Israel Withdraws From Southern Lebanon After 22 Years, Britain’s Military Rescues UN Hostages in Sierra Leone and Mexico’s PRI Loses Power After 71 Years

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 July 2000 | Reporting Period: 3 April – 2 July 2000

Quarterly Briefing

• Israel completes its withdrawal from southern Lebanon on May 24, ending a 22-year military occupation; Israeli forces depart faster than the scheduled timetable as the South Lebanon Army, the Israeli-backed Lebanese proxy force, collapses under Hezbollah pressure; the withdrawal is largely peaceful but the rapid SLA disintegration prevents an orderly handover; Hezbollah claims victory; UN forces (UNIFIL) deploy to verify the withdrawal; the departure ends the longest continuous Israeli military deployment outside its own borders and has profound implications for the regional balance.
• Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front renews its offensive in May, capturing over 500 UN peacekeepers from UNAMSIL across the country; the RUF had signed the Lomé Peace Agreement in July 1999 and been granted an amnesty and positions in a unity government; the resumption of hostilities exposes the agreement’s fragility; Britain deploys Operation Palliser on May 7, landing airborne forces at Lungi Airport and stabilising the area around Freetown; the intervention prevents the RUF from retaking the capital and rescues or facilitates the release of the UN hostages.
• Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) defeats Francisco Labastida of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico’s presidential election on July 2, ending 71 years of continuous PRI rule; the transition is widely celebrated as the completion of Mexico’s democratic consolidation; Fox receives 42 per cent of the vote against Labastida’s 36 per cent; the election is certified as free and fair by international observers; Fox will be inaugurated in December; the result signals a historic political realignment in the Western Hemisphere’s third largest economy.
• The NASDAQ Composite, which reached its all-time peak of 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000, has fallen 34 per cent by June 30 to around 3,966; the dot-com bubble’s deflation is accelerating; internet companies that had attracted billions of dollars in venture capital without profitable business models are losing investor confidence rapidly; the wider technology sector is contracting; the impact on US consumer wealth and spending has not yet fully registered in the broader economy but analysts expect a slowdown in the second half of 2000.
• Vladimir Putin, who became Russia’s acting president on January 1 when Yeltsin resigned, wins the Russian presidential election on March 26 with 53 per cent of the vote in the first round; Putin’s election consolidates his position and gives him a democratic mandate to continue his centralisation of power and reassertion of state authority over the oligarchs who had dominated Russia’s political economy since 1991; Western governments watch the transition cautiously, uncertain whether Putin’s early signals of authoritarian consolidation represent his governing intentions.
• Caribbean governments welcome the Middle East peace process’s proximity to a conclusion that the Camp David summit is designed to produce; peace in the region would reduce the oil price risk premium that has kept crude at elevated levels and eased Caribbean import bills; the British intervention in Sierra Leone reinforces Caribbean support for a more robust international approach to African conflicts; Jamaica’s own tourism season is tracking well through the first half of 2000.

Prologue: Endings and Beginnings

The quarter from April to June 2000 was rich with historical transitions. Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon closed a chapter that had opened in 1978 and expanded into a full occupation in 1982; it removed a source of sustained Hezbollah-Israel conflict but did not resolve the underlying tensions that would return in force six years later. Mexico’s democratic transition on July 2 closed the chapter of PRI hegemony that had defined Mexican politics since 1929; it opened an era of competitive democracy that would reshape the country’s political institutions. Sierra Leone’s crisis demonstrated that the post-Cold War optimism about African conflict resolution — expressed in the Lomé Agreement’s generous amnesty provisions — had been premature.

Lebanon, Hezbollah and the Regional Balance

Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon was ordered by Prime Minister Barak as a fulfilment of his election promise to end an occupation that had killed over 900 Israeli soldiers since 1978 and that had never achieved its stated objective of preventing Palestinian attacks on northern Israel. The rapid collapse of the South Lebanon Army — which had served as Israel’s proxy force and depended on Israeli support for its existence — left thousands of its members fleeing into Israel within days of the withdrawal announcement. Hezbollah, which had fought the occupation as a resistance movement, immediately moved into the vacated positions and declared victory; its political standing in Lebanon was substantially enhanced. Israel had withdrawn under fire rather than through negotiation; the precedent would influence Hezbollah’s calculations for years.

For the Caribbean, Lebanon’s Lebanese-descended communities — substantial in several islands including Jamaica — had tracked the occupation and its conclusion with personal interest. The withdrawal’s implications for the broader peace process, and for oil price stability, were more widely felt; any reduction in Middle East tension that reduced the risk premium on crude was welcome in energy-importing Caribbean economies.

Looking Ahead

The Camp David summit that Clinton has convened for July will determine whether the decade’s peace diplomacy can be concluded before his presidency ends; the gap between Israeli and Palestinian positions on Jerusalem is the primary obstacle. Sierra Leone’s RUF has been checked but not defeated; the UN mission needs strengthening. The NASDAQ’s correction is accelerating; whether the broader US economy will follow into recession will determine the trajectory of Caribbean tourism for 2001. Mexico’s Fox, inheriting a democracy and an economy with significant structural challenges, faces a transition that will define Latin American political development for a decade.

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review is published quarterly, examining how wars, geopolitical tensions and major international crises have shaped Jamaica, the Caribbean and their economies.