Here is a quick tour of stories on Zimbabwe making the news, offered with little commentary:
SADC has launched an aid program to deal with Zimbabwe's humanitarian crisis. Specific details are scarce, and one wonders if the aid will come with any element of pressure whatsoever.
The United States claims that it will not work with a unity government involving Robert Mugabe, which seems prematurely bold — if Tsvangirai manages to emerge with an agreement is the United States going to reject Tsvangirai's wishes and allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good? With less than a month to go before a transition from the Bush administration to the Obama administration, these sorts of pronouncements are not worth a whole lot. In any case, the power-sharing negotiations continue to go nowhere, so the point may be moot.
In the UK it appears that Mugabe's supporters are free to operate pretty much unfettered. In so doing they prop up Mugabe's regime by providing financial support for him and his henchmen. In a similarly deleterious vein, Mugabe's thugs continue to have access to weapons and ammunition, and much of that materiel comes via the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the source of so much regional destabilization.
Yet another indicator of just how bad things are, as if one is needed, is the fact that Doctors Without Borders has placed Zimbabwe on its lists of both the world's ten worst humanitarian crises and its ten most under-reported stories. The real shock would have been if Zimbabwe had not made both lists.
Through it all Mugabe continues his defiant stance. He of course refuses to step down. So look for more of the same as 2008 transitions to 2009.
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