Tuesday, June 07
Never A-fucking-gain
We had the famines in Ukraine. (7 million dead.) We had the Great Leap Forward in China. (30 million dead.) We had Cambodia. (2 million dead.) And Uganda and Angola and Ethiopia and Somalia. And now it's happening again.
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We had the famines in Ukraine. (7 million dead.) We had the Great Leap Forward in China. (30 million dead.) We had Cambodia. (2 million dead.) And Uganda and Angola and Ethiopia and Somalia. And now it's happening again.
President Robert Mugabe's onslaught against Zimbabwe's cities has escalated to claim new targets, with white-owned factories and family homes being demolished in a campaign that has left 200,000 people homeless.If that last paragraph doesn't send a chill up your spine, then you weren't paying attention during the 20th century.Across the country, Mr Mugabe is destroying large areas of heaving townships and prosperous industrial areas alike.
The aim of this brutal campaign is, says the official media, to depopulate urban areas and force people back to the "rural home".
Yes, Mr Kothari. And what do you plan to do about it?Across Zimbabwe, the United Nations estimates that 200,000 people have lost their homes, with the poorest townships bearing the brunt of Mr Mugabe's onslaught. "The vast majority are homeless in the streets," said Miloon Kothari, the UN's housing representative. He added that "mass evictions" were creating a "new kind of apartheid where the rich and the poor are being segregated".
Earlier, bulldozers had begun wrecking the adjacent industrial area. Ian Lawson, the owner, was assured by a senior police officer that the site would be spared.God may not be able to help. But a few hundred UN troops could.But at 6am last Tuesday, 10 lorries filled with police arrived and the destruction began.
"The police officer said to me 'Why are you running for help? No one can help you now. Not even God can help you. We are going to destroy this place'," said Mr Lawson, 60.
If they weren't too busy raping goats.
Virtually all the areas singled out for demolition voted for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the last elections. The MDC says that Mr Mugabe ordered the destruction as a deliberate reprisal. But the regime is also seeking to depopulate the cities, driving people into the countryside where the MDC is virtually non-existent and the ruling Zanu-PF Party dominates.Subsistence agriculture - if they are lucky. Mass starvation, more likely.The Herald, the official daily newspaper, urged "urbanites" to go "back to the rural home, to reconnect with one's roots and earn an honest living from the soil our government repossessed under the land reform programme".
Again.
Again.
AGAIN.
And this time, no-one can say they didn't know.
(via Tim Blair)
Update: Bob of canadiancomment reminds us that Zimbabwe is on the UN Human Rights Commission.
Burning the homes and businesses of the citizens of your country, forcing many others to leave their homes at gunpoint, and arresting journalists that are trying to cover the event, and that's just in the last week. So what would a country have to do to not be considered for a position on the Human Rights Commission, or is it even possible to be a big enough abuser of human rights that you may not even qualify? I was just wondering.I'm wondering too. Hell, even the Guardian is wondering:
In April, Zimbabwe was re-elected to the UN Human Rights Commission for the third year running by satirically minded African states...Gah.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:27 AM
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1
Paging Walter Duranty, Robert Mugabe has an assignment for you.
Don't worry, the mass starvation will have nothing to do with Zimbabwean gov't action. The problems (which for the most will not exist) will all be caused by poor harvests due to bad weather.
Posted by: TallDave at Tuesday, June 07 2005 12:46 PM (9XE6n)
2
You are right to bring up the issue, but perhaps you can make some concrete suggestions about what your good readers should do. Sounds like Kolthari, who is simply a reporter to the UN Human Rights Commission is doing all that his mandate permits him to do by raising his voice. Others like you have to run with it.
Those in Australia should check out the suggestions listed at the Zimbabwe Information Centre, an NGO established in NSW. http://www.zic.com.au/action.htm.
Good information is also available at this blog:
http://www.willisms.com/archives/2005/04/mugabes_zimbabw.html.
Mugabe has turned a bread basket into a basket case, and the world has stood idly by. Mugabe plays us all for fools, who will wring our hands at action, but then step up with food relief as he forces his own people into starvation.
Action to remove Mugabe would require a resolution of the UN Security Council; but Mugabe is not threatening his neighbors with WMDs, so the rest of the world prefers not to establish precedents for interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign nations.
The only other decent option is to move to have Mugabe indicted by the International Criminal Court, in the same manner that cases are now being brought against Sudanese leaders.
Although Condoleezza Rice calls Zimbabwe one of the "outposts of tyranny", her words are empty. This Administration has no interest in insisting that the UN Security Council do anything about Zimbabwe. The US, although originally a chief driver of the ICC, now is firmly against the court, and so cannot push the court to take action against Mugabe.
No one else has saw fit to request the Security Council to consider action against Zimbabwe. It seem that the hope has been that Mbeke of South Africa would persuade Mugabe to step down, but whatever "quiet diplomacy" Mbeke has been apply certainly is having no effect.
This is a real hole in the international system, as has been pointed out in this recent discussion in the UK House of Lords: http://skidelskyr.com/index.php?id=2,48,0,0,1,0.
Clearly the world would be better off if the UN were strengthened and given a mandate to act more proactively to deal with regimes such as Zimbabwe, but arguable there are many places where an intervention may be justified, and very few clear criteria to limit the potential scope.
What would you propose?
Posted by: Tokyo Tom at Wednesday, June 08 2005 01:10 AM (R+EaW)
3
The wonderful thing about Mugabe is that he will be dead soon, and hell, like diamonds, is forever.
I feel sorry for his people, just like I do for those dying of the Arab genocide of Africans in Darfur.
What, you guys didn't hear its Arab militia has been systematically targeting African Christians and Muslims?
That might have something to do with the fact that the media has spent the last two years trying to launch a witch hunt against anyone that might have sneezed near a copy of the Koran in an effort to oust President Bush instead of focusing on the real evils of the world.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at Wednesday, June 08 2005 01:21 AM (CO4eV)
4
The fundamental problem with the UN is that it doesn't represent people, it represents governments. There are many governments in the world who would be uncomfortable in seeing Mugabe removed, because they could be next. The UN will never be a useful body because of this.
What should be done?
Let's ask instead, what needs to be done, and what solutions would work.
Mugabe is the problem. He needs to be removed.
How, short of war?
I see no way, short of war.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, June 08 2005 02:15 AM (AIaDY)
5
Confederate Yankee, yes, I'm aware of the atrocities being committed in Sudan. It's just not what I'm upset about today. I can only get upset about so many things at once before my brain goes into a spin and I have to post some more puppy pictures.
What's happening in Zimbabwe upset me particularly because it so closely parallels the appalling humanitarian disasters in China and Cambodia. It's completely predictable, and we are very likely going to sit by and watch.
Do we invade every time some communist fruitcake starts destroying his own country? Is it wise? Is it even possible?
I don't know.
But if we see two million people die over the next five years, knowing we could have prevented it - what then?
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, June 08 2005 02:20 AM (AIaDY)
6
This Administration has no interest in insisting that the UN Security Council do anything about Zimbabwe.
What would you expect the Security Council to do? Given their remarkable action on Iraq...
The US, although originally a chief driver of the ICC, now is firmly against the court, and so cannot push the court to take action against Mugabe.
What would you expect the ICC to do?
Action to remove Mugabe would require a resolution of the UN Security Council
No it wouldn't. It wouldn't require any such thing.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, June 08 2005 02:26 AM (AIaDY)
7
Zimbabwe isn't exactly heavily armed.
We need to start forming a Coalition of the Willing, with a mandate to hold free elections and protect property rights of the minority farmers who were actually feeding the country. There's no sweetheart oil deals with France or military relationship with Russia, so it shouldn't be hard to do.
And if we don't, millions will die.
Posted by: TallDave at Wednesday, June 08 2005 11:28 AM (9XE6n)
8
PM:
You say that "the fundamental problem with the UN is that it doesn't represent people, it represents governments. There are many governments in the world who would be uncomfortable in seeing Mugabe removed, because they could be next. The UN will never be a useful body because of this."
I agree with your sentiments; we are looking at a failed world order. However, I still think that the system can be much improved by relatively small changes that leave the big powers in charge.
The obvious solution for many parts of Africa is for the donor countries to empower the UN or its members to administer failed countries like Zimbabwe. Otherwise our aid just enables corrupt leaders to carry on as before.
The UN Security Counsel can authorize action (not a strong case since Mugabe is terrorizing only his own people, not threatening his neighbors), but there is no institutionalized mechanism for "nation-building". But when we see the Bush administration push guys like Boulton to be ambasssodor to the UN, you can see that the US has no apetite for using the UN as a multilateral tool to solve problems like in Zimbabwe, the Sudan or Myanmar.
By the way, another problem here reflects the steady growth of Chinese influence globally, including noticeably in Africa and Zimbabwe, at the expense of the US and its occasional Western allies. Mugabe is a Marxist, and has craftily turned to China for support, as Roger Bales of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out last week in the Weekly Standard: http://aei.org/publications/pubID.22581,filter.all/pub_detail.asp.
We can expect that China would veto any Security Counsel resolution authorizing action against Mugabe.
Zimbabwe, the Sudan, Myanmar and Iraq are all necessary consequences of the fact that the international community is still composed of sovereign countries - each of which prefers to allow bad things happen elsewhere than to take the bull by the horns and tie themselves down to a system that demands more responsibility from each of its members. The big countries could of course protect themselves (and their allies) by allowing a veto at the UN Security Counsel level.
Posted by: Tokyo Tom at Thursday, June 09 2005 12:20 AM (R+EaW)
9
The obvious solution for many parts of Africa is for the donor countries to empower the UN or its members to administer failed countries like Zimbabwe. Otherwise our aid just enables corrupt leaders to carry on as before.
Except that the UN is also hopelessly corrupt. I don't see that this will improve anything.
The UN Security Counsel can authorize action (not a strong case since Mugabe is terrorizing only his own people, not threatening his neighbors), but there is no institutionalized mechanism for "nation-building". But when we see the Bush administration push guys like Boulton to be ambasssodor to the UN, you can see that the US has no apetite for using the UN as a multilateral tool to solve problems like in Zimbabwe, the Sudan or Myanmar.
So, your argument is that first, the UN is unlikely to authorise effective action and second, that the US is not interested in trying to work through the UN.
It seems that the second point follows naturally from the first.
We can expect that China would veto any Security Counsel resolution authorizing action against Mugabe.
They've been pulling that crap for sixty years, so duh.
Zimbabwe, the Sudan, Myanmar and Iraq are all necessary consequences of the fact that the international community is still composed of sovereign countries - each of which prefers to allow bad things happen elsewhere than to take the bull by the horns and tie themselves down to a system that demands more responsibility from each of its members.
No.
There are lots and lots of sovereign countries that don't systematically murder, maim or imprison their populations. Not many of them are in Africa, however. Leaders willing to kill their own people aren't going to pay any attention to "international law". They will pay attention to bombs and bullets.
You can't fix this through the UN, because the UN is part of the problem. It's fundamentally and irretrievably corrupt. We have to destroy the UN and start again.
What can fix it? Trade. Free movement of goods, capital, people and information. Freedom makes you rich. The solution to the world's ills is not transnationalism but globalisation.
We might have to shoot some more dictators first. And if that involves ignoring the bleating of France and Germany and the scowls of China, then so be it.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, June 09 2005 02:14 AM (AIaDY)
10
We should form a new UN open to democracies only; call it the Organization of Democratic States or something. It would have a President elected by a nation-by-nation electoral college (with # of electors based on population) and a legislature similar to the U.S. House and Senate. Prospective members would have to meet guidelines of freedom of the press, real democracy, human rights, etc.
It would have legitimacy, transparency, accountablity, and by God, it would get shit done.
Posted by: TallDave at Thursday, June 09 2005 01:17 PM (9XE6n)
11
More proof, as if any were needed, that the UN is useless at best, a true source of evil at worst.
That's why it would be funny, if weren't so infuriating, to hear Senate Democrats, and a few Rebublicans like like crybaby Voinovich, going on and on about what an important posting the UN Ambassador's job is, and how Bolton lacks the diplomatic skill to represent us there, he'll hurt America's reputation around the world, etc, etc. Dont ya just wanna scream - IT'S FULL OF COUNTRIES LIKE ZIMBABWE - WHO CARES WHAT THEY THINK! The UN isn't the answer to anything. We need another coalition of the willing, like one of the above commenters said.
Posted by: Jim O'Sullivan at Friday, June 10 2005 02:11 PM (6+o02)
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