True to Form

The UN, which I was under the impression was founded to deal with threats to peace and freedom like Mugabe, leaps into action after the sham Zimbabwe elections–and asks Africa to sort it out for them.

Update: Yeah, that worked out really well.

Zimbabwe Question

My recent posting on Britain's contingency plans for dealing with Zimbabwe have received a few comments and emails that basically said that my idea of Britain going in and sorting out Mugabe the old fashioned way was not necessarily a good idea and, as this is not the day of the gunboat, we might get our heads handed back to us .

On the former I am entirely willing to concede the point that perhaps military intervention (i.e. pounding Mugabe and his ilk into the ground like a nail) is not the wisest course of action (though not for the craven reasons that Mr. Brown subscribes to, which is what really gets up my nose). The day I present a plan of attack and everyone else says "goodo" is the day I give up on the sanity of the world. I have trouble organising a trip to the swimming pool, so military options I leave to more experienced minds.

On the latter point, though, I must stand firm. True, Britain's might is not what it was, though this is largely a matter of numbers rather than quality, as comparable unit for comparable unit and man for man the British armed forces excel against anyone in the world. And we are not talking about taking on Red China in a land war here. We are talking about east Sub-Saharan Africa with armed forces for whom the glory days of the Impi are a faded memory and whose main experience is in pushing around poor farmers and tradesmen like Cossacks in a somewhat warmer climate. There are only two countries that need to be looked at for overflights to Zimbabwe: Mozambique and South Africa. Mozambique's air force is so small that it doesn't even show on the charts and South Africa only fields one fighter aircraft. I don't mean one type of fighter plane, I mean one plane. Even Zimbabwe only boasts half a dozen clapped-out Chinese fighters and God knows what condition they're in. As for ground defences, I doubt if they field anything that the RN or RAF couldn't take out before breakfast.

But for what happens when the SAS or whoever reach Harare, I submit for comparison the 1981 SAS mission where a force of three men was sent into Gambia to rescue the President's wife and family from left-wing rebels who'd seized the capital. Long story short, the three SAS men got the hostages out safe and for good measure liberated the country with the aid of a contingent of Seneglese paras that they hooked up with. Hopefully they got a commendation for initiative.

As I said, whether that sort of thing is wise is one question, but whether it is possible is another thing entirely.

Britain's Do-Nothing Contingency

The Times looks at Britain's so-called contingency plans for military intervention in Zimbabwe that reveals New Labour as a load of gutless wonders more worried about how they are seen by tin-pot African dictators rather than cleaning up the mess their predecessors made of Zimbabwe a generation ago at Lancaster House.

Any grown up nation worth its salt would have had plans that ran along the lines of putting together a special forces task force out of Diego Garcia with the mission of taking out the Mugabe regime in toto while the Foreign Office gave a gentle message to whichever country whose airspace was being crossed that the RAF can go through their defences like butter if they don't cooperate. And if any of the assortment of petty tyrants and kelptocrats who infest central Africa want to call it colonialism, they'd best say it very, very softly.

Unfortunately, Whitehall is in a rather infantile stage that demands that civilised men defer to barbarians and the MoD's plans, such as they are, amount to little more than Britain sitting on its hands while Zimbabwe's neighbours decide whether it's worth deposing a fellow dictator and then watching Her Majesty's armed forces hold Mebki's coattails. Or until hell freezes over, which is far more likely.

I assume that Mr. Brown has a barber shave him, because I cannot imagine how he looks himself in the mirror.

Zimbabwe Opposition Gives Up

Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said that his party will not participate in the runoff presidential elections this week because of President Mugabe's reign of terror.

And so it is that Zimbabwe, once a democracy, albeit an unjustly limited one, and the breadbasket of Africa has descended into a nakedly racist dictatorship ruling over a terrified, hungry and impoverished people. If ever there was an object lesson in how moral posturing leads to disaster, this is it. The old Ian Smith regime was nothing to applaud. Its whites-only government and open rebellion against Britain left a permanent bad taste in the mouth, but it was at least a fundamentally civilised society that, given time, could have been reformed. Instead, a load of we-know-better types at Lancaster House demanded instant solutions that boiled down to handing power over to a Marxist tyrant whose literally only qualification was that he wasn't white. But that didn't matter to successive British governments who just wanted to wash their hands of the whole mess. The result has been a slow motion Grand Guignol while Britain, who forced this situation and bears the largest responsibility for its outcome, sits back and does nothing for fear of being seen as "colonialist."

I'm sure that's a great comfort to the Zimbabweans.

Mugabe Loses

In the best news to come out of Zimbabwe since Ian Smith was fool enough to issue the UDI in 1965, Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF has lost the election and Mugabe himself has lost the presidential vote.

Whether or not the old monster leaves power gracefully or is put in the dock for his crimes remains to be seen, but for now I'll sum it all up in one word:

RESULT!

Fruits of Macmillan's Folly

If you know anyone in Zimbabwe, tell them to get out now. The nation that was once the bread basket of Africa is now like something out of a John Christopher novel with the people living under tyranny in abject poverty. Cholera is breaking out in the capital city, inflation is at 1281 percent, and even the police and army are on the verge of collapse.

So much for the joys of decolonisation.

Winds of change, my eye.