterious to instilling respect for private, as opposed to common, property. Ultimately, both U.S. and Canadian efforts to eradicate or control tribal religions proved unsuccessful. Although those religions often bent to the winds of change, the old belief systems did not break. Today organized religions such as the Native American Church enjoy broad, intertribal support. Other forms of worship, linked to the land and a belief in myriad spiritual forces, also thrive. The legal battles surrounding the preservation of sacred sites and repatriation of sacred objects have so far largely taken place in the U.S., though developments are keenly watched by the tribal peoples of Canada as well. Religions throughout the world hold certain geographic locations sacred to their systems of belief. Many among the Hopi, a Puebloan people who have lived in northeastern Arizona since prehistoric times, think of the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff as the home of the kachinas, supernatural beings who help bring rain to their arid fields. Likewise, Hopi make pilgrimages to the sipapu, a site near the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers in the Grand Canyon, believing their ancestors emerged at that spot after escaping from a flood that inundated their previous home below the earth's crust. Some American Indian sacred sites are located on tribal land, some on government land, and still others on private property. (See Map.) No matter where a site is located, however, its care and condition remain of paramount concern to believers. Understandably, many Hopi resent the presence of ski operations on the San Francisco Peaks. Likewise, the vitality of a tribal religion depends on its control of the objects it holds sacred. Basically, repatriation involves the return to tribal control of such culturally sensitive items as human remains that may have been recovered during archaeological investigations and physical paraphernalia intimately entwined in the tapestry of indigenous religion. Examples include the Lakota's White Buffalo Calf Woman pipe, the Arapaho's flat pipe, and the Cheyenne's sacred arrows--all currently under tribal control. Although museums and governmental institutions in North America have sometimes dealt with Indians' concern about sacred sites and objects in a casual and ad hoc fashion, the U.S. legal code is undergoing fundamental changes in response to mounting pressures from tribal peoples. In 1978, reversing the long-standing policy of persecuting, or at best ignoring, tribal religions, the U.S. Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. AIRFA commits the federal government to protecting and preserving "for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions . . . including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites." The Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 restricts the removal of "archaeological resources on public lands and Indian lands," categorizing such materials as "an accessible and irreplaceable part of the Nation's heritage." In some jurisdictions the legal protection now has been extended to cover artifacts on private land as well. This may be leading in the direction of Roman law, which held that recovered objects of antiquity were the property of the entire nation. Although this is not yet the position of the U.S. or Canadian government, the concept appears to be gaining some currency in both nations. Through the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990, U.S. law addresses not only human remains (also covered in the National Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989, which focuses on the return of remains housed at the Smithsonian Institution) but "sacred objects" as well, defined as "ceremonial objects which are needed by traditional Native American religious leaders for the practice of traditional Native American religions by their present day adherents." NAGPRA also defines "cultural patrimony" as "an object having ongoing historical, traditional, or cultural importance central to the Native American group or culture itself, rather than property owned by an individual Native American, and which, therefore, cannot be alienated, appropriated, or conveyed by any individual regardless of whether or not the individual is a member of the Indian tribe." Because ownership is communal, an object of cultural patrimony is "considered inalienable by such Native American group at the time the object was separated from such group." NAGPRA allows tribes to press claims for the repatriation of certain categories of objects from any institution receiving federal funds. There is no statute of limitations. Some of the objects returned to tribal control under NAGPRA include: a Hopi Koyemsi (Mudhead) mask, a bandolier used in the Navajo Enemyway ceremony, several Zuni war god carvings, the Elk Tongue Beaver Bundle of the Blackfeet, and 31,651 funerary objects sacred to the Pawnee. The repatriation of objects under NAGPRA remains controversial, but sacred sites issues are perhaps even more difficult to resolve, especially when the sites in question are no longer under tribal control. In United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians (1980), for example, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government's 1877 acquisition of the Black Hills region of South Dakota from the seven Lakota tribes was extralegal. Although the Lakota were offered substantial monetary compensation, all seven tribal governments refused to accept payment, insisting upon the return of the land they regard as a holy place. As far as the Lakota are concerned, the issue remains unresolved. Conflicts over sites of religious significance can occur between tribes as well--or even divide a single tribe. Some Navajo in northern Arizona, for example, revere sites in the Chuska Mountains, while others work for the tribe's logging company that harvests timber in the Chuskas. Strip-mining of coal on Black Mesa, another site of spiritual significance, is offensive to some Navajo despite support for the mining corporation by the Navajo tribal government. One might expect the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to provide some protection to sacred places, but this has not been the case to date. In Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association (1987), the Supreme Court announced that the government's use of federal land thought of as sacred by an Indian tribe does not impose an onerous burden on the free exercise of religion, even if that use results in the physical destruction of the site. Still, the freedom of religion issue lies at the core of tribal perceptions about sacred sites. As the Lyng case implies, this is something of an ambiguous area in U.S. law, a condition almost certainly attributable to the fact that Indian religions were long grouped with superstitions. This view seems to be losing favour, although Euro-American conceptions of property rights will require considerable adjustment to accommodate the spiritual needs and claims of the continent's oldest inhabitants. Ron McCoy is director of the Center for Great Plains Studies at Emporia (Kansas) State University and is the author of Kiowa Memories: Images from Indian Territory, 1880. Spotlight: Pollution in Eastern Europe In 1995 Eastern Europe pondered ways to clean itself up. Well it might, since it is arguably the most polluted region on Earth. (See Map.) From Poland to Romania and from the Czech Republic to Moldova, its skies are dirty, its rivers and lakes contaminated, and its soils so poisoned that in some places the crops are inedible. Shortly before the Soviet Union's demise in 1991, the Kremlin admitted that 3.5 million sq km (1.35 million sq mi), 16% of the nation's territory, were so polluted as to be a risk to human health. They were a risk to political health as well; some of the 45 million people who were worst affected joined other protesters in making environmental degradation a catalyst for ending communist mismanagement. Poland serves well as an example of how bad things can get. The Polish Academy of Sciences has described the country as the most polluted in the world. Few of its coal-burning industrial facilities and power plants have effective pollution-control systems, yet coal is crucial since it supplies about 80% of the country's energy. Air pollution in nearly every major city is 50 times the legal limit; it also has reduced yields of barley, beans, and potatoes by 10-55%. About half of Poland's cities have no wastewater-treatment systems. Even in Warsaw only half of the sewage is treated, the rest being dumped raw into the Vistula River, which carries it to the Baltic Sea. Water along most of the lengths of the country's monitored rivers is too polluted to drink even after disinfection. A fourth of the country's soil is believed to be so contaminated that it cannot grow food that is safe for people or livestock, and in the Katowice region 90% of fruit and vegetables are thought to be toxic to humans. Fortunately, Poland is now working to reduce pollution. In 1992 the government shut down 18 of the dirtiest industrial plants. In 1995 it tried--with only moderate success--to implement the antipollution standards laid down in the comprehensive National Environmental Policy of 1990, the first such plan in Eastern Europe. Other countries of the region face similar problems. In the former East Germany, average levels of sulfur dioxide and particulates are many times those found in the U.S. The town of Boxberg, with its lignite-burning power plant, emits more sulfur dioxide annually than the total emissions of Denmark and Norway combined. Acid rain has damaged 35% of Hungary's forests, 50% of the former East Germany's, 73% of the former Czechoslovakia's, 78% of Bulgaria's, and 82% of Poland's. A third of the rivers in the Czech Republic and half of those in Slovakia no longer support aquatic life. As much as 80% of Romania's river water is unfit for drinking. The Black Sea receives so much chemical pollution, large amounts of it via the Danube and Dnieper rivers, that 90% of the sea is biologically dead. All this environmental damage levies sizable economic costs. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, annual crop losses from sulfur dioxide alone cost the economy almost $200 million. In the Czech Republic, air pollution of all kinds accounts for losses totaling the equivalent of 1.3 million metric tons of wheat, or about 125 kg (275 lb) per person--half of a Czech citizen's grain needs for a year. Then there are health costs. In the dirtiest parts of Eastern Europe, life expectancy is several years lower than in cleaner areas, and the incidence of cancer, reproductive problems, and other ailments is far higher. In Hungary one in 17 deaths is thought to be due to pollution. Lack of environmental safeguards and poor health care have combined to reduce the average life expectancy in the former Soviet Union to less than 64 years. In several high-pollution areas of western Russia, 10-20% of children are born with environmentally related birth defects. The worst environmental debacle centres on the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident in the Soviet Union in 1986. The explosions and fire, which produced more fallout than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, and irradiated an area of 200,000 sq km (77,000 sq mi), caused the evacuation of a quarter of a million people in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. Belarusian officials believe that as much as one-fifth of their country's farmlands has been rendered unusable by Chernobyl radiation, and it is expected that more than two million people eventually will be moved from contaminated areas. Another 16 Chernobyl-type power stations exist in western Russia and Eastern Europe, some of them notoriously unsafe. Amid the gloom there nonetheless are rays of hope. Eastern Europeans are realizing that environmental degradation accounts for losses of 5-10% in their countries' gross national products. They are outraged and are saying so. A poll in Russia found that almost one in two citizens considers pollution to be the nation's most urgent problem, ahead of housing shortages and poor medical services. In the former Czechoslovakia four people out of five believe the top priority should be environmental rehabilitation. The Romanian Ecological Movement has 112 local groups and more than 100,000 members, plus a good number of small "green" organizations. These are encouraging signs, but it remains to be seen whether Eastern Europe's newfound environmental awareness can be exercised in time to reverse the decades of gross neglect. Norman Myers is a consultant scientist in environment and development, a visiting fellow of Green College, Oxford, and a senior fellow of the World Wildlife Fund. Spotlight: Secularism in South Asia The ideals of secularism have always been important, though precarious, in South Asia. Because of its diverse population, the region has long been a theatre of conflict between religious communities. (See Map.) Even when the threat of conflict has been centred around ethnicity or caste, political parties and governments have sometimes appealed to religious considerations to distract attention from these other forms of conflict. In all such circumstances it is secularism that has been eroded. In 1993 conflict between Hindus and Muslims in northern India came to a head with the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya and took on a scale and significance not witnessed since the communal troubles during the partition period that culminated in the creation of Pakistan in 1947. The partition left India with a sizable Muslim population (10-12% of the whole) who did not become citizens of the new state of Pakistan, and this population has recently come under an attack from a Hindu nationalist majoritarian movement known as Hindutva. The parliamentary party explicitly committed to a policy of opposition to the Muslim minorities is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but it has important extraparliamentary support from bodies that propagandize for Hindu dominance. This group of organizations, known as the sangh parivar, has a distinctive ideology that claims India is a Hindu nation and that minorities in it, particularly the Muslims, may live in India only if they acknowledge these claims. This means, among other things, that Muslims would not be allowed to live as they do now, under their own code of personal laws. (India, though a secular state, allows Muslims and Hindus to live according to a code of personal laws based on their religion.) This has made the Muslim community particularly defensive on the matter of this code, which many Muslims now believe is the only thing that can preserve their cultural identity. This attitude gives popular currency to the Hindutva claim that Muslims were pampered during the years of British rule and by the "pseudosecular" state of postindependence India. Perhaps the most significant event relevant to secularism in the past year was the election of the BJP to power in India's most prosperous state, Maharashtra, in alliance with a militant regional party called Shiv Sena. This newly elected government has already proposed legislation to abolish a separate civil code for Muslims, a move that Muslims resist on the grounds that this federal matter is not subject to state legislation. At the federal level, however, the Supreme Court ruled earlier that conversion by Hindu men to Islam as a means of marrying more than one women was prohibited. In Uttar Pradesh, the state with the largest Muslim population after Kashmir, the government led by Mulyalam Singh Yadav fell when a party of the Untouchable community called the Bahujan Samaj Party withdrew its support and formed an alliance with the BJP. This shows how the condition of secularism in India is influenced by the question of caste. Singh's government had assumed that Hindutva was a movement of upper-caste Hindus with no support among the Untouchables, but the defection of the BSP indicates that some groups will put aside economic concerns when jockeying for immediate political power. Secularism in Pakistan is an issue of the extent to which the official religion, Islam, will be allowed to dominate the state, and the chief problem in Pakistan at present is threats to the government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto from an increasingly Islamic and conservative army. In Bangladesh there was an Islamist outcry against Taslima Nasrin's feminist novel Lajja, which expressed sympathy for the plight of the Hindu minority in the country. A similar situation surfaced in India with the publication of Salman Rushdie's new novel, The Moor's Last Sigh, which satirizes a leader of the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. The ongoing civil war in Sri Lanka between the Sinhalese majority, mostly Buddhist, and the Hindu Tamil separatists in the north seems no closer to resolution, but in Nepal most people prefer making the new multiparty democracy work, and there are few who wish for a return to the absolutist Hindu monarchy. In spite of such groups as the "guru busters" of Calcutta, which agitate against religious influence in India, and groups that want to preserve a multireligious state, the secular commitment to free expression of religious dissent will no doubt continue to be under some attack and strain in the countries of southern Asia in the near future. Akeel Bilgrami is professor of philosophy at Columbia University, New York City and the author of the forthcoming Postcolonial Politics and Cultural Identity. Spotlight: Sub-Saharan Africa in a New Era The momentum for democratization continued to sweep sub-Saharan Africa, but with varying degrees of success. The outlook for economic recovery, however, remained unpromising. Although 41 of the 48 governments in the region had committed themselves to establishing multiparty parliamentary systems, by year's end only 9 could be judged to have met the criteria for pluralism in an open society; another 21 qualified as "semidemocratic" or transitional democracies. The number of single-party or military regimes shrank to 9 from about 36 in the previous year. With the end of the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, the number of serious armed conflicts had dropped to just five--Sudan, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and, again, Liberia, where the civil war seemed to be finding renewed vigour at year's end. There was also a significant decline in the number of successful military coups--only one (The Gambia). The mass killings of Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 were the most horrific in the continent's postcolonial experience. South Africa continued to be the flagship of the region's democratic transformation. The prolonged civil war in The Sudan between the Islamic fundamentalist military regime and rebel groups in the non-Muslim southern region spilled across the borders. Four of The Sudan's neighbours--Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya--agreed on a strategy to bring down the government in Khartoum. The two precipitating causes of this unprecedented decision were the abortive attempt to assassinate the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, when he went to attend the summit meeting of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa, Eth., and allegations that the Sudanese National Islamic Front was engaged in spreading Islamic fundamentalism to Eritrea and Ethiopia. The defeated Rwandan government accused Uganda of arming the successful Rwandan Patriotic Front. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War opened up a new chapter in black Africa's relations with Western Europe and North America. In the absence of Cold War politics, African concerns were what came to be described as the "marginalization" of the continent--i.e., that Western interest in the continent would decline and, at the same time, economic aid would dwindle as more economic support was provided to Russia and Eastern Europe. Regional governments, with the exception of South Africa, had entered into agreements with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in support of structural adjustment programs. Despite some criticism, many prominent Africans--especially those opposed to their governments--welcomed the terms imposed by donor countries, making the provision of aid conditional upon good governance and respect for human rights. Fears that the European Union would not renew the favourable terms under the Lom Convention proved to be unjustified when a new agreement was signed in November. The peace process in the Middle East also contributed to ending the difficult choice between siding with Israel or the Arab world. By year's end almost all regional governments had restored their diplomatic and economic ties with Israel. Moreover, almost all the governments in the region maintained close links with the Commonwealth of Nations, the Francophone community, or a Lusophone (Portuguese) grouping. Japan became one of the largest aid-donor countries and, with the two Koreas, substantially expanded trade relations. The OAU, revivified by its secretary-general, Salim Ahmed Salim, was beginning to play a more active role in mediation and peacekeeping operations. At its 1995 summit in Addis Ababa, a decision was made to set up specialized military units in member countries to be available for either UN or OAU operations in dealing with conflicts in the continent. The summit also diluted its previous policy of nonintervention in the internal conflicts of member states. A proposal submitted by the United Kingdom and Nigeria, reflecting the consensus of 15 United Nations members, outlined the kind of help the international community should offer to strengthen the OAU's capability for peacekeeping. The outbreak of an Ebola epidemic in Zaire early in the year caused widespread concern because of the mystery of its cause and the high fatality rate among its victims. The virus claimed 244 lives out of 315 reported cases. The outbreak ended as suddenly as it began, with little more known about the virus than was known before its latest occurrence. Both the Ebola virus and HIV helped focus attention on the paucity of health services in Zaire and other African countries. Between 1985 and 1995, the number of persons infected with HIV rose from 1.5 million to more than 10 million; more than 1% of the 15-49-year age group was HIV-positive, and an estimated one million more were expected to contract the virus in each of the years following 1995. More than half the region's population of about 560 million had no access to public health services, and almost two-thirds had no safe drinking water. Sub-Saharan Africa's population constituted 10% of the world's total, but the region produced only slightly more than 1% of the world's gross domestic product. In the region's 24 better-off countries, average income in 1989 was less than $400 per person, while in the remaining 23 countries the average was even lower. The level of poverty continued to decline, with average incomes falling by 15% in the 1980s. Despite the support of international finance institutions, a survey of its impact showed little evidence of improvement in the first half of the decade. According to the United Nations, economic growth remained blocked despite considerable improvements in a few of the better-off countries. The World Bank forecast that sub-Saharan Africa's exports would grow only 3% a year to the year 2000, which was below the growth of population. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimated that in the coming years the average annual growth in aid funds was unlikely to exceed the modest performance of 2%, whereas the World Bank warned that unless this figure was doubled, the financial gap in the region was set to widen even further. Foreign debt in sub-Saharan Africa tripled from $56 billion to $173 billion between 1980 and 1990, and although debt relief for some of the poorest countries eased their debt-repayment burden to some extent, the total debt in fact increased to $176 billion by 1991 and was still increasing. Colin Legum is the editor of Third World Reports and consulting editor of the Africa Contemporary Record. Spotlight: The Spat over the Spratlys Scattered over 388,000 sq km (150,000 sq mi) of the South China Sea midway between Vietnam and the Philippines, the 500-600 largely uninhabited islets, reefs, and shoals of the Spratly Islands (see Map) seem a curious prize in Southeast Asia's most contentious territorial dispute. China, Vietnam, and Taiwan lay claim to the entire archipelago, and Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines to islands close to their shores. At the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional forum on security in Brunei in July, ASEAN, bolstered by seventh member Vietnam, pressed China to abide by a 1992 ASEAN declaration to settle the Spratly dispute through negotiations. Over Chinese opposition to U.S. involvement, Washington said that it wanted freedom of navigation maintained. Some 200 vessels ply the South China Sea at any one time, conveying nearly half of Asia's commerce, including 70% of Japan's oil. While asserting its sovereignty over the Spratlys, Beijing agreed in Brunei to resolve claims according to international law, softening its past insistence on historical title. In talks lasting until August, China and the Philippines adopted measures to avoid military conflict. Beijing allowed the Filipinos to destroy its stone markers and small structures on islets around Mischief Reef (but not the main facilities, which China contended were for fishermen). The Philippines detained 62 Chinese fishing in a nearby area but later released all except four captains. Analysts believed Beijing was conciliatory in order to preserve relations with ASEAN and to forestall any regional alliance to "contain" China. While the Mischief Reef problem was smoothed over, a general Spratlys resolution remained remote. At a workshop on the issue at which Indonesia served as host in October, the sixth since 1990, participants from the six claimants endorsed a call to set aside sovereignty questions and undertake joint development. Besides abundant fish, the area may contain oil, tin, manganese, and other minerals, judging by what is found in surrounding waters. The workshop in Borneo agreed on low-level programs, and Indonesia hoped joint projects would create an atmosphere for tackling weightier matters, but some participants opposed discussing such measures in the next meeting. Seeds of the dispute were planted 50 years ago. In 1945 the Allies took the Spratlys from Japanese control. The Nationalist Chinese occupied Spratly Island but withdrew in 1950. After Tokyo formally relinquished the islands in its 1951 peace treaty with the Allies, other countries began staking claims. In 1956 South Vietnam occupied Spratly Island and the Paracels group farther north. That same year, by Manila's account, Filipino mariner Tomas Cloma claimed a group of 53 islands, reefs, and shoals, which he named Freedomland. In 1962 Taiwan drove Filipino settlers from Itu Aba, the largest Spratly island at 43 ha (106 ac). In 1968 the Philippines occupied three islets. In the 1970s, when China took the Paracels, unified Vietnam took more islands. In 1995 Vietnam held 25 islands, China 12, the Philippines 8, Malaysia 4, and Taiwan 1. In 1988 Vietnam lost three vessels and 77 seamen in a half-hour battle with China. Hanoi said Chinese troops also took over a reef it had held and six unoccupied islands. That same year Malaysian gunboats detained 49 Filipino fishermen near Commodore Reef, also claimed by Manila. In 1992 China passed legislation formally claiming--by force, if necessary--the Spratlys, the Paracels, the East China Sea's Senkaku islands (claimed by Japan), and most of the South China Sea. Beijing then gave Crestone, a U.S. oil firm, a concession in waters within Vietnam's claimed exclusive economic zone. In 1994 Vietnam drove Crestone away, which prompted a temporary Chinese blockade of a Russo-Vietnamese oil rig. The Philippines also awarded oil concessions, while Malaysia developed one island into a diving resort. In recent years the addition of new warplanes and vessels to their forces has augmented the ability of most claimants to intervene in the area. While accepting international law, China still preferred bilateral, not multilateral, talks with rival claimants. Legal experts, though, believe that all six claims are weak. Spratly references in Chinese and Vietnamese historical records are intermittent, which suggests no lasting claim, occupation, or settlement. No nation has administered the area anywhere near the 50 years normally conferring title. Under the UN Law of the Sea, none of the claimants seemed qualified to claim 200-nautical-mile economic zones around the Spratlys, and zones based on the continental shelves of Malaysia and Vietnam probably carry greater legal weight. So despite tough talk and some military buildup, claimants are unlikely to wage war over the Spratlys and torpedo lucrative relations among themselves--unless national pride overcomes pragmatism. Ricardo Saludo is a senior editor at Asiaweek magazine and is based in Hong Kong. SRI LANKA A republic and member of the Commonwealth, Sri Lanka occupies an island in the Indian Ocean off the southeast coast of peninsular India. Area: 65,610 sq km (25,332 sq mi). Pop. (1995 est.): 18,090,000. Legislative cap., Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte; administrative cap., Colombo. Monetary unit: Sri Lanka rupee, with (Oct. 6, 1995) a free rate of SL Rs 52.10 to U.S. $1 (SL Rs 82.36 = 1 sterling). President in 1995, Chandrika Kumaratunga; prime minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike. The 12-year-old civil conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who demanded an independent state for the two million Tamils, continued to be a major preoccupation for Pres. Chandrika Kumaratunga in 1995. Upon her election in 1994, Kumaratunga had pledged that she would seek a peaceful solution to the civil war, which by late 1995 had already claimed close to 50,000 lives. In January 1995 the government and the LTTE agreed to a truce, the first one in five years, opening the way for talks. Expectations were high as Canada, The Netherlands, and Norway sent monitors to supervise the cease-fire. The Colombo government sweetened the truce with a SL Rs 40 billion rehabilitation plan for the northern region, where the Tamils were concentrated. Public opinion, including that of Tamils living in LTTE-controlled areas, supported the talks. The LTTE unilaterally ended the truce on April 19, accusing the government of having failed to meet its demands, which included dismantling the Sri Lankan army camp at Pooneryn (located southwest of the LTTE's Jaffna stronghold) and a complete lifting of the government's trade embargo with the Tamil north. In a series of bold guerrilla attacks in April and May, the LTTE dealt severe military blows against the government armed forces. With the aim of regaining the initiative, the military launched its biggest offensive in eight years in July. Operation Leap Forward ran into serious trouble after a week, however, when it was confronted with daring LTTE counterattacks. On August 3 Kumaratunga unveiled a plan that would turn Sri Lanka into a federation of eight regions, each with considerable powers. The central government would be left with control over defense, foreign affairs, and international economic relations. To be accepted the plan would require the support of two-thirds of Parliament and a favourable vote in a national refere