ninme

The Times - Comment: intervention in Zimbabwe is the only solution
The idea that Mugabe will cave in to sanctions or diplomatic pressure is absurd, by David Aaronovitch

The Australians were kicking out the kids of Zanu (PF) officials being educated in Oz. The EU would be freezing bank accounts. The African Union and the Southern African Development Community would not be recognising Mr Mugabe’s imminent second-round election theft thus delegitimising him, and the UN would “force in” election observers to monitor that second-round (from which Morgan Tsvangirai had already withdrawn) or - in a manner unspecified - “force some change of government”. These were “powerful steps - as long as you accept that there are pressures short of military action”.

Perhaps, I thought, his lordship [Malloch-Brown, who was being fatuous on the Today programme, and read the whole thing for that] simply knows something we don’t about back-channels and internal divisions in Mugabe’s apparat. Because, unless you regard the recent burnings, rapes, beatings, murders, threats, arrests, starvings and raids as some kind of exotic preamble to negotiation, then what seems clear is that the Zanu (PF) military-security group has no intention of allowing any transfer of power to an elected opposition, no matter what a whingeing world says about it.

Or am I missing a clue, cleverly hidden in the present repression? If so, it seems that Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change missed it too when he took refuge in the Dutch Embassy in Harare on Sunday night. Recalling Bosnia, one can only hope that the Dutch keep their embassies safer than they did their UN safe havens.

There follows a handy Zimbabwean political history lesson updating us on events during my lifetime…

And what do we imagine now? That Zambia’s crossness, Angola’s criticism (only a few weeks after that country passed on Chinese weapons to the armed forces of Zimbabwe) and Botswana’s rather valiant anger will persuade the Harare murderers that the game is up, especially now we are investigating freezing their European assets? Again, one asks, do the diplomats know something we don’t, and that the historical record fails to suggest? Is there some Zimbabwean Admiral Dönitz or Juan Carlos, waiting to arrange the transition? Why aren’t we just as likely to get Mugabe’s Heydrich, Emerson Mnangagwa, the Joint Operations Command strongman?

“Military intervention,” said one BBC person yesterday, expressing the views of the consensus, “is not a realistic option.” It might be better if it was. How many South African or British soldiers would it take to unseat the junta and disperse the Zanu (PF) “veterans”, who are now veterans only of whipping and gouging defenceless people, or raping women without the slightest chance of resistance?

Instead, the suffering people of Zimbabwe (life expectancy, 37) get what the Foreign Secretary called yesterday “the worst rigged election in African history”.

Ditto all that.

Update:

Times Online - Comment Central - The BBC, Zimbabwe and some disturbing reporting

By reporting as if the events of the last fortnight represented chess moves in a game of election strategy rather than a fascist carrying out a campaign of mass murder, Mr Simpson is framing the events as Zanu PF would like him to frame them.

Good lord. Read the whole thing for the quotes.