Ebagum! Uncle Sam may step in...

[S.Potter Returns]

From 'Eht Grauniad', 7th November:

Top official says administration is considering defying Mugabe and delivering food to starving opposition areas

Andrew Meldrum in Harare
Thursday November 7, 2002
The Guardian

The US government warned yesterday that it might take "intrusive, interventionist measures" to deliver food aid directly to millions of famine-hit Zimbabweans if President Robert Mugabe continues to starve his political opponents.
Washington is considering measures that would challenge Zimbabwe's sovereignty, the Guardian was told by Mark Bellamy, the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa. Such drastic measures are being studied because the Mugabe regime is aggravating the effects of a region-wide famine by blocking food from areas which support the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), he added.

"We may have to be prepared to take some very intrusive, interventionist measures to ensure aid delivery to Zimbabwe," Mr Bellamy said by telephone from Washington.

The plan was disclosed in the Zimbabwean state-owned Herald newspaper under the headline "US plans to invade Harare".

A spokesman for Mr Mugabe said other African countries should take heed of "the mad talk of intrusive and interventionist challenges to Zimbabwe's sovereignty. Today it is about Zimbabwe. Heaven knows who is next", he said.

Mr Bellamy, who develops US policy on Africa, said: "We have disturbing reports of food being used as a political weapon by the Mugabe government, of food aid being diverted and food being denied to millions of opposition supporters.

"For the sake of those hungry people it may be necessary for us to undertake intrusive delivery and monitoring of food. The dilemmas in the next six months may bring us face to face with Zimbabwe's sovereignty."

He said Mr Mugabe was "holding his people hostage the way Saddam Hussein is holding his people hostage".

Mr Mugabe and other Zimbabwean officials deny using aid as a political weapon. They maintain that food relief is distributed freely and fairly.

The government has however outlawed the private importation of food, leaving the state grain marketing board with a monopoly on the importation and wholesale deliveries of the staple maize meal. Aid agencies and government critics claim that this gives the marketing board a stranglehold on food availability throughout the country.

The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development has failed to get permission to import 100 tonnes of food aid, which sits at the Beitbridge border post with South Africa. The MDC has also been refused permission to import food.

The marketing board's depots refuse to sell maize meal to people identified as opposition supporters, according to accounts from across the country. In addition, police roadblocks stop the MDC and ordinary individuals from transporting all but the smallest parcels of maize meal to hungry areas, numerous witnesses claim.

Mr Bellamy refused to specify what the US could do to deliver food aid to Zimbabweans against the will of the government, but said the Bush administration was "considering all approaches". Aid experts suggested the possibility of air drops, such as in Sudan and to Kurdish rebels in Iraq.

"At the very least we need to see aggressive, assertive monitoring to ensure that food is being distributed fairly throughout Zimbabwe, in an even-handed, humanitarian way," Mr Bellamy said. "We may have to make hard choices. We will press for food to be distributed freely in all areas of the country. We cannot take government assurances at face value, we must monitor it and confirm it for ourselves."

Washington provides about 50% of the food aid being distributed in Zimbabwe by the UN world food programme.

Zimbabwe was until recently considered the breadbasket of southern Africa, but Mr Mugabe's violent and chaotic land seizures, combined with drought, have resulted in a crippling food shortage.

Zimbabwe is by far the worst affected of the six southern African countries threatened with famine. Of the 14 million people at risk of starvation throughout southern Africa, 6.7 million are Zimbabwean, nearly half the country's population.

Washington's hard stance comes after other warnings from the Bush administration. The US representative to the UN food and agricultural organisation, Tony Hall, visited Zimbabwe last month and criticised the government for preventing respected international charities, such as Save the Children and Oxfam, from distributing food relief.

The US does not consider Mr Mugabe to be the "democratically legitimate leader of his country", Walter Kansteiner, US assistant secretary of state for Africa, said.

He cited widespread state-sponsored violence in the March presidential election, and evidence of large-scale vote-rigging.

[BEagle]

Even Toady B Liar might then have to do something!

[MrBernoulli]

While Uncle Sam may do something I really don't believe that Blair will get involved here. Zimbabwe does not have anything that Blair wants.

On the other hand Blair may just be more of an a**e kisser and coat-tail rider than we suspect.

In any event, how the heck will UK forces deal with a possible Gulf scenario (given this weeks UN resolution then Op Deny Christmas is even more likely), Op Fresco and a possible 'Op Fiasco' in Zimbabwe? Somehow I don't think so.

[ORAC]

LA TimesJanuary 12, 2003

ZIMBABWE - As World Looks Away, a Nation Dies
By Paula R. Newberg, Paula R. Newberg, who writes regularly on countries in crisis, recently returned from southern Africa.

WASHINGTON -- When historians review this century's missed opportunities, Zimbabwe may be one of them. Like many of its neighbors in southern Africa, it is the victim of familiar plagues: HIV and AIDS, drought and famine, and the ills of misguided economic development. But Zimbabwe's leaders, chiefly President Robert Mugabe, the former freedom fighter who now rules with an iron fist, have turned difficult circumstances into an almost impossible situation. Ignoring his country's impending implosion and chasing foreign donors away, Mugabe has steered Zimbabwe to the political edge. Without a rescue plan, he is courting the failure of the state.

Zimbabwe suffers more than its share of plagues. HIV and AIDS have infected at least 33% of the adult population, and last year's drought turned food shortages into famine. Unemployment has reached 60%, and 75% of the population lives in poverty. But Zimbabwe's government, once blessed with a vibrant civil service, can barely find enough employees to do its work: The shrinking, debt-ridden economy has led to a brain drain that threatens to sap the country's vitality for generations to come.

Famine and disease result as much from bad policy as from Mother Nature. Fiscal austerity during the 1990s wreaked havoc on the economy, misjudgment led to default on international loans, and miscalculated food estimates forced Zimbabwe to depend on outside aid to eat. Worse, Mugabe tried to redress so-called colonial-era grievances by expropriating large commercial farms and redistributing their lands. In doing so, he displaced farm workers, aggravated the ailing agrarian economy, angered foreign governments whose citizens owned the lands and thumbed his government's nose at the rule of law. What Mugabe calls land reform, others, including donor governments, brand as state-sponsored thievery.

Resentful of the criticism, Zimbabwe's leader has chosen economic and diplomatic isolation from the West, at the cost of fiscal prudence and investment, and relies on old friends among southern Africa's leaders to offer him the appearance of support and solidarity.

Worse still, Zimbabwe has yet to contend directly and fully with the effects of HIV and AIDS. Few of the thousands who die each month know they have AIDS. The rising death rates have yet to provoke the government to acknowledge the prevalence of the disease, let alone count its victims. Health care, prevention, education and social protection are inadequate. An official attitude of denial is turning Zimbabwe into a country of orphans. But as long as AIDS is a crisis mostly affecting the poor and disenfranchised, government is unlikely to fundamentally change its views or behavior.

Mugabe has increasingly found the rule of law too burdensome to obey. The violence unleashed by the ruling party during the March elections and the government's refusal to encourage civil society to set the terms for civil politics seriously compromise the government's legitimacy and the viability of future elections. Mugabe has criminalized the mere idea of opposition politics; young praetorian guards patrol the streets. "If you challenge the state," reports one opposition politician, "you're in for it." Even stalwart Mugabe supporters are leaving his party's ranks, but they can count on few legal protections for civic activism. In separating his own interests from those of his citizens, Mugabe is pulling the state apart. Soon, Zimbabweans will have no place to turn for help.

Zimbabwe is simply worn down. Every woe feeds on others: Poverty and famine drain a disease-ridden society; disease weakens workers; debt leaves the exchequer empty and drought mitigation inadequate; aggressive land expropriation forces donors to close foreign-backed health and education programs. Donors respond to the country's emergencies, but without long-term aid, Zimbabwe's assistance crisis will jeopardize its development. Even the World Bank is packing up. When aid workers call the current situation in Zimbabwe "horrible," they are barely scratching the surface.

We have seen this before. In countries as diverse as Haiti and Somalia, Rwanda and Afghanistan, state leaders mistakenly believed that they ruled for themselves alone. In each instance, the abuse of power slipped into authoritarianism and then something worse. Without local politics, no one was around to prevent wrongful behavior, and without the active protection of the international community, failed states turned local conflicts into wars that risked civilians, compromised borders and endangered entire regions.

While diplomats argue about the limits of sovereignty and intervention, countries can disappear and states can break. Rwanda and Somalia were important only to Rwandans and Somalis -- until they almost perished in their own bloodshed. Afghanistan seemed important to almost no one until its failure made it, for a short time, the most important problem on Earth.

We know what happens when no one is looking: Failure, like disease, offers the opportunity for infection -- and like disease, it rarely cures itself. By now, we should have learned that abandoning countries and peoples has consequences: Crises multiply when we don't envision recovery. But while our armies and banks have become adept at fixing damage, we haven't yet learned what we need to do to prevent disaster from striking.

Zimbabwe offers the international community a chance to act collectively to prevent the collapse of a state before it happens. It is beset by problems to which there are no easy answers. But it still has some government infrastructure, educated and sophisticated citizens, resources and the recent memory of lively and engaged politics.

Years after the Rwandan genocide, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan reminded his colleagues that "if we had acted earlier, we could have saved lives." The shadow of inaction in the face of malign states lies heavily on the international community. Surely, an experiment in conflict prevention is a good way to begin the new year.

[mutleyfour]

When is Uncle sam going to something about the deplorable tide of Illegal and legal immigrants into the UK...........talk about State Sponsored terrorism.......

"Welcome to the United Kingdom Ahmed, which Hotel would you like to build your bombs in? Where would you like to store your Biological weapons? Oh, and you are under 17 (nudge, wink) aren't you as you'll get your hotel bill paid for you?"

"Enjoy your stay!"

[Jackonicko]

M4,

Why should anyone do anything about legal immigration into the UK? You're not a nasty 'Little Englander' racist, I hope?

While I have reservations about the ability and willingness of a tiny minority of immigrants to fully integrate into British Society, there can be no doubt that most do so with alacrity, and provide a useful (perhaps even invaluable) contribution to our multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society. We can perhaps take some credit for our tolerance and for the welcome we generally give, and should be flattered that Britain is the destination of choice for so many.

And while some immigrants need some assistance and benefits to help them settle in, others do not. Indeed some may even be well-educated enough to use the word 'deplorable' instead of 'inplorable' and to correctly spell the word 'immigrant'.

[West Coast]

Somalia was only a short decade ago. The thought of going back to Africa worries me.

[mutleyfour]

Thank you, former post now edited!

[BEagle]

Last night's Ch 4 expose 'Mugabe's Secret Famine' exposed the greed, corruptin and ruination being wrought on Southern Rhodesia by Comrade Bob.

But what was interesting was the conclusion that Thabo Mbeki could give Bob a pretty direct ultimatum which would bring him to heel; however, Mbeki's brother declared that the Seth Efrikan policy is 'Do Nothing'..........Africa Wins Again!

[MrBernoulli]

Africa doesn't really win. Only the thieving, incompetent, corrupt excuses-for-politicians win. And the Western ******s who give them handouts.......constantly.