"Mr. President, Liberate Zimbabwe"
Kirchick, James
Mr. President, Liberate Zimbabwe A good deed for Bush’s fi nal days. BY JAMES KIRCHICK In the fi nal days of his presidency, George W. Bush will face an avalanche of requests....
...James Kirchick, who has reported from Zimbabwe, is an assistant editor at The New Republic...
...Since the March election, a steady stream of journalists has come to report on the stalled negotiations and needed his skills at ferrying them around the country, arranging interviews, and dodging military cordons and security operatives...
...The [Zimbabwean] military would be very weak and have a diffi cult time in resisting any credible intervention,” says J. Anthony Holmes, a former Foreign Service offi cer now with the Council on Foreign Relations...
...In the routine and predictable nature of these appeals, Bush’s remaining time in offi ce will be little different from those of his predecessors granting last-minute favors to the privileged and powerful...
...He described the horrors he saw recently taking a French journalist to the cholera-infected area...
...He cried,” my friend told me...
...I have given up,” he says...
...last month, soldiers rioted in response to the government’s failure to pay them on time (a task complicated by the fact that the country faces 231 million percent infl ation...
...Mugabe, meanwhile, continues to threaten violence against anyone who would try to ease him or his party out of power...
...Most of these people are in need of emergency food supplies, and they will starve unless outside actors like the United Nations or the United States comes to their help...
...Across the continent, African voices are bravely speaking out to say now is the time for him to step down...
...But he fi nds the utter lack of political progress frustrating and the humanitarian situation unendurable...
...It is time for Robert Mugabe to go,” Bush said last week, recognizing the growing momentum in favor of a humanitarian intervention to save Zimbabwe...
...In the face of professional armies, many units would surrender or revolt against their commanders...
...We won this country through the barrel of the gun and we will defend it the way we won it,” a government spokesman said...
...Calls for Mugabe’s forcible removal are growing stronger...
...government estimates of the number of citizens residing in-country range from 5.8 million to 12 million...
...Most of the country’s hospitals are inoperative, and the Zimbabwean government has no means to stanch the spread of the disease...
...Given the massive refugee outfl ows to bordering states and an intensifi ed mortality level brought about by the policies of the Mugabe regime over the past several years, it is no longer possible to even state Zimbabwe’s current population...
...For some time now, the president of neighboring Botswana, Ian Khama, has supported intervention to topple Mugabe...
...He has not been wanting for work...
...A few days ago, I chatted online with the Zimbabwean fi xer I worked with during a visit to the country in 2006...
...Indeed, it couldn’t prevent the initial outbreak, which it blames on Western governments’ poisoning of water wells...
...Last week, amid the growing chorus of calls for Mugabe to step down, a spokesperson for the chairman of the African Union said, “Only dialogue between the Zimbabwean parties, supported by the AU and other regional actors, can restore peace and stability to that country...
...BY JAMES KIRCHICK In the fi nal days of his presidency, George W. Bush will face an avalanche of requests...
...In his fi nal days in offi ce, he could liberate millions more...
...He was then coaxed by African leaders into negotiations to establish a coalition government, but has refused to cede control of the army, the police force, or the central bank...
...He was joined earlier this month by the Kenyan prime minister, Raila Odinga, who said that “it’s time for African governments . . . to push [Mugabe] out of power...
...He uses the negotiations to prevent any handover of power to the real winners of the country’s election and to frustrate all attempts at economic reform...
...The Zimbabwean military is poorly equipped and demoralized...
...The World Health Organization has confi rmed nearly 800 deaths so far (though it believes many more have perished) and 16,000 more cases...
...He told Tsvangirai to boycott the stalled power-sharing talks as the negotiations, with their patina of international legitimacy, have become a way for an illegitimate leader to maintain his grip on power—not unlike another “peace process” in a different part of the world...
...Mugabe rejected the results and won a rigged followup...
...Even South Africa’s Desmond Tutu supports intervention...
...But Bush has an opportunity to benefi t some of the world’s most destitute individuals and to secure a positive and lasting legacy in a country that has suffered under the boot of a megalomaniacal thug for decades...
...With the vocal support of Botswana and Kenya, an American- and British-led force could work alongside African troops to decapitate the regime and facilitate the delivery of emergency aid and the installation of the duly elected government...
...Well-connected political hands will inquire if so-and-so could receive a coveted pardon, lobbyists will ask for that last-minute executive order, obscure foreign leaders will finally call in chits for having joined the Coalition of the Willing...
...What ought to bring Zimbabwe to the forefront of international concern is a spreading cholera epidemic, incubated in sewage-infested townships, which threatens to overtake the country and the region...
...Zimbabwe, which for the past eight years has been careening from one disaster to another, is today on the precipice of humanitarian catastrophe...
...African leaders have long protected Mugabe, fearful of the precedent that ushering out a liberationera hero could set for their own political survival...
...Asked to refl ect upon his legacy in an interview last month, Bush said, “I’d like to be a president [known] as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace...
...Mugabe has the backing of both Russia and China, meaning that, as with NATO’s intervention in Bosnia, military action would have to be taken outside the parameters of the United Nations...
...Ruled by Robert Mugabe for nearly 29 years, the country has been in political stalemate since March when Mugabe lost a presidential and parliamentary election to Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change...
Vol. 14 • December 2008 • No. 14
