By the beginning of June 1997, Afghanistan is effectively partitioned between areas controlled by Pashtun and non-Pashtun forces.

The Taliban control approximately two-thirds of Afghanistan, including all the predominantly Pashtun areas of the country as well as Herat and Kabul.

Non-Pashtun organizations control the areas bordering on the Central Asian republics, whose populations are ethnically non-Pashtun, such as Uzbeks and Tajiks.

Mother Theresa dies in 1997 the same week that Britains’s Princess Diana is killed in an auto crash.

India's CBN begins the destruction of illicit opium cultivation operations in the Yingkiong and Lohit districts of East Arunachal Pradesh.
(Source: Central Bureau of Narcotics, Gwalior)

Somalis and UN officials say ships from places such as China and Taiwan have been dumping toxic waste in the unprotected waters off the coast.

Ships from around the world also have been illegally fishing the seafood-rich waters.

"This is one of the five best fishing areas in the world according to World Bank studies, but it's being looted by pirates who are taking advantage of our national tragedy because we can't protect our coastline," says Gen. Mohammed Abshir, a top official in the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF), the leading political faction in Bosaso, which has become a major point of entry for goods into Somalia.

UN officials verify ships from China, the Philippines, Spain, and Russia have been heavily fishing the area.

Somali leaders in the northeast region say that 300 to 500 vessels appear along their 800-mile section of coast during a season, and that the fleets also include trawlers from other European countries, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Yemen, and Pakistan.

(Source: The Christian Science Monitor International.

10-20-1997, Post-US, Somalia Finds Many Cashi In on Chaos, by Ilene R. Prusher.

Britain’s Princess Diana, estranged wife of Crown Prince Charles, dies in a 1997 auto wreck in Paris with her lover and his driver.

In 1997, former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide forms a new political party, the Lavalas Family.

Highly decorated U.S Major General Aubrey "Red" Newman writes the widely read and influential Forward Edge columns published in ARMY magazine over a twenty-year span.

Virtually a legend in his own time, Newman's leadership as a regimental commander on Red Beach during the October 1944 Leyte landings in the Philippines inspired the "Follow Me!" painting in the Army in Action poster series.

Hence the title of Newman's collection of his assays as the Follow Me trilogy, published in 1997 by Presido Press.