Beware
Of West’s Posturing: Zimbabweans Warned Against The US,
The UK Indirection
11 January 2010By Reason Wafawarova
THE 2008 cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe and the dawn of
the inclusive Government were both met with
enthusiastic, if not bragging, announcements of
support pledges from a few of the Western countries.
It is not like the sanctions-ravaged country had not
needed any aid since the illegal sanctions were
imposed in 2001.
Organisations like Oxfam, Save the Children and others
had been involved with providing humanitarian aid in
many parts of the country over that period.
During this time, the US-led Western alliance had
their governments largely involved in the acrimonious
rhetoric that all the lack and want in Zimbabwe was
President Mugabe’s fault, not a result of the economic
strangulation that had been collectively launched on
Zimbabwe.
Now that the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe has publicly
admitted not only to the fact that sanctions are real
and harmful, but also that him and his party mobilised
them against Zimbabwe, it is time to analyse the
timing of the latest announcements of indirect
government aid from the US, the UK and in a little
way, countries like Australia.
At the risk of being viewed as one wont to vitiating
the GPA and its inclusive Government, and in the
process frustrating the helping hand we believe the
West is, this writer will interrogate the posturing of
humanitarian intervention we saw when Prime Minister
Tsvangirai visited the White House earlier in the
year, together with pledges made by other Western
governments — all supposedly expected to come through
unnamed Western NGOs operating in Zimbabwe.
In international relations, states are rarely
considered as moral agents; they are vehicles of
power, which operate in the interests of the
particular internal power structures of their
respective societies.
So anybody who intervenes in another country is most
likely going to be doing so for their own purposes —
and that has always been true in history.
When the US decided to intervene in Somalia in 1992;
that was sold in heartland America as "humanitarian
intervention" just as was the promised US$73 million
to Zimbabwe by President Barrack Obama.
For Somalia, the United States waited very carefully
as the Somali famine ravaged the country between 1991
and 1992, the same way they waited patiently as the
economy of Zimbabwe crumbled under ruinous sanctions
from 2001 up to 2008.
The same major international aid organisations like
the Red Cross, Save the Children and others were doing
a lot of work in Somalia just like they have been in
Zimbabwe, albeit not enough to halt the demise in both
cases.
So if the US government had had any humanitarian
feelings with regard to Somalia, it had plenty of time
to show it, in fact they could have shown it from 1978
through to 1990, when the US was Siad Barre’s chief
international supporter.
When the US-supported strongman collapsed, the US
pulled out, a civil war erupted and has not yet ended
up to today, there was mass starvation; and the US did
nothing.
The famine and the civil war reached peak levels in
1992, and still the US waited cleverly until around
the November 1992 Presidential election in the US.
Then Somalia became a favourite place to do impressive
photo shoots for the election.
The campaign managers reckoned that if the US
government sent 30 000 Marines into Somalia when the
famine was declining and the feuding fighters were
getting weary, that would be a nice opportunity to get
nice shots of Marine colonels handing out cookies to
starving children.
People like Colin Powel publicly said the mission
would be "good for the Pentagon".
Equally if the US government had had any humanitarian
feelings for Zimbabwe, then it should never have even
thought of enacting ZDERA, the 2001 sanctions law that
stops US companies from doing any business with
Zimbabwean business entities.
The US, the UK and other Western countries publicly
celebrated the suffering in Zimbabwe as "Mugabe’s
unsound policies" for about eight years, and they
waited very carefully for an opportune time to play
public relations with the lives of Zimbabweans.
So they waited until the cholera outbreak reached its
peak, killing around 4 000 people, and they reckoned
this was an opportune time for photo shoots of a
helping hand underlined by a strong media baseline of
"it’s all Mugabe’s fault".
With the inclusive Government coming in place in early
2009, they reckoned it was perfect timing for photo
shoots announcing their scepticism of the whole
arrangement covered in impressive announcements of
financial pledges destined for Zimbabwe’s suffering
masses — albeit via routes that have nothing to do
whatsoever with the inclusive Government.
What a way of showing the world humanitarian love for
Zimbabweans while showing disdain for President Mugabe
and everything associated with the man.
These poor masses of Zimbabwe can be massacred by
murderous sanctions when it suits the purposes of
Western governments, but they can also come in handy
when it suits Western public relations to posture as
humanitarians of the highest order.
This tactic does not always work out well.
For Somalia it was a nightmare when the US lost 18
marines in one Somali strike and they were forced into
a hasty and unplanned humiliating retreat.
When you put a foreign military force into another
country, it will not be long before they are fighting
the local population, never mind that the population
may have welcomed the invaders in the first place.
Take Northern Ireland; where the British were invited
by the Catholic population in August 1969.
Two months later, the British were murdering the
Catholic population.
The same happened with the invasion of Iraq. No sooner
did we see the celebrating masses at the deposition of
Saddam Hussein than we saw American troops murdering
the same masses in Baghdad.
Some Zimbabweans might have celebrated the imposition
of sanctions in the vainglorious hope that the embargo
would put MDC-T in power, but it has taken just these
few months of 2009 for most people to see that the
sanctions were not a good move at all. People are
angry at both the West and MDC-T for their role in the
destruction of the economy in the last eight years.
The public relations posturing will not impress
Zimbabweans at all, and MDC-T’s belated decision to
call for the lifting of sanctions will only help
unveil the deception in this mischievous posturing by
Western governments.
We were told by the Australian government that they
were going to support only the ministries run by
members of Mr Tsvangirai’s party.
That announcement was calculated not only at isolating
President Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF government
officials, but also at painting the picture that
Australia has humanitarian feelings for the people of
Zimbabwe.
This is the country whose Prime Minister, John Howard,
worked so tirelessly to have Zimbabwe expelled from
the Commonwealth, and they even punished innocent
cricketers in the name of punishing President Mugabe.
The public relations posturing has manifested in a
number of ways. We have heard this earth shuttering
gospel about human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and how
the West would never rest until all Zimbabweans are
exposed to freedom and liberty.
The number one evidence of these human rights abuses
are the thousands of Zimbabweans who have told
dramatised stories of how they escaped "Mugabe’s
murderous men" as they fled to various Western
destinations.
These are the asylum seekers that have told drama
stories of living "dead parents and family members"
all killed by Mugabe.
Their stories need no verification because they are
good enough for public relations.
The West must be seen to be offering refuge to
unfortunate escapees feeling the "murderous regime’.
All these people know for a fact that they fled
Western sanctions, but they cannot say so to Western
immigration officials.
That would betray the whole cause and it certainly
would not do.
What is needed for Zimbabwe is support for Sadc in
helping end the crisis in the country.
It would be easier and more prudent for Western
Government to at the very least channel any help
through Sadc structures since they are the guarantors
of the GPA.
One would have thought that the West would at least
trust that Zimbabweans knew what they wanted when they
signed the GPA on September 15 2008.
Zimbabwe may in the end benefit or be harmed by these
Western machinations and this writer is not certain
what the outcome will be.
Whatever it is, the reality is that humanitarianism is
not part of it.
The country just happens to offer excellent props for
photo opportunities and good publicity back in Western
communities.
Any benefits that may come our way may be purely
incidental.
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