Zimbabwe: why Blair changed his mind on Mugabe

Posted on Tuesday 31 August, 2010
Filed Under International, New Labour

NAOMI Campbell’s account of how she was gifted dirty pebbles after flirting with Liberian dictator Charles Taylor was perhaps the biggest story of the 2010 silly season, dominating many media outlets for days on end in early August.

Most of the coverage was down to the involvement of a supermodel. Routine tales of African strongmen pocketing the cash from the sale of precious stones obtained by brutal means are not deemed worthy of reporting.

So little attention was paid to the news that even as the kerfuffle in The Hague was still ongoing, Zimbabwe raised around $72m from the auction of diamonds from the Marange fields.

Buyers from the United States, Israel, Russia, Lebanon and India all attended the sale at Harare airport, some of them keeping private jets on stand-by in order to get the hell out as soon as possible, we are told.

Zimbabwe’s armed forces seized control of the Marange fields in late 2008, forcing out tens of thousands of small-scale miners as they did so. Human rights groups state that about 200 people died in the operation, and that soldiers beat and raped villagers to force them to mine the gems in early 2009.

The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme – the United Nations mechanism designed to establish the origins of rough diamonds entering world markets, blocked the sale of Marange diamonds in November last year, giving Zimbabwe until June this year to clean up its act.

But interestingly enough, under the KP rules, the Marange diamonds do not meet the definition of ‘conflict diamonds’. According to definition on offer at the DeBeers website, only diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance conflicts aimed at undermining legitimate governments can properly be so called.

And Mugabe, of course, runs a legitimate government and not a rebel movement. It is a regime characterised by systematic police repression, torture, use of child soldiers, mass forced evictions from poor urban areas, vote-rigging, electoral intimidation and assaults by state forces on journalists, civil society activists, gay people and opposition politicians. But it is still internationally recognised as a legitimate government.

Among its sternest critics of late has been Tony Blair, who has openly called for the Zimbabwean president to be toppled, in what comes close to open incitement to political revolution, in a manner rarely seen beyond the far left.

The trouble is, such public declarations in favour of regime change on the part of a man no longer in power are somewhat undermined by a piece in the Independent yesterday.

Documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that in his early years in office, Blair’s actual policy was to seek close commercial and diplomatic ties with Mugabe, who even at that point was held responsible for the slaughter of thousands in Matabeleland in 1983-87.

For instance, the PM dispatched a letter congratulating the head of state for his efforts to improve ties between Africa and Britain. Even as late as 2000, Britain was content to allow the sale to Zimbabwe of spare parts for Hawk fighter planes made by BAe.

Interestingly, the volte face only seems to have come after Mugabe initiated a policy of expropriations against white farmers, most of them of British extraction.

Mugabe is 86 and suffering from prostate cancer, so his number is clearly very nearly up. His younger self obviously deserves the credit of leading a national liberation struggle against white minority rule, although the proper yardstick for the judgement of ageing rulers is always what they represent now rather than what they stood for in the past.

Blair, of course, famously found world politics rather more fascinating than the domestic agenda, and the autobiography he releases tomorrow will seek to justify the stances he took on Afghanistan and Iraq. Any apparent inconsistencies are entirely down to him to explain himself.

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