"Haze" is a weasel word for the eye-stinging, throat-rasping smog that periodically engulfs parts of South-East Asia. The resort to euphemism points to why the pollution, which smothered much of the region in 1997, has been a nearly annual torment since the early 1990s: a reluctance to get tough with the country responsible, Indonesia, whose forest fires cause the scourge. Unlike the earthquake, tsunami and volcanic eruption that ravaged Indonesia this week, the fires are man-made.
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