Genocide on the cheap in Zimbabwe

The Belmont Club:

When we read stories, like this one in the Catholic News Service, comparing deaths from chaos in a Third World country to Iraq, what should we make of it? More people are dying from starvation and disease in Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe than are killed in the war in Iraq or the conflict in Darfur, said Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He claimed about 3,500 people are dying each week in his country from a "unique convergence of malnutrition, poverty and AIDS."

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... I think it is fair to observe that both cases represent problems to which a satisfactory solution has not yet been found. Zimbabwe represents the kind of death by benign neglect which descended on Rwanda, Darfur and the Congo. A kind of silent catastrophe that was largely left to the AID agencies, the UN and the NGOs to solve. Iraq represents something different; the challenge of asymmetrical warfare to West. Bishop Ncube thinks the "international community" has already withdrawn as far as it possible to go from Zimbabwe. So far we don't even think about it any more. That's how far we've gone. But he rightly points out that simply because we don't hear the tree fall in the forest doesn't mean it doesn't fall. And the question is why it should be any different with a problem like Iraq. The challenge of terrorism forming within the chaos of the Third World will remain with us until we learn to meet it. We haven't learned how to yet. And it's not clear that solving this problem is optional.

Mugabe is using Stalin's method of genocide, i.e. famine. It does not make as much noise as Saddam's method and is therefore less likely to get attention. Mugabe is also smart enough not to threaten his neighbors. But he is still a mass murderer on a grand scale. Because he does not threaten his neighbors he is less likely to have any worries about regime change which is sorely needed. The man is a racist demagogue whose racism has resulted in the destruction of people of his own race. Perhaps he would just plead incompetence if put on trial, but it is unlikely that the UN's International Court will ever host his trial.