When the Taliban recapture Bamiyan in 1999, there are reports that Taliban forces carry out summary executions upon entering the city.

According to Amnesty International, hundreds of men, and some instances women and children, are separated from their families, taken away, and killed.

Human Rights Watch reports that besides executing civilians, the Taliban burn homes and use detainees for forced labor.

Russia, angered by the Taliban's recognition of the rebel government in Chechnya, says it is ready to bomb suspected terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

Russia and the United States call on the Taliban to hand over bin Laden and dismantle "terrorist" camps.

(Source: AfghanWeb Chronology of the Taliban militia's rise to power in Afghanistan http:www.afghan-web.com

In 1999, Afghanistan produces approximately 75 per cent of the world's opium cultivated on 91,000 hectares.
(Source: United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention)

The Sicilian Mafia controls about thirty percent of Italy's waste disposal companies, including toxic waste, according to an Italian parliamentary study.

Commission head Massimo Scalia says the Mafia, seeking new business interests beyond their traditional southern strongholds, have moved into areas of Italy that had been considered free from the grip of organized crime.

The report says both local governments and companies unwittingly used Mafia-controlled firms to get rid of waste, especially industrial and toxic waste.

The commission, examining links between organzed crime and rubbish, says Mafia groups are infiltrating the entire chain of waste disposal.

The report on illegal waste trafficking says the so-called "ecomafia" runs companies dealing with about thirty-five million tons of refuse a year, making at least fifteen trillion lire ($6.66 billion).

The report also states that radioactive waste from Italy dumped in Somalia may have affected Italian soldiers based there with a United Nations force in the mid-1990s.

Libya hands over the suspects in the Lockerbie bombing for trial in the Netherlands under Scottish law, resulting in the suspension of UN sanctions and the restoration of diplomatic relations with the UK.

Haitian president René Préval, faced with political infighting among the groups that had supported Aristide, dissolves the parliament in 1999.

Jewish Israeli settlers establish more than twelve new settlements throughout the West Bank immediately following the implementation of the Wye Memorandum, heeding Ariel Sharon's call to "grab" as much land as possible.

Standard practices include the razing of Palestinian houses in search of "Jewish archaeological remains" and establishing "nature reserves" for later conversion to Jewish housing.

Israel has reduced the activity of its ground forces in the fighting in Lebanon and relied more on air power, which seems to have a deterrent effect.

In early January, the Cabinet authorizes in principle a new policy of retaliation against Lebanese infrastructure targets in response to Hezbollah Shi'ite fighters' shelling Israeli civilians.

In early 1999 also, after a legislative defeat on the budget, Benjamin Netanyahu calls for early elections and soon suspends the Wye agreement.

On January 11, 1999, Time and Newsweek publish the interviews with Osama bin Laden conducted two weeks earlier.

Five days later, the US Attorney General's office files its most complete indictment to date of Osama bin Laden and 11 other suspected members of his terrorist organization.

In the indictment delivered by the grand jury, the first count-conspiracy to kill US Nationals-charges that several of the co-defendants, acted with other members of "al Qaeda," characterized as a worldwide terrorist organization led by bin Laden, in a conspiracy to murder American citizens.

The objectives of the terrorist group allegedly include: killing members of the American military stationed in Saudi Arabia and Somalia; killing United States embassy employees in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and concealing the activities of the co-conspirators by, among other things, establishing front companies, providing false identity and travel documents, engaging in coded correspondence, and providing false information to the authorities in various countries.

King Husssein had proclaimed his son, Abdullah, to be his successor, rather than his brother, Hassan, who had been the crown prince, shortly before the sixty-three-year-old monarch's death from cancer on February 9, 1999.

King Abdullah will continue to carry out his father's policies and maintains that the new government he forms in March will focus on integrating economic reforms, bettering Jordan's relations with its Arab neighbors, and improving the status of women.