As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Zimbabwe: Modern failure
Demiurge
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Zimbabwe, currently undergoing the worst economic crisis in modern history, with inflation over 100% a day and a dictatorship government in all but name. Recently the opposition presidential candidate backed out of the election because of intimidation and many of his supporters being beaten, killed and raped for supporting his candidacy and Mugabe was "re-elected".
A lot of pressure has been put on Mugabe from the international community, China, a former ally of his government has been distancing itself, viewing any money invested in the country at this point money down the drain.
What are people's views on the situation? Should the internatiol community step in? Are sanctions enough, will it only expand the problem? There are currently over a hundred thousand people displaced after the election, whole towns have been bulldozed as part of a project to "clean up".
I firmly believe that waiting it out and hoping he dies off soon will only worsen the situtation and prolong the suffering, a millitary intervention is neccessary and a provincial government set up until the country can be brought into a form of normality.
A lot of pressure has been put on Mugabe from the international community, China, a former ally of his government has been distancing itself, viewing any money invested in the country at this point money down the drain.
What are people's views on the situation? Should the internatiol community step in? Are sanctions enough, will it only expand the problem? There are currently over a hundred thousand people displaced after the election, whole towns have been bulldozed as part of a project to "clean up".
I firmly believe that waiting it out and hoping he dies off soon will only worsen the situtation and prolong the suffering, a millitary intervention is neccessary and a provincial government set up until the country can be brought into a form of normality.
Demiurge on
0
Posts
Quick kick flip comment aside, that's probably a fair assessment though but in order for any kind of intervention to work, multiple international parties would have to be involved.
We could do something as asinine as giving them free gas like we did North Korea too...
I figured that this sounded like a potential win for international diplomacy... Until I caught the tail end of the BBC coverage where they went through who all these "Leaders" at the summit were. Man, not many of them seemed any better than Mugabe!
I'd love to know if anyone has a good source where I can get a better look at who these guys are and what they've done.
But I was definitely all like
In a few short years the country has pretty much collapsed.
Zimbabwe is not at all analogous to Iraq however, and I think criticisms that link the two are horribly in the wrong.
People need at least a modicum of stability and assurance that they won't be raped or murdered when they try to institute change. Roving gangs of thugs are kind of hard to organize against.
Ideally with a massive military force that has international (preferably U.N.) backing, I think?
I think that the Zimbabwe situation would definitely benefit form one though, and after the initial takeover, I think conditions would improve in, relative to Iraq, extremely short order. Zimbabwe, if I understand it correctly, is not stable in the same way Iraq was.
EDIT: The other issue is, where would the US get the military forces for such an intervention? Iraq and Afgahnistan mean they certainly don't have much to throw around (I would say none). The UK is in a very similar boat, though probably much more able to legitimately exercise military power in Africa and able to ramp up it's deployments more.
What can we do? Convince S. Africa to stop helping Mugabe.
The real upside is that there is an opportunity to return the country to stability. That is, the country is in a chaotic death spiral now. There's a lot more opportunities for the situation to improve than there is with no intervention at all, I think.
Why in the name of hell would we invade? That wouldn't help anything.
Jesus, Mugabe has been maintaining himself in power for years by claiming the British are trying to come back and reestablish control over the country. The last thing in the world they want there is a foreign occupying army.
I thought that when I typed "the U.N." and "international force" people would interpret those words as they were written. And when I suggested that a unilateral approach would be amazingly shitty, I was operating under the hope that people wouldn't overlook it.
And dammit, Mbeki! Stop being such a disappointment.
He would simply claim that the UN are there on the UKs behalf.
Also, UN peacekeepers have a very spotty record in actually keeping the peace in the face of a determined opposition.
the only ones who could do anything are the other african countries, and they won't. As for, democratic or peaceful change, several militias have announced that they would start a civil war if the opposition won in the presidential elections. This isn't one man and a bunch of thugs against his people, its one man and a non-trivial amount of the population against the majority of the population.
Pretty much this. The African Union could have taken a stand and booted mugabe out of the union but instead some of them supported him and the others said nothing. You'd think some of those countries that have seen genocide and civil war in their own countries would be more willing to help another country from heading down that road, but apparently not.
In fact very few countries would let situations like this happen I suspect. Situations like Afghanistan , Kosovo or even E Timor are very rare and usually have other reasons in addition to preventing humanitarian disasters (say revenge/regional powers who value stability).
Secondly, if the world didn't intervene during the near two decades of the Rhodesian UDI regime (the White minority regime that declared independence rather than submit to non racial democracy back in the 1960s), why would they now? At least back then Britain and France had spare forces or African experience to actually do something. Now, all the usual suspects are occupied in Iraq, Afghanistan or other areas, and most media reports I've read on military intervention capacity states that there is little spare capacity.
Edit - Even if the AU had kicked Mugabe out, what good would that have done? It wouldn't have deposed him, it would just isolate him further internationally. Morocco was effectively kicked out of the OAU back in the day for invading W Sahara (well, it quit, but only after the OAU ruled against it). Morocco is still ruled by the same regime 30 years later.
No one likes the US, no one wants to have the US army invading their country. Simple as that.
This is an issue only the Zimbabweans can properly solve, but they will need help with that, how can the rest of the world help?
- Boycotting for the time being, all profit goes right in Mugabe's pockets anyway.
- Supporting local people with food and whatever else they need, making them depend less on Mugabe
- Getting Mugabe's friends to stop being nice to him.
- AU should promise to back up the guy who won the elections (ie: the guy who was bullied away by Mugabe's thugs)
To me the problem is that people like Tutu consider him their friend because he did some good things in the past. You can't get rid of someone when you've got mo'fuckin' Tutu sticking up for him. This diplomatic nightmare should be resolved by the AU, they function as a forum where most -all?- African leaders show up and they can put some real pressure on Mugabe. Us whiteys who fucked up Africa to begin with (and trust me, no one in Africa would forget this whole colonization thing from a few decades ago) cannot send our army in, shoot Mugabe through the skull and expect everything to be all right and being hailed as heroes.
It's always important to remember that Africans leaders hardly ever leave office once their term is up, there's even a special monetary award for any leader who does, just to make it more interesting for leaders to leave when they're supposed to. This situation is hardly unique.
I think the best we can hope for is that South Africa, Botswana and Mozambique to agree to cut Zimbabwe off. By this I mean not allow the country to trade. If you look at a map of the area, noting the rail/road/power connections the vast majority of goods travel through these three countries. Zimbabwe couldn't function without their access, nor of course could Zambia (well, it could, it did so during UDI). This would be a serious step to take because there could well be famine, given Zimbabwe's destroyed economy, so many people would die or flee. But it would do the job
Organised protest is hindered somewhat by the truly desperate situation most Zimbabweans are in.
t John: it does have a lot of other natural resources I believe.
I'd be hard pressed to find a more glib response to the situation in Zimbabwe than than the above.
All I'm saying is that the empty stomach is usually a reason to start a revolution, not the other way around. I should have worded better, sorry.
The other reasons make more sense anyway.
I mean, the problem at the moment is that the result of a revolution of any sort is probably going to be that the people still generally starve. So, we drop heaps of food aid over the country, Mugabe predictably takes it over and cuts it off (since that's how you stay in control), and then something like that sparks off resistance to the government with the promise of equitable distribution of supplies.
Certainly not the most moral thing to do, but one of the few sort of, active measures I can think of that might be plausibly implemented by the West. Of course the same thing didn't work in Sudan as I understand it.
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
Really though, Botswana and South Africa should be putting pressure on Zimbabwe at this point, seeing as how they themselves are pretty stable.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
EDIT: anyway, in terms of solutions I suppose you could just kill Mugabe.
I understand that a lot of the leadership is not too happy with him and could turn out to be more moderate. Back during the initial election there was talk that the vote might end up rigged by the ZANU-PF leadership, but in Simba Makoni's (the splitter from Mugabe's party who came third) favour to get rid of Mugabe . . . but nothing really came of that.
If AU members agreed that Mugabe needed to go, which they've just failed to do, that would probably be the end of him. Military intervention is not needed.
Somehow the idea of rigging a vote against a dictator isn't terribly palatable (nor under any circumstances internationally permissible). I mean, it's not like Mugabe and those loyal to him wouldn't bitch and scream and probably force the country into a civil war.
Military intervention has been looked at as a helpful tool in stabilizing post-conflict situations, however, and is something that tends to be missing when proposing solutions to help dirt poor countries.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12