African Freedom

Are international tribunals for war crimes suspects a Good Idea?

And if so, are they being Done Well?

If not, does that mean that the Idea is in fact not so Good?

Two excellent pieces on these themes: one by John Lloyd, the other by Bill Montgomery.

It goes without saying that there are going to be shortcomings in any process of this sort, especially if the accused is bent on turning the whole affair into a circus as the best way of confusing the issues and trying to 'relativise' his/her guilt.

To this end Vojislav Seselj is putting in a powerful performance (NB a rare example of courtroom transcripts being Not Suitable for Work?).

Likewise any such Tribunal needs to rely on certain cooperative countries' police/military forces to arrest and hand over suspects, and to provide hard evidence perhaps from Top Secret sources.

This means that those countries inevitably start to have some influence over the timing of arrests and even the issue of indictments. Political and other calculations creep in. "You help us - we help you."

So if Milosevic had to be indicted, surely Croatia's President Tudjman who also played his part in some ghastly events should be too? Indeed. 

Yet somehow the indictment with his name on it was never quite issued. 

Did some governments not want that to happen and suggest that ICTY delay matters as Tudjman was ill? Tudjman generously solved the problem by dying. Unindicted - his reputation undeservedly intact to that extent at least.

Similarly Bosnia President Izetbegovic was under ICTY investigation when he died in 2003, when investigations were dropped. Was it really not clear by 2003 (ie almost a decade after the Bosnia conflict) that Izetbegovic too should face some war crimes indictments? Why was it all dragging on in this way?

Lloyd's article includes the following quote from a senior disillusioned British observer of ICTY:

And I saw that the UN, which is supposed to supervise, has no moral compass. It enjoins even-handedness, on ethnic grounds, not on grounds of justice.

Maybe in the circumstances of what happened in former Yugoslavia, which most people would see as some sort of ethnic civil war, this sort of thing is not only inevitable but desirable? If justice is to be seen to be done - most importantly among the communities involved in the fighting - all the issues need a fair objective airing?

NB All of which is not - of course - to say that each leader was "equally guilty".

One thing is for sure. If ICTY and other such Tribunals can not find a way to deal with intimidation of witnesses as happened in the case of indicted Kosovo leader Haradinaj, the process might as well not continue.

To carry on and reach unsatisfactory verdicts when this is going on simply shows weakness, and tells ICTY indictees and their supporters that the worse they behave, the better the outcome - for them.

Exactly the opposite of the message ICTY was set up to send?    

In Sudan too the authority of UN-led international processes is now being directly challenged.

Will ICC keep its nerve and follow through by indicting President al-Bashir?

Tempting as it is to disagree on sight with everything written by Jonathan Steele in the Guardian, I did think about this one arguing the case against the International Criminal Court indicting the President of Sudan.

Spared as I am from knowing the slightest thing about Sudan, what might I offer by way of First Principles?

JS distinguishes this case from the indictment against Slobodan Milosevic:

The Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, was under military attack from Nato. Negotiations had been cut off. Ultimately, they were renewed but only with the good offices of the Russians who had shown no enthusiasm for the Hague tribunal's indictment.

All sort of true enough. But not the best argument for politically and morally supporting that indictment.

The point is that up Milosevic's indictment we all had been tempted to keep a number of policy eggs in his basket ("better the devil you know", "we have no choice but to deal with the people in power", "realpolitik has to prevail" etc etc).

This meant not throwing our full weight behind the democratic opposition, who consequently were even more demoralised: "even if we do everything we can in these appalling conditions to make Serbia a decent society, the West may not support us wholeheartedly".

Hence lots of unhappy neurotic tweebling at high levels of the FCO and elsewhere as the prospect of the indictment loomed: "now we'll face a cornered animal, even more dangerous and unpredictable... a bad situation could get a lot worse..."

The indictment of course as I expected had several excellent effects:

• Milosevic became a skunk - almost no-one serious would engage with him any more
• therefore all eggs thereafter placed in the opposition basket
• this allowed us quietly to drop hints to key regime supporters that the game was ending - better to jump ship than sink with him. Wedge-driving and all that. Worked a treat.
• and we could turn round his slogan that "in the end the world would come to Serbia via me".
• Instead we could at last say convincingly "Not true! Milosevic is Serbia's obstacle to rejoining the civilised world - throw him out!"

All this worked remarkably well. Out he was thrown.

Does any of this apply to Sudan? Probably some of it. Especially the wedge-driving bits - if the President is indicted we can start picking away much more effectively at those around him.

Not an overnight win, but a big change in the psychological climate, empowering at least a bit more those normal people caught in the Sudanese struggle.

As for Jonathan Steele:

Holding people to account for their actions is a desirable goal, but it has to be weighed against the difficulties it creates if the indictees still hold power. Bashir is not Pinochet, who was long out of office as well as out of favour in Chile when he was indicted (by a foreign judge, not by an international court).

The list of practical problems that would flow from an indictment of Sudan's president is long. It far outweighs the benefits. The ICC's prosecutor should think again.

Does this not miss the most basic point? That if the ICC thinks he ought to face charges for vile atrocities, they indeed must indict him regardless of the political inconvenience and practical problems?

Otherwise it is not an implacable independent Court, but a whim of whatever political fashion happens to be prevalent?

Plus, of course, if they sense ICC weakness local lunatics everywhere only have to threaten to create an even longer list of "practical problems" for the Guardian to bewail the 'likely' impact of any indictment.

Which rather defeats the point of setting the ICC up in the first place?

There are not too many UN Security Council vetoes.

So when one comes along it shows that things at that top table are not in good shape - lack of grown-up consensus and/or serious miscalculation by those who pushed the offending Resolution.

Although of course there may be cases where a Resolution is pushed in expectation of a Veto by one or other Permanent Member in the hope of embarrassing said Permanent Member before world opinion.

Last night the world saw the unedifying spectacle of Russia and China backed by South Africa, Vietnam and Libya blocking a Resolution to impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe as well as financial measures against key Zimbawe leaders.

The Russians and Chinese hid behind the pious rubbish that Zimbabwe is not a 'threat to international peace and security', the legal 'trigger' needed for action of this sort. Since it is quite easy to imagine Zimbabwe collapsing with dangerous ramifications for its neighbours, that argument is unconvincing if not downright dishonest.

The stance of Mbeki/Mandela South Africa, itself a victim of Zimbabwe's collapse, goes beyond shame.

So there it is.

Three countries with no democracy lining up with Russia which is doing its best to diminish its democracy, aided and abetted by South Africa led by a Soviet-trained narcissist, voting against meaningful pressure on a vile and incompetent regime which counts for nothing.

But why? 

The decision of course has nothing to do with Zimbabwe. The Chinese and Russians want to be obstinate just to show that as their post-Cold War wealth increases apace they can do what they darn well please, regardless of what the 'West' wants. Zimbabwe's luckless population are collateral damage. 

No better time to do flex these muscles than in the dying months of the unhappy Bush Presidency and with Gordon Brown's domestic credibility also low. A strong school of thought has it that when someone is down there is never a better time to kick him.

So, a new phase begins.

Mugabe and his core villains gloat heartily at the success of their daring smash and grab raid on their country's integrity.

Western measures of different sorts intensify.

Zimbabwe's already parlous situation gets worse. The Chinese may step in to buy the place if it gets cheap enough. Ruin. Human desperation and misery on a massive scale.

All as I warned. 

Plus there could be bigger picture effects too. The idea of a League of Democracies separate from the UN may get a boost. But would this move allow a significant League of Authoritarians to set themselves up in business? Is this the best the world can do?

Yet if one looks at these things from a grander perspective, one sees different patterns emerging.

Policies have Consequences, even if those consequences bite you far in the future.

For example, when did the UK wield its first UN Veto acting alone?

Perhaps on 13 September 1963: over ... the situation in Southern Rhodesia. 

Nelson Mandela was finally released from prison to global acclaim on 11 February 1990.

Despite being First Secretary (Political) at our Embassy in Cape Town at the time, I missed it. My friend and colleague John (now Sir John) Sawers was there in the thick of the action, and was probably the first British person to greet Mandela in person after all those long years of imprisonment. Which diplomatic and personal nimbleness he is now deploying to good effect as HM Ambassador at the United Nations.

Anyway, I missed this historic moment because I was in deepest Transkei, Mandela's Xhosa home base, at a rally of the ANC's rival the Pan Africanist Congress.

This was a daunting affair, a heaving African crowd crammed into a sweaty hall chanting 'one settler, one bullet'. Mine was the only pink and conspicuously settlerish face for many miles in any direction.

The ANC (with its steely core of Moscow communist discipline) went on to sweep the board in ensuing elections in South Africa, and the PAC disintegrated in the margins.   

Anyway, a few months later the Embassy had relocated to Pretoria for the non-Parliamentary season. The Ambassador was in the UK. His deputy set up a call on Mandela in Soweto and drove off, delighted with his likely 'scoop'. I was left to run the ship on a sleepy afternoon. 

Zzzzz. 

The telephone rings. The security guard at the gate. "Nelson Mandela is here!"

Panic.

I race downstairs to greet Mandela and escort him to the Ambassador's office. His people mutter something unconvincing (and it turned out untrue) about having called us to say that the meeting with the Deputy Head of Mission was to be here, not in Soweto. Urgent calls go out to try to get my boss back to the Embassy asap for the meeting.

So we sat and waited. I, lowly First Sec Pretoria, a very small ant crawling on the vast dunghill of world history, had the most famous person in the world and a couple of his people, all to myself!

We talked mainly about the ghastly violence in KwaZulu, where ANC/SACP members and Inkatha supporters of Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi were killing each other in large numbers.

At one point Mandela sharply said "Would you people support Buthelezi as President?"

I replied, "If he wins a free and fair election of all South Africans, why not?"

There was a long awkward silence.

Then one of Mandela's people spoke through gritted teeth: "Good answer!"

Eventually Mandela decided not to wait for my boss to return from Soweto and departed, the 'white' South African local staff women in the Embassy jostling to meet him and being charmed to bits.

And to make an exciting day complete, my boss finally arrived. Too late to meet Mandela but complete with speeding ticket. By then I had drafted my telegram to London recording my fascinating encounter. 

Bliss.

This sorry Swedish story attracted fleeting global attention.

A school in Sweden confiscated a boy's party invitations being handed out to his friends as two classmates were not invited:

"Two people in class had not been invited, and that is not allowed. The ones who were not invited felt sad and left out," the school principal, who was not named, told the paper.

Let's assume that the two who were not invited had in some way or the other upset the party-host.

The boy hosting the party decides not to invite them. Cause - meet Effect!

The idea that behaviour has consequences is life's one core rule. Our world depends on it.

Society ideally should be organised so that Good Behaviour has Good Consequences; Bad Behaviour has Bad Consequences.

And if those basic principles are not taught and learned at school, when are they taught and learned?

What if the very distinction between Good and Bad is seen as ... discrimination? 

Thus to the Mandela Birthday Party in London. And the revolting spectacle of Annie Lennox on stage twittering on about HIV/AIDS, when Mandela has done so little about the utterly awful policies of President Mbeki in this area which have led to the deaths of countless South Africans.   

Then on to the African Union gathering, where 'President' Mugabe is welcomed as if nothing untoward had happened in his country's 'election'. Again, Mandela has done nothing to make a difference.

On the day France takes over the EU Presidency let us recall the infamous words of Jean-Paul Sartre in 1961:

The rebel’s weapon is the proof of his humanity. For in the first days of the revolt you must kill: to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remain a dead man, and a free man; the survivor, for the first time, feels a national soil under his foot.

We see now that J-PS was 100% wrong.

Those African Marxist liberators, so generously supported by Sweden, did killing enough. But they remained unfree, locked in a profound Marxist/Swedish moral syndrome of Total Irresponsibility.

Unable to accept criticism, unable to set their standards high, ultimately loyal (like Mandela) not to their people but only to their own political movements.

Nor are we former colonialists free either, since we carry on sending 'assistance' to these villains, patronisingly subsidising and extending their countries' moral and actual impoverishment.

In Africa thanks to generations of the best Euro-Swedish non-judgmental educational thinking and development policies, Bad Behaviour has Quite Good consequences.

Result?

Disaster. Of course.

But it's no-one's fault. Except maybe ours.

Update: I learn that many schools in the UK and not only in Sweden have these 'all or no-one' policies for parties. Including the school where my daughter goes(!). They have a variation - it is OK within one class for girls to invite only girls to a party, and boys only boys. Hmm.

Not clear to me what exactly the 'policy' means. It is not (I think) in any contract one signs with the school. In practice it is little more than an impertinent device to give teachers an easier life, and maybe these days they need one.

Yet it is deeply perverse. Imagine if the teachers at a school were told that if they host a party at home they had to invite all their teacher colleagues. They would say 'Get Lost! It's my house and I'll invite whom I like.'

Parents and children are not extended a similar freedom and the accompanying responsibility?

One of the most piquant features of the British Parliamentary voting system is that it is so well established and so well analysed that pundits can predict with a high degree of accuracy which MPs will lose their seats for any given % swing of opinion against the government at the next election.

Thus the current group of Labour MPs are staring at the opinion polls in horror, as so many of them stand to be Out next time round if things carry on as they are.

Thus the Labour ship heads boldly for the rocks. At what point do the crew rebel and heave the captain overboard?

Robert Mugabe of course sets Gordon Brown a magnificent example in full steam ahead political navigation when rocks are looming.

Robert. Gordon. Names of great richness in Scotland.

Are these two leaders by some chance related?

Daniel Finkelstein in the Times also takes up the charge against John Simpson's wretched analysis of the latest news from Zimbabwe.

And Lord Ashdown argues the case for intervening by force in Zimbabwe to head off a possible genocide.

But, comes the shriek, that would violate Zimbabwe's sovereignty!

Recently I was a Harvard-sponsored seminar at which issues of 'humanitarian intervention' and the Right to Protect were discussed.

I recalled seeing signs as one entered Harvard Square: Cambridge is a Domestic Violence-Free Zone.

I said that if you were walking down the street near Harvard and saw a man beating his wife/child/dog brutally with a stick in his front garden, you were morally and maybe even these days legally obligated to intervene to stop the violence.

Thus we long ago moved on from the idea that the 'sovereignty' of one's home was a shield enabling the uninterrupted commission of seriously illegal acts.

So if it is unacceptable to brutalise one person in one's own garden, why is it acceptable to brutalise millions of people in one's country without fear of being stopped?

Lordy. The West appearing yet again as the self-proclaimed world policeman. How to choose where to intervene? Zimbabwe the thin end of the wedge?

Good points. But to accept them without more merely gives a blank cheque to repressive regimes everywhere. 

So let's agree at least to intervene in the no-brainer immediate brutality cases, where there is no serious cost to intervening and immediate gains to be made in saving large numbers of lives.

Plus 'intervention' need not jump immediately to military force. If key Western governments froze all Zimbabwean official accounts, forced the printing of Mugabe's worthless currency to be stopped and used a bit of electronic sabotage, the regime's power to suppress its own people would be massively reduced.

Or why not quietly offer the key gangsters propping up the regime a bit of money to Go Quietly?

Or lots of other little ruses designed to End the Misery asap?

Maybe some of this is going on. I hope so. But the dose so far is not working.

Finally, South Africa's role (to be precise Mkeki's role) has been outlandishly bad.

Here is a Good Idea from Peter Godwin in the New York Times: lean hard on South Africa by treating Zimbabwe as South Africa's Tibet:

Maybe Zimbabwe should become to the South Africa-hosted World Cup what Tibet has been to the Beijing Olympics — the pungent albatross that spoils every press conference and mars every presentation with its insistent odor.  

This from the BBC is just too much.

John Simpson - who should know better - gushes on about Mugabe's 'extraordinary turnaround' under a heading about 'Mugabe's remarkable comeback'.

A 'sweeping victory for a man who only three months ago seemed on the ropes.'

What makes a seemingly intelligent journalist use tired and vilely inappropriate sporting cliches to describe the violent greed of this African despot as if it were some sort of meaningful achievement?

May I have a refund of my licence fee, please?

Imagine.

You fairly win an auction to buy a house. But having attempted to rig the auction the previous owner will not move out, and starts to attack you viciously when you come to claim the property.

Most of the others living on the street and further afield are dismayed, and want you to take possession peacefully. But then along comes a clever but shifty neighbour with what he says is a great idea.

That the violent previous owner and you live together nicely in the house, in the name of 'unity' and 'resolving the crisis'.

What a helpful suggestion.

And how lofty the Moral Authority and Wisdom of the neighbour, who himself once called in a lot of outside help when the previous owner of his house was behaving brutally towards him.

The scorpion sings lustily.

As the UN warns of mass starvation in Zimbabwe the time has come to stop talking about the 'Zimbabwe elections' as if they were/are elections.

What we are seeing are the deranged throes of a violent gang around and including Mugabe aimed at staying in power at any cost to their own country. No vote held under these circumstances can have legitimacy or credibility. Mugabe presumably is hoping to brutalise the Opposition into a boycott, so as to save himself the trouble of cheating and piously claiming victory.

Voting is a subtle process intended to give citizens a substantive choice in who runs their country. Just as voting was a meaningless farce in communist countries where only one party could take part, it also is meaningless in a country where the voters are being openly attacked and intimidated and the government is howling that its opponents are a deadly enemy to whom they will not cede power.

Mugabe in fact has a weird point when he rants that Western and especially British interest in Zimbabwe is racist.

Because of its sizeable and significant 'white'/European community and all the history involved, Zimbabwe attracts significant interest in our media. In a (patronising?) way we have notably higher expectations of this country. Perhaps they are being met. Compared to previous catastrophes in Rwanda and various wars elsewhere in Africa, Zimbabwe is still a model of decorum.

An intelligent Zim leader would be using the presence of this 'European' community to develop his country more speedily and creatively. Just as we could be doing far more to mobilise Zimbabweans in the UK and indeed in Zimbabwe against the collapse of their country, even if that would allow Mugabe to 'prove' that the Colonial Masters were back in business...

A few years back when Mugabe started to attack the farming community I talked privately to a British Cabinet Minister. I said that to my unexpert eye a likely course of events looked to be:

• ethnic cleansing of 'white' farmers
• speedy deterioration of the economy
• risk of widespread hunger/famine
• millions of people displaced plus countless deaths
• British taxpayers forlornly watching this fiasco, then being sent a large 'assistance' bill to try to repair some of the damage, much of which spending would do no good anyway

I urged the argument that HMG had to mobilise a vigorous intervention of one or other sort immediately to force Mugabe from power and so head all this off. Was that not the only 'moral foreign policy' way to go?

The reply: "I agree, but there would be no political support to do it..."

So much for the claim that HMG/DFID policy is all about lifting people from poverty - we have stood blinking unhappily as Mugabe has plunged Zimbabwe into ruin.

Whatever happened to our Moral Foreign Policy?

Or even Enlightened Self-Interest? 

The BBC last night led its top news programme with warnings of a new famine in Ethiopia, "caused by two factors - drought, and rising food prices".

The main 'deeper' cause is in fact the long the reign of Marxist terror by dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, which killed a million people plus and seriously weakened the country:

Although the Red Terror affected thousands, it was Mengistu's dismissive response to events in 1984 which arguably caused most deaths. An estimated one million people died in a desperate famine which grabbed the world's attention. News footage, shot by the cameraman Mo Amin, spawned LiveAid and a global fundraising drive.

Yet through it all, Mengistu was consumed with preparations for the 10th anniversary of the revolution. Dawit Wolde Giorgis, the member of Mengistu's central committee responsible for drought relief, claimed in his memoirs that Mengistu referred to the prospect of a serious famine as "petty human problems".

During his 17-year reign, tens of thousands of people were killed, tortured or detained and about 700,000 peasants were forcibly resettled in an effort to cut off support for rebels in the north. Those rebels, led by Meles Zenawi, took power in 1991...

My earlier post on the Cost of Mugabe and Milosevic and Castro was run by B92 in Serbia, prompting a series of mostly weird comments purporting to demonstrate that I am 'anti-Serb' or otherwise a crazy neocon.

My point is simple.

It may not be easy to show what exactly causes what, when it comes to the weather. But if you deliberately burn down your own house, it is fair to say (a) that you have 'caused' your own rooflessness. And (b), that that rooflessness will persist until someone builds you a new one.

Massive sustained blunders at a national level have massive consequences, which echo on down the decades and bring about future disasters.

Run the figures. If Ethiopia had not had Mengistu and grown at a modest 3% per annum since the mid-1970s, there would be no mass famine now. 'Drought' is the cause of famine in poor societies primarily because they are poor - they lack the technology and productivity and flexibility to deal with it. And Mengistu's terror made Ethiopia far poorer than it should have been.  

And yes, the Mengistu misery in Ethiopia and the Mugabe misery in Zimbabwe are indeed related.

Zimbabwe as expected falls ever more steeply to total disaster.

The gang of military/security leaders previously dependent on Mugabe now look to be running the shop, desperate as they are to cling on to power and privileges at the cost of ruining their own country. A text-book case.

Yet the UN still gives Mugabe a forum to rave away. And we taxpayers end up paying for it.

I have been looking at the True Cost of Stupidity.

Take Serbia and Slovenia.

After the initial flurry of violence when Slovenia broke from the then Yugoslavia, Slovenia has patiently got on with developing its economy.

Serbia by contrast got on with more violence against Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. This led to reduced investment, sanctions and even in the end a NATO bombing.

Result? In GDP per capita terms, Serbia is still struggling to match its economic position of 1991.

Thus the Cost of Milosevic(ism) can be accurately measured. It is the space between the two lines of a simple graph of total GDP measured over time:

• one line shows Serbia's actual awful performance
• the other line shows what Serbia would have achieved by growing at an average of 3% a year over the past seventeen years. (Note: a conservative estimate - of course it could have done a lot better than that with common sense leadership and policies.)

To calculate that gap, a mathematician uses the Trapezium rule. In Serbia's case the 'opportunity cost' of Milosevic and Milosevicism now runs towards hundreds of billions of dollars.

It is no exaggeration to say that Milosevicism in all its forms delivered a set-back to Serbia from which it will never recover. There is no conceivable chance of Serbia growing faster than Slovenia for the decades required for Serbia to 'catch up' the ground lost in the past seventeen years.

The political costs of this madness also have compounded up. Montenegro and Kosovo have broken away - had Serbia developed to its natural potential they could be clamouring to stay with Serbia and share its success.

Ditto for Mugabe.

Running the Trapezium formula on Zimbabwe's performance over the past twenty years and comparing it with eg Estonia is a profoundly depressing experience.

Mugabe like Milosevic for reasons of selfish paranoia has created national losses running to scores of billions of dollars, losses on a scale far exceeding anything development assistance might now do to put right. 

Zimbabweans will pay for this folly for many decades to come through low living standards, higher disease and death rates, worse roads, poorer education, weaker institutions.

Castro Communism is another horror story. Back in 1959 Cuba was richer than Singapore. Singapore got on with developing and building itself up, maintaining solid policies over forty years. It is now one of the most successful countries in the world. Castro's Cuba scarcely changed at all.

Conclusions? 

The Guardian's Madeleine Bunting visits a new bore-hole in Africa, funded not by official development assistance but by voluntary efforts.

She asks in some despair:

"But the question that keeps coming back is: where is the state investment in Katine? Why isn't Kampala finding the money to drill a borehole for this community?"

Anyone who has seen the results of Western development assistance in Africa over decades will not take long to answer that question for her. Later in the piece she mentions Chinese contractors hard at work building a new road. Who is paying them? And why are African contractors themselves not hard at work in that area?

This too is a bit odd:

These are people whom history has served badly, and Britain has played no small role in that. We cobbled Uganda together ... Furthermore, the damaging western legacy is no longer seen as just political: it is increasingly also environmental. Last year, Katine was one of many sub-counties in the Soroti district devastated by nine months of flooding, which destroyed roads, homes and crops on which thousands depended. No one can remember comparable floods, and the fear is that climate change is to blame.

On a point of sneaky drafting technique, note how Ms Bunting effortlessly slips from the Subjective (" ...is seen as just political") to the Objective ("it is increasingly environmental".

Is she suggesting that if the colonial-legacy borders were different there would have been less flooding?

In Europe we have adjusted many earlier borders peacefully (and not so peacefully) in the past 20 years as communism ended.

Time for Africa do the same, if the different communities find it so hard to live together?

Our Ambassador in Zimbabwe Andrew Pocock has had a confrontation with the Mugabe regime when he and some senior diplomatic colleagues went to have a look at what is now happening in Zimbabwe beyond the capital.

Thus the dilemma of diplomats in a country run by gangsters and heading for disaster. The basic story is clear and well understood by capitals. What else to do?

Staying in the Embassy and/or talking to sensible local people who want democratic change does not achieve much. But you also know that going around to see for yourself evidence of the regime's brutality also will make little difference other than to annoy the regime and make it even less likely to engage with you personally.

Mugabe and his senior clique have basically prevailed, for now at least. They held an election, lost it, and are simply staying on in power as world attention ebbs in despair at the stupidity of it all.  

Of course in a way Mugabe has a point when he denounces Western focus on Zimbabwe as 'racist'. Were it not for the presence in Zimbabwe of a significant post-colonial 'white' population his cruel corrupt manoeuvrings would not attract much international attention at all. Zimbabwe would be just another hopeless African country among many sinking under the weight of calamitous mis-government.

In such a situation we run out of words to describe the situation. Thus the Guardian:

Since he lost control of parliament, Mr Mugabe and the rump of Zanu-PF have been playing for time. The delay allowed them to chase 40,000 farm workers from their homes, kill at least 22 people and torture 900 others, according to the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights ... Mr Mugabe can not be sure that he has yet bludgeoned enough of the opposition into submission ... Another major task for Mr Mugabe is to find more than 200,000 votes, if he is to overturn the results of the first round. There is, still, all to play for if the run-off is held promptly.

The expression "there is still all to play for" contrives to make this sound like a cricket match played to respectable rules, not a violent power struggle in which the regime is counting on the opposition's decency and restraint to continue brutalising them.

If we see a neighbour whipping his child or starving his dog to death in the next door garden, do we not have a moral and maybe even legal obligation to intervene?

What is the difference in today's Global Village when thousands or even millions of people are being whipped or starved by their own leaders?

Let's talk about it, very earnestly. But above all, actually do nothing.

Hurrah. An African leader hits a corpulent target, calling for the FAO to be abolished.

Meanwhile rich countries scatter yet more subsidised food aid here and there, to Do Something.

When the Soviet Union collapsed there were fears that Russians would starve to death in ther millions. I sat in on Whitehall crisis meetings where senior officials agonised over how best to help.

It was pointed out that in Russia there was plenty of food produced but unbelievable quantities rotted in the fields and en route to consumers. Maybe we could provide storage silos to stop at least some of this waste.

I defiantly said that whatever Russia might lack, it did not lack the capacity to build grain storage facilities. Cutting rocket fuselages in half would do nicely. The less food assistance we sent, the faster Russia would move to supplying its needs via market mechanisms.

The EU did unwisely send some heavy quantities of subsidised butter to Russia. A proportion of this reached a tiny proportion of Russians in Moscow and a few more big centres, who were fleetingly cheered up to have products of this quality. The rest was last heard of in military storage depots.

If we in Europe really want to make a difference, let's scrap the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). If not, let's at least not pile on the misery through more food aid except in situations of ruinous real famine. 

Historical Note: those who opposed scrapping the Corn Laws in the UK called themselves the Central Agricultural Protection Society (CAPS).

Are the CAP and CAPS by some chance related?

What is unfolding now in Zimbabwe is what we would have seen in Serbia in 2000 if Milosevic had had his way in the elections which brought him down.

An extended attempt to avoid declaring a result through trite, pompous bureaucratic and legal manoeuvres. This is aimed at taking the psychological momentum out of the opposition's victory while relying on international media attention to wander away as nothing much happens.

End result? Manifold opportunities to 'fix' a new outcome while beating up one's opponents. Mugabe and his villains ramble on. The country sinks further towards total collapse.

This pitiful behaviour naturally prompts inane calls for 'dialogue' at the UN in New York: "The solution to the problem of Zimbabwe lies in the hands of the people of Zimbabwe..."

Indeed it does. As it lay with the Serbian people, who stormed the Parliament building in Belgrade and threw their oppression out of the window.

In these situations outside politicians usually urge 'restraint'.

Why?

If it becomes clear that a country is being stolen and plundered by its clique of leaders, the only thing the mass of ordinary people can do is rise up and attack them. This is nothing more than self-defence, after all, against the vast violence being perpetrated by the regime against their lives and prospects.

Many people may die. But they at least will die honourably in a good cause, rather than die listlessly from starvation and disease.

Zimbabweans!

Follow the example of Serbia! Go for it!

While there is still something to salvage.

Mugabe is worse than the white supremacist leader, Ian Smith, who he overthrew. He has murdered more black Africans than the apartheid villains Hendrik Verwoerd, John Forster and P W Botha.

Reading this I come away with a clear view that Peter Tatchell disapproves of Presidents Mugabe and Mbeki.

Is there a case for the defence?

As Titanic-Mugabe steams urgently towards the rocks one asks oneself: what is really going on here?

The key 'deep' point to remember in all this is that Zimbabwe leader Mugabe is not (like South Africa President Thabo Mbeki) a Communist, but rather an Africanist.

The European Communist tradition stressing class struggle as hijacked by Moscow created the South African Communist Party, which in turn used the 'moderate' ANC as the vehicle to achieve a winning position in the anti-apartheid struggle.

This was quite separate from the Pan-Africanist tradition which, responding to Africa's colonised condition, originally emphasised a sort of pan-African 'national' awareness and self-improvement for Africans. Mugabe came from this latter tendency, which over time became radicalised and openly socialist.

Anyway, as the European colonial powers withdrew from Africa following WW2 there was bound to be an especially difficult struggle in Rhodesia and South Africa, where 'whites' of European descent were especially strong and rich. Armed resistance to Ian Smith's unilateral declaration of independence in Rhodesia developed. And Cold War geo-politics played its part.

Thus it happened that the Soviet Union threw its weight behind Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU movement. Robert Mugabe's ZANU movement found support from communist China, with also - after Mugabe won power - some handy local ethnic cleansing help from North Korea.

The populist hard core of Africanism is a preoccupation with Land - with the idea that Africa has to rid itself of all 'settlers' once and for all.

In South Africa I knew many members of the Pan-Africanist Congress, one of the groups hoping to achieve power after apartheid rule collapsed. PAC leaders were genial enough, but their slogan was 'One Settler - One Bullet!' Asked why they had such a violent non-inclusive mission-statement they would say 'Ah, as a poor organisation we can only afford one bullet for each settler'. Otherwise they would whip up support in the townships by saying "India for the Indians, Russia for the Russians, England for the English - why should it be Africa for everyone?"

NB too that South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement led by Steve Biko in the 1970s was in effect an attempt to create a new synthesis between 'African-ness' and class struggle, namely 'Blackness'. The ANC/SACP of course hated this new rival and shed few tears as the apartheid regime crushed it. But BCM mobilised many brilliant people. Some prominent ANC personalities now such as Cyril Ramaphosa had their formative years in such groupings; the ANC's internal rivalries today in part are about these long-standing ideological differences going back thirty years or more.  

The practical, political, moral and even metaphysical issues surrounding 'settler' land ownership in South Africa and Zimbabwe alike are, of course, obvious. After all those long years in power the Mugabe regime has failed to come up with fair but sensible solutions, which is why as it clings on to power it is still thrashing out at Zimbabwe's diminishing number of white farmers, even if this is risking collective national starvation. 

In short, Mugabe looks to be having his own special Nongqawuse Moment.

Nongqawuse was the Xhosa girl who back in 1856 in Transkei (now South Africa's Eastern Cape) announced that she had seen visions. This led to the Xhosa people in a fit of collective hysteria slaughtering their own cattle on a huge scale, creating appalling starvation. A unique example in history of collective national quasi-suicide.

Mugabe's case of course is rather different: it is the Mugabe elite putting the gun to the head of the Zimbabwean people, and telling them they need to die for their own good.

Does Mbeki as a Xhosa himself look at Zimbabwe and think about this parallel? What goes through his mind? 

In his communistic rationality he must look aghast at the catastrophe caused by Mugabe's atavistic vengefulness against 'whites' (plus he has to think about coping with the tens of thousands of Zimbabweans who have crossed into South Africa looking for food). Yet he also knows that Africanist instincts run deep inside South Africa too, even if they currently do not find explicitly powerful political expression.

So here we see a sort of Africanist Fundamentalism playing itself out.

Even leaving aside the fact that the Mugabe elite will have plundered plenty of loot for themselves, there is something in the Mugabe elite mind which wants to see all traces of 'settler-whiteness' in Zimbabwe eradicated once and for all, whatever the horrendous cost to Zimbabwe's indigenous Africans themselves.

This will represent a symbolic 'purification' of this part of Africa, following which somehow or other the territory can start to rebuild on exclusively African terms.

Fine. But what if no-one is left standing to do the rebuilding work? 

Rian Malan's book My Traitor's Heart about South Africa is a towering classic.

It describes in a raw way which much rattled 'liberal' opinion at the time just how African and 'other' most of South Africa in fact is, and just how unimaginably and painfully far 'whites' have to go to be accepted there.

I met Rian while I was based in Pretoria soon after his book came out. I also visited Creina Alcock, a South African of European descent who had renounced white South Africa and ended up living in a small hut in deepest Msinga in Zululand, as described in his book. An astounding real-life story.

Anyway, Rian is still in business. This wonderful piece describes how the two Alcock boys and their amazing fluency in Zulu are carving out a lively and successful role for themselves in the hurly-burly and very African New South Africa.

Read it to the end:

For GG, just visiting the supermarket can turn into an extraordinary experience.

Picture this: you're in a shopping mall in northern Jo'burg. African ladies man a line of tills. They're chatting in Zulu. A young white man reaches the head of the queue, laden with groceries. One of the ladies says, in Zulu, 'Look at the hair on this one's arms. It's a baboon, I tell you.' Her friends titter. The white man says nothing. He's writing a cheque. He rips it out, hands it over. He says, 'Ever see a baboon write a cheque?'

The till lady freezes. She says, 'Oh God. Sorry, boss.' The white man laughs and says, 'Sengi suke kwi mfene ngaya kubasi?' - so I've gone from baboon to boss, eh? This is getting seriously weird; his skin is white, but the sounds emerging from his mouth are African. The till lady shrieks, claps a hand over her mouth, runs and hides behind a pillar.

By now, the rest of the till ladies are convulsed with merriment, and the entire supermarket is paralysed. A supervisor appears, apologising profusely. GG says, 'I think it's funny.' The guilty till lady is coaxed back to her post and finishes the transaction amid gales of laughter and ribald African banter. GG gathers his groceries and waves goodbye.

As he leaves, the entire staff give him a standing ovation.

The option of throwing the Bad Leader overboard of course is not the only one available to the Bad Leader's nearest and dearest.

They instead can strap the old villain to the wheel, aim the ship firmly at the rocks and scream "full steam ahead".

The bland assurances of South Africa's President Mbeki read increasingly strangely.

Or maybe not: are Zimbabwe and South Africa by some chance related? 

When Bad Leaders finally realise that their hold on power is slipping (as looks to be the case in Zimbabwe), various things happen.

The 'mood' abruptly changes, from Maybe This Time We Can Bring Him Down to When He Goes...

The immediate entourage round the Bad Leader are affected. Some know that they have behaved so badly that they have no chance to cutting a deal with the next government, or otherwise staying in political business for the foreseeable future. Their main concern is how to keep most of their ill-gotten gains.

Others may think that if they help cut a deal with the newly emboldened opposition and pretend to show some contrition, they can hope to minimise their personal losses by being 'statesmanlike' and 'patriotic'.

Meanwhile outside powers (if they are smart) stay studiously calm and aloof, so as to avoid giving the Bad Leader an excuse to launch a new crack-down by ostentatiously 'interfering'. But behind the scenes a lot will be happening to work out how to weigh in quickly behind the next government as and when it takes power.

Hence the dire dilemma for the Bad Leader's closest collaborators.

Do they throw the Captain overboard and make a big sharky splash in the hope of not being thrown overboard themselves?

If they do, the effect is of course dramatic. World opinion knows the names of the Bad Leader, but probably nothing at all about the gangsters who have done much of his dirty work. So when the Bad Leader flies over the railings and splashes into the water there is inevitably a sense of 'thank goodness that's over'.

When in fact it may not be over.

This is what happened in Serbia after Milosevic fell in 2000. A huge and excellent splash. Democrats swarmed all over the ship, dancing for joy.

But it turned out that many of the senior Milosevic crew had not jumped ship but quietly slipped below deck to bide their time and look for opportunities to sneak back into good positions or, failing that, make life very difficult for the new Captain Djindjic so that his mission and direction were discredited.

Djindjic of course realised what was going on, but he had a hard choice. Should he wage debilitating hand-to-hand combat with these villains deep in the dark bowels of the ship? Or better to get on with trying to steer the ship somewhere better, while preparing to go below deck and sort out the worst gangsters out when the time was right?

Djindjic chose the latter course. And underestimated the wickedness of his enemies.

Hence Serbia's continuing misery today.

Back in Zimbabwe, the ruling elite must be getting nervous. Stay and fight? Cut and run? Who is likely to do what? That Mugabe is old and losing it. But who dares grab him and head for the side of the ship?

Who heaves whom overboard first?

Poor Zimbabwe.

According to the BBC it has been 'plagued' (origin of said plagues not described) by the world's highest inflation, as well as acute food and fuel shortages.

Newsflash: These phenomena are not caused by 'plagues'.

They are caused both in general and in Zimbabwe's case in particular by truly stunning and sustained Bad Government.

The BBC's use of the plague metaphor in this context somehow craftily shifts the responsibility for Zimbabwe's calamitous plight on to ... no-one?

Mr Mugabe is still there, seemingly ducking and weaving - and haggling?

From the point of view of diplomatic technique, this is another awkward Bad Leader moment.

When a Bad Leader finally runs out of road, he (it is almost always a he) above all wants to save his own sorry skin and ideally some sort of reputation too.

Plus around him are all sorts of malign growths which have developed in his shadow and have every reason to keep him propped up in place, so as to protect their ill-gotten gains and privileges for as long as possible.

Meanwhile millions of people whose lives and hopes have been wrecked by this tiny elite urgently want an end to their misery, but also feel that somehow justice should be done so that the Bad Leader and his cohorts do not at the end tip-toe away from their crimes unpunished and without being called to account for what they have done.

Thus the leading democrats' conundrum. Do you try to prise away the Bad Leader's powerful core supporters with promises of some sort of life under a new, better system, or at least a possible amnesty? Or do you forcibly bring the whole evil structure crashing down with the risk of plenty of chaotic bloodshed (including maybe your own) and no clear road to success?

If you do try to bring some of the Bad Supporters on board you risk opening yourself to the charge that 'nothing has changed' and that all your promises were hollow. But maybe you can spin that by noisily talking about 'national reconciliation' and the need to 'look to the future'?

This problem has arisen many times in recent history. See the debates still rumbling on in Poland over the deal struck by Solidarity with the Communists, which President Kaczynski and many others think was too generous to the erstwhile oppressors. 

Or take the fall of Milosevic, where Zoran Djindjic managed to get some of the worst Milosevic gangsters to arrest him - who else would or could do it? Those same gangster structures murdered Djindjic too when he came after them.

South Africa finessed this problem to some extent by its Truth and Reconciliation process. Even if the worst apartheid oppressors were not all punished, they at least were forced to confront their victims.

There is no clear answer. Bad Leaders necessarily create a filthy moral and political wasteland around them, making it next to impossible for anyone honest operating there to stay and look clean.

My view?

Bad Leaders should not escape unpunished. If they do so, their evil influence will linger on and poison the atmosphere.

Freedom can put down deep strong roots only in clean, clear soil with fresh water. Those who want freedom may have to pay a high price to get it, adding to all the other high prices they have already paid suffering during its long absence.  

One thing alone is sure. The 'international community' will not be braver than the people on the ground, and will come up with all sorts of reasons for 'avoiding bloodshed', 'showing restraint', 'being merciful' and 'conciliatory'.

And all sorts of people fatuously will try to claim that even the likes of Mugabe are far better than Western Imperialism.

Why? Because as well as the small number of Really Bad Leaders there are plenty of Fairly Bad Leaders out there who have a great interest in not seeing crime punished anywhere, thereby setting a firm precedent for honesty and decency. 

In the seedy circumstances of international politics, too much Honesty and Decency could be ... unhelpful. 

Perhaps my finest career moment came late on Sunday 24 September 2000. I was in my office at the FCO waiting for the first results to arrive in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's elections, where we hoped to see Milosevic fall.

My computer showed a first result from a tiny settlement somewhere deep in Serbia. Kostunica had some 40 votes, Milosevic 20.

This microscopic result in a rural area showed immediately that Milosevic was going to lose, and Lose Big. If he could not win well there, he had no chance in the cities.

The results started to emerge, and this supposition was confirmed. Milosevic had lost!

In Serbia news of Milosevic's defeat spread like wildfire. The regime did not worry. They planned to gather all the results centrally, then do whatever was needed to fix the outcome and announce the Official Result some two weeks after the election.

Because the anti-Milosevic opposition were well-armed with mobile telephones and laptops, this plan collapsed: the scale of Milosevic's defeat was so obvious, so quickly. Pressure on Milosevic to quit mounted fast. Eventually came the famous Bulldozer Revolution on 5 October. 

The point, of course, is that the speedy transmission of accurate election results is at the heart of the democratic process. It allows all sides to know where they stand almost as soon as the polls have closed.

Mugabe is trying to do a Milosevic, delaying the issue of results in the hope that opposition momentum will fizzle out and he can somehow cling on. Plus he is menacingly saying that 'premature' claims to victory by the opposition are in effect an attempted coup (ie justifying force to suppress those making such claims).

A grisly spectacle.

And a classic political problem.

What do Moderates do when Extremists cheat? Do they resort to some sort of force to try to see justice done? If they do, everything could spiral out of control. If they do not, the Extremists may win again.

Maybe if Mugabe was trying to defend a solid record against a bunch of crazed populists one could see some merit in what is now happening. But on the contrary...

What if anything is even more repulsive than the farce now unfolding in Zimbabwe is the studied silence from people in Africa who should be giving leadership. No wonder that Continent is in such a mess. Facile 'solidarity' with any deranged gangsterish leader as long as he is an Authentic African. 

An old joke from that part of the world has a scorpion asking a crocodile for a lift across a wide river. The croc fears that the scorpion will stab him. "Why should I?" says the scorpion, "I'd die too!"

The croc lets him climb on. Halfway across the river the scorpion delivers the croc a massive fatal sting.

"Aaargh, why did you do that?" gasps the dying croc as he starts to sink.

"Africa, Africa!" sings the scorpion, blithely dancing away on the diminishing space available...

This makes depressing but convincing reading.

South Africa's problem is that it is mainly a vast desert. Keeping the water and power systems working across a space that size requires amazing sharp-end engineering technique and sustained policy and operational discipline. And if top-end skills are undervalued or eroded by bungled government policy and/or attempts to achieve better 'racial balance' rather than deploy vital expertise, those systems will decay.

With alarming real-life consequences.

All this mess was both predictable and predicted. Andrew Kenny has been writing about the problems for years.

But huge damage has been done. With a lot more to come.

This article makes grim reading. The human cost of Mugabe-ism is soaring to nightmarish levels.

Zimbabwe is a case-book study in the cost of Bad Leaders - leaders who for one reason or the other lose all sense of perspective and responsibility, and who then grab all the controls and point the nose of the aircraft straight at the ground.

There is always a cost for 'intervening' one way or the other against a crazy dictator (Saddam, Milosevic). But there is also a cost of not intervening.

How to measure that cost in Zimbabwe's case? It is far bigger than one can possibly imagine, since it amounts to the large wealth gap between where Zimbabwe could have been with steady if modest economic development over the past decade and where it has ended up now. That gap itself compounds up as time passes by, soaring far beyond what any conceivable external assistance packages can put right. Zimbabwe is experiencing a calamity which will not be put right for decades, if ever. 

Needless to say, Mugabe seems to think that he is doing the right thing by running for office yet again on his fine record, albeit with a good insurance policy. 

Meanwhile back in the United States the political Tower of Babel is babbling away. Ghastly though that phenomenon undoubtedly is when looked at from that point of view, what it represents is the unruly conversations of millions of free people hammering away at myriad points of view to help elect a new President. Who will get elected. And in due course step down gracefully.

Civilisation at work.

Having spent most of my working life in or dealing with societies suffering from the consequences of communism, I have tried to work out what it is communists really believe(d) in.

Communists' immediate policy goals are clear enough. To run and above all control everything on exclusively their own terms with no accountability, all in the name of The People, not people. See eg this presumably unintentionally hilarious report on elections (or, perhaps one should write, 'elections') in Cuba.

There are now vast mountains of proof that this form of control creates a dismal mess, practically and philosphically. Yet when looking at any problem Western pro-communist writers, progressive thinkers and activists still typically insist that if only there was more state intervention and control on Leftist terms, everything would work better - and would go 'forward'.

One deep common belief in varying communist worldviews is the idea of the Wheel of History.

The expression appears in the first chapter of the infamous, turgid Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1848: "The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history".

This revealing passage is followed a few words later by a nice description of the lowest people in society, the 'lumpenproletariat': "the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society." Middle-class Leftist disdain for poor people who do not agree with them was there from the start.

The notion of the Wheel of History is, like the "don't worry, they'll muddle through somehow" cliche, replete with curious and questionable assumptions. That history 'moves'. That it moves 'forward'. That forward is 'good'. That it can be 'rolled back', but only with necessarily negative consequences.

My own memorable encounter with the Wheel of History imperative came in 1988 when as First Secretary Internal at the Embassy in South Africa I went to visit Govan Mbeki, who several months previously had been released from Robben Island after 24 years' imprisonment. Mbeki (father of President Thabo) was feted in progressive circles for his intellectual leadership in the South African Communist Party as well as the ANC.

I asked affable Mbeki Snr about the democratic strirrings then taking place in Poland where Solidarity were calling for free elections. Mbeki opined that he would go along with some sort of different election system in Poland and other parts of the communist world, but only on one clear condition - the elections had to be organised in such a way that the Communist Party won! "Any other result would turn back the wheel of history."

So there it was. The power of ideology. A man who had endured over two decades of harsh imprisonment wanted millions of Poles to continue to be oppressed, for no reason other than an abstract belief that their oppression was better for them and for the world than any possible alternative - that it took them 'forward'. 

Mbeki of course was steeped in the beliefs of Scientific Socialism:  "Scientific socialists apply the inductive method. They stick to facts. They live in the real world and not in the spiritualist regions of scholasticism."

The Poles, living as they did in the real world run by Communists, stuck to facts. They wisely ignored Mbeki's advice. And threw out the Communists. 

They are now ticking along very nicely. Dare one say rolling forward?