Saturday, March 26, 2011

UPND is no longer in race for W/Province - Induna Imbwae

UPND is no longer in race for W/Province - Induna Imbwae
By George Chellah
Sat 26 Mar. 2011, 04:00 CAT

UPND is no longer in the race for Western Province, says Induna Imikendu Imbwae. Commenting on the UPND's reaction to the recent defections involving top leaders in the provincial executive committee, Induna Imbwae, who was Hakainde Hichilema's campaign manager for Western Province in the 2008 presidential by-election, said the situation on the ground was now different for UPND.

“UPND is no longer in the race for Western Province. Right now, I am having about 160 cards of UPND members defecting to PF. In fact, the Nalikwanda constituency executive has resigned. So those talking about Western Province from UPND are liars. We shall meet on the ground if they think they are strong,” Induna Imbwae said.

“Even this move to All People's Congress (APC) they have made it's a non-starter here. In fact, right now am with a lady APC featured as councillor for Mulambwa ward in 2006, she has also defected to PF. She is here just next to me do you want to talk to her?”

He said Hichilema's lieutenants were cheating over Western Province.

“We shall be going to Nalikwanda constituency tomorrow to receive former UPND members and this is where Sibote Sibote UPND national chairperson for logistics, who was yesterday quoted in the state media denying the defections wants to stand,” Induna Imbwae said.

“We will see how he is going to stand and who is going to vote for him. Sibote and others are cheating him Hichilema, they are not going anywhere that's why we are saying we shall meet on the ground if they think they are strong.”

Induna Imbwae said UPND should not cheat itself that only two people had defected because the numbers kept growing.

“There is no way those people can say some of us are disgruntled politicians. In the first place, I was appointed in the interim committee of UPND on the 5th October 2010 as trustee special duties,” Induna Imbwae said. “But now I don't know if they would have given me special duties if I were disgruntled. Those comments are coming from disgruntled elements themselves.”

Induna Imbwae said he joined UPND with 1,800 members from the MMD.

“On top of that, during the by-election for the presidency in 2008, I was given the position of campaign manager for Hichilema in Western Province and I gave them a lot of people. In fact, that was the time when UPND was nothing in Western Province after the differences with United Liberal Party (ULP),” Induna Imbwae said.

“It was myself and Colonel Best Makumba who brought in a lot of people into UPND after the differences with ULP. It's a lie for somebody to call us disgruntled more especially if it comes from Sibote. All we can say is we shall meet on the ground. Otherwise, all of us who defected are here.”

On Wednesday, members of the UPND top leadership in Western Province resolved to endorse Michael Sata for presidency after the break up of the Pact saying UPND president Hakainde Hichilema never consulted them when he decided to pull out of the Pact.

The UPND leaders that endorsed Sata included former Sikongo UPND member of parliament Col. Best Makumba, who is also a member of the UPND National Management Committee, David Muzinda provincial vice-chairman, Induna Imikendu Imbwae provincial trustee - special duties, Teddy Chimbinde provincial publicity secretary, Candy Mundia provincial youth chairman, Rosemary Munalula provincial vice-secretary for women and Friday Makondo constituency youth chairman for Mongu.

And on Thursday, UPND Nalikwanda constituency officials defected to PF.

The officials that defected are; Arista Muyumbwa constituency chairman, Oscar Kabutu constituency secretary, Reuben Lubasi constituency treasurer, Geogina Nakena constituency chairlady, Mbingila Malesu constituency vice-chairlady, Ernest Silukena Nakanya ward chairman and Kawila Samazuka Nakanya ward secretary.

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ECZ, MMD want to manipulate polls - Shamenda

ECZ, MMD want to manipulate polls - Shamenda
By Darious Kapembwa in Kitwe and Misheck Wangwe in Lusaka
Sat 26 Mar. 2011, 04:00 CAT

IT is embarrassing that ECZ wants to connive with the MMD to manipulate the elections by refusing parallel vote tabulation, says Fackson Shamenda. And Fr Richard Luonde says it is nonsense to say that the Catholic Church or anyone supporting the PVT wants to put Michael Sata into office.

In an interview, Shamenda, a former Zambia Congress of Trade Unions president, said the Electoral Commission of Zambia and the government would cause chaos in the country over PVT because the Law Association of Zambia had categorically stated that it was not illegal. The ECZ yesterday said it would not tolerate PVT system despite the Law Association of Zambia stating that the exercise is legal.

Shamenda said there was need for government, ECZ and people opposing PVT to stop the malicious schemes against Zambia's democracy by accepting that PVT was an important aspect during elections.

“Apprehension on this matter will only provoke Zambians to completely reject any outcome from the elections because everyone will be convinced that the results have been manipulated,” Shamenda said.

“President Banda's government and the MMD should not be afraid of this if they mean real democracy. Zambia is not a barracks where you command people to turn left or right. We are in a democratic dispensation where people's demands must be met and respected by the sitting government.”

Shamenda said the arrogance of the government and ECZ over PVT would force the people to rise and demand justice over the matter. He said Zambia was in need of a government that would democratise the country's laws and strengthen the electoral system by not being jittery on issues such as PVT.

He said individuals and organisations that were calling on government and the ECZ to allow PVT had nothing personal against President Banda or the electoral commission but were only interested in credible elections.

“Those opposing PVT should stop it. They are the ones who want to bring chaos because people who are calling for this exercise want free, fair and credible elections. It is sad that we have a government that only respects the views of LAZ only if it is in their favour,” said Shamenda.

On Wednesday, LAZ issued a statement saying PVT was not illegal in Zambia. LAZ president Stephen Lungu stated that there was no provision in the current law that criminalises the system.

“The determination whether an act or an omission amounts to a criminal offence is guided by the provisions of Article 18(8) of the Constitution which states in part - '(8) A person shall not be convicted of a criminal offence unless that offence is defined and the penalty is prescribed in a written law',” Lungu stated.

“On the basis of this provision, the legal requirement is that for an act or omission to amount to a criminal offence, that act or omission should be cleared, defined and/or described and the penalty attendant on that act or omission should be stipulated with certainty. Our reading of the Constitution, the electoral Act and the regulations made thereunder and indeed the Zambian statute book in general has not revealed any definition or description of an act that can be associated with PVT. On that basis therefore, our view is that the practice of PVT is not illegal and is definitely not a criminal offence.”

And in a walk-in interview at The Post office in Kitwe, Fr Luonde, an Anglican Priest, said there was no logic in advancing arguments against PVT that were not supported by the law.

He challenged information minister Ronnie Shikapwasha and the ECZ to quote the law that criminalises PVT.

“Whether criminal or not, we are going ahead with PVT and no one and nothing will stop us as Get Involved Zambia,” said Fr Luonde.

“PVT is a must and we will use it as a church and it is nonsense to say that the Catholic Church or anyone in support of PVT wants to put Sata into office, that's wrong. All we want is to have the same results that will be announced at the totalling centre as those from polling stations. We don't expect results to change in mid-air.”

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Government to freeze Libya assets in Zambia

COMMENT - If 75% of shares are frozen, who is going to vote at board meetings? How is this going to effect the operation of the board?

Government to freeze Libya assets in Zambia
By Mwala Kalaluka
Fri 25 Mar. 2011, 16:50 CAT

THE government will freeze LAP Green's 75 per cent stake in Zamtel once the UN Security Council confirms that the company’s assets were part of its resolutions on Libya.

Finance minister Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane told Parliament that Libya’s LAP Green Network's shares in Zamtel were covered under UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which, among other things, calls for the freezing of assets linked to the Muammar Gaddafi regime.

Dr Musokotwane said in a ministerial statement on Tuesday that Zambia, being a UN member since 1964, it would take any and all action required to ensure the successful implementation of the above Resolutions.

“There has been a considerable degree of speculation in the past few days as to the future of Zambia Telecommunications Company Limited (“Zamtel”) in connection with the recent events in Libya,” Dr Musokotwane said. “Seventy-five per cent (75%) of the equity in Zamtel is owned by LAP Green N, a Mauritian company headquartered in Uganda which is 100 per cent owned by the Libya Africa Investment Portfolio, known as LAP…”

LAP is in turn wholly owned by the Libya Investment Authority.

“As government we understand that there is high likelihood that the shares in Zamtel which are held by LAP Green N are covered by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 and therefore those shares shall be frozen,” Dr Musokotwane said.

“As a consequence, certain actions such as payment of dividends or registration of transfer of such shares, for which as government we already have protection in the transaction documents, shall be temporarily suspended, pending resolution of current issues in Libya.”

Under resolution 1973, the UN Security Council resolved, amongst other things, to extend its earlier resolution on asset freezing applicable to key individuals in the government of Libya as stipulated in resolution 1970 (2011), to apply to the assets under the control of the authorities of Libya.

Dr Musokotwane said freezing of assets, as it pertains to Zamtel, relates to the
shareholder LAP Green Network and its holding of shares in Zamtel.

He said as a cautionary measure, the government would seek clarification from he Sanctions Committee established under clause 24 of the UN Security
Council Resolutions number 1970, on the issue.

Dr Musokotwane said he was unable to give the exact time frame but that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had already contacted the UN.

He also said should the UN Security Council confirm that the assets of LAP Green Network were part of its Resolutions on Libya, the assets would be frozen.
Dr Musokotwane said the Bank of Zambia would be involved to ensure Zamtel funds were not externalised to finance activities of the Gaddafi regime.

Kafulafuta MMD parliamentarian George Mpombo said Dr Musokotwane's ministerial
statement was an exercise in snoopy because there was incontrovertible evidence that Col Gaddafi's son, Islam, was the founder of the Libyan parastatal, LAP Green.

But Dr Musokotwane said Mpombo's question was incomprehensible.
“We all know that LAP Green is owned by the Libyan government and could be owned by Gaddafi,” said Dr Musokotwane. “If it is, the answer is very clear, it is subject to sanctions. So what is the excitement about?”/JC

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Rupiah files in his nomination for MMD presidency

Rupiah files in his nomination for MMD presidency
By Chibaula Silwamba
Sat 26 Mar. 2011, 04:01 CAT

PRESIDENT Rupiah Banda says he is surprised about reports that the MMD had frozen the position of vice-president. And President Banda said he supported the bombings of Libya in line with the UN Security Council resolutions.

In an interview after filing in his nomination papers for the MMD presidency yesterday at Mulungushi International Conference in Lusaka ahead of the party's national convention set for April 5-7 at Mulungushi University in Kabwe, President Banda said only the convention could freeze the position of party vice-president.

Asked about reports in the Zambia Daily Mail that the MMD had frozen the post of vice-president, President Banda responded: “I am not aware of that. My colleagues are going to issue a statement.
Somebody jumped the gun. That decision has to be made by the convention, so I am not aware of that, myself. I was surprised.”

MMD acting national secretary Chembe Nyangu later told journalists that there were suggestions to freeze the position of vice-president.

“There was an intention to freeze the position of party vice-president but the decision has not been made by the convention,” Nyangu said.

“There are a few members that thought this position is creating some problems. There is a lot of acrimony and friction among the members. Others have proposed amendments to the constitution.”
He said applicants for the party vice-presidency, including the two that had already declared interest - Republican Vice-President George Kunda and former Kabwe central member of parliament Patrick Musonda - were free to file in their nominations between yesterday and 24 hours before the convention.

Nyangu said the convention would debate on whether or not to freeze the vice-presidency.
“If they delegates think it should be frozen, then the convention will decide. It's not for one person to decide,” Nyangu said.

Nyangu said Nason Musoni and Charles Ngesa had shown interest to challenge President Banda for the party presidency at the convention.

Nyangu said Mike Mulongiti, Jonas Shakafuswa, George Mpombo, and two others members were deemed indiscipline and not in good standing with the party and as such would not be allowed to file in their nominations for national executive committee (NEC) portfolios.

Talking about his nomination, President Banda said he was happy that he had successfully filed his nomination and was “ready for battle”.

On Western powers shelling of Libya, President Banda responded: “We know the AU already supported the resolutions by the United Nations Security Council. I am a member of the AU, I believe in it and I support it.”

MMD electoral commission chairperson Christopher Mundia, who is also President Banda's personal lawyer, announced that party members would be allowed to file in their nominations until 24 hours before the convention starts.


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Where is justice Mambilima on PVT?

Where is justice Mambilima on PVT?
By The Post
Sat 26 Mar. 2011, 04:00 CAT

The position taken by the Law Association of Zambia on the ongoing debate about the use of parallel vote tabulation raises some very interesting questions for Rupiah Banda and his friends.

Rupiah has been on a campaign to criminalise an innocent, if not very necessary, process of vote tabulation which every political party and civil society organisation that has an interest in an election should engage in. It would be foolish for a political party to participate in a national election and yet fail to keep a close tally of results as they are being declared.

This probably has been one of the major failings of political parties in our country. They have failed to mobilise enough human resource to man every polling station to ensure that they follow every result that is declared. Even the MMD as a party, if truth be told, has failed to create the capacity that allows them to monitor the result at every station.

What helps the MMD is that they commandeer public officers, including election officials, and turn them into their election agents. It is a fact that the greater part of our election process is managed by officers from the Ministry of Local Government and Ministry of Home Affairs. The Electoral Commission of Zambia is very small and doesn’t have enough staff of its own to manage elections and therefore relies heavily on staff from these two ministries – some of them strategically placed there long in advance for the purpose of elections.

Against this background, we are not surprised that Rupiah is very jittery about the opposition creating a system that gives them a significantly higher access to election results and information than has been the case in previous elections. Suddenly, the MMD will not be the only party that will monitor trends across the country. There is no wiggle room left for them to do as they please with results as they play around with the emotions of our people. This is what they have done in the past. They have tried to manage the flow of results in a way that has left our people wondering what was happening. It will be difficult for them to do what they have done in the past. In the last election for instance, results from an area as close as Chibombo were so late that one was left wondering what was going on.

Rupiah and his friends seem to forget that our people have developed an entrenched belief that the government always rigs election results. This is an unhealthy development in our country, something that they should be working to change. The only way that this change can be achieved is to ensure that as much information as is practically possible is given to the public.

In other words, there has to be high levels of transparency in the process. It is only in this way that we will begin to mend the damage that has been done to our people’s confidence in the electoral process. It must be a matter of high concern to all of us that election results are made acceptable to everybody, losers and winners alike. The reason for this is simple.

If people stop believing the authenticity of election results, they will lose confidence in democracy as we practice it and find other ways of expressing their opinion about how they are governed. In some countries, this has led to civil war and other types of political conflicts.

We hope that Rupiah and his friends will respect the opinion of the Law Association of Zambia and allow all citizens and other election observers interested in carrying out parallel vote tabulation to do so without hindrance.

This is a welcome advice from the Law Association of Zambia, albeit it being late. This is a matter the Law Association of Zambia should have jumped into very early. We say this because it is important for organisations such as the Law Association of Zambia to enter the debate of such issues in a way that does not begin to suggest that they are weighing the partisan impact of their opinion. The Law Association of Zambia should simply state the law as it is.

Surely, it should not have waited while Rupiah made threats of criminal sanctions repeatedly on a matter that is very straightforward from a legal perspective. Why did they allow Rupiah to make a fool of himself on such a straightforward legal matter? But maybe we also need to question the professional independence of Rupiah’s Attorney General. Where was he when his boss was threatening people with non-existent criminal offences? That said, it is good that the Law Association of Zambia has come out clearly on this matter.

But there is a lesson here that needs to be driven home. Professionals should be professionals. Right should be right and wrong should he wrong. Rupiah is wrong about parallel vote tabulation and so is George Kunda. And when that happens, the people who have a responsibility to the public to tell them what the position is should do so quickly without fear or favour. This issue also falls squarely in the lap of justice Ireen Mambilima, the chairperson of the Electoral Commission of Zambia. Why should she allow the government to issue statements that cause alarm and give people an impression that there is an intention to rig elections? All that justice Mambilima should have done is to come out clearly on this matter as quickly as possible. In this way, the confidence of the public in her office will be raised and we will all benefit from an increased confidence in the election results. Justice Mambilima’s silence on a matter that has generated so much public debate raises questions about the independence of her institutions. The public statements that have been made by the Electoral Commission of Zambia have left all of us wondering what they are trying to say. They seem to be walking on egg shells. Why? If they are independent facilitators or managers of elections, they should be clear about matters that affect the conduct of elections in a credible way so that all of us know where they stand on a particular issue. Trying to walk a tightrope leaves them looking like they will do anything to please those in power, those in control of government.

All those who watch sporting contests know that today almost in every sport, the results are tabulated and beamed on a billboard so that everybody knows what is happening. Cricket, football, rugby, basketball, volleyball, golf and many other sports, scores are tabulated as the contest progresses. Even at the Olympics, the medals are tabulated as the events progress. It is only this type of transparency that will enhance people’s confidence in the results that emerge from our elections.

The Law Association of Zambia has spoken and given guidance; where is the Electoral Commission of Zambia on this matter? Justice Mambilima should explain to the Zambian people why they should trust a secretive management of results which only the Electoral Commission of Zambia and those in power control. We challenge the Electoral Commission of Zambia to clearly state its position on vote tabulation as a method of monitoring election results in Zambia.

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(NYASATIMES) Malawi on alert ‘failed states index’

Malawi on alert ‘failed states index’
By Nyasa Times
Published: March 25, 2011

Malawi has been marked on alert as a country on the brink to be a failed state, according to the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy Magazine and on their latest Failed States Index (FSI).

Malawi has been ranked top 28 weakest states and is on “alert” based on factors including its economy, human rights record and security. The 2010 “Failed States Index” was released on Monday, ranking 177 countries to determine those most at risk of failure.

President Mutharika: Malawi on alert

The annual report uses 12 metrics including security threats, economic implosion and human rights violations.

A failed state is defined as “one in which the government does not have effective control of its territory, is not perceived as legitimate by a significant portion of its population, does not provide domestic security or basic public services to its citizens, and lacks a monopoly on the use of force.”

Rating the five core state institution, Fund For Peace said Malawi leadership, judiciary and its military were “weak”.

And it rated Malawi Police and public service as “poor”.

The index comes at a time when western donors have expressed concerns over governance issues in Malawi. The civil society organisations have also petition the United Nations including a similar one presented by a group of Malawians based in UK to Britain’s Prime Minister on deteriorating human rights situation in Malawi.

But Malawi Information and Civic Education Minister Symon Vuwa Kaunda has defended the country’s human rights record.

The Minister said the country’s leadership has sustained “institutional framework” including respecting the independence of the Judiciary and that since the country attained multiparty democracy in 1994 there has no presidential signing of a death warrant for those sentenced by the courts is an indication of commitment and respect for human rights.—(Reporting by Judith Moyo, Nyasa Times)

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(TALKZIMBABWE) Libya, Africa and the Victorians

Libya, Africa and the Victorians
By: Nathaniel Manheru
Posted: Saturday, March 26, 2011 2:24 am

As I write, Libya is burning. It is in the throes of war, more accurately, of a "righteous" aggression. The list of the aggressor nations is as familiar as it is predictable: US, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Denmark and Canada.

Missing in this Western league is Portugal. Missing in this unholy league is Germany, itself historically the venue and convenor of the 19th Century meeting that made the colonial phase of imperialism an abiding ethos in international relations.

I am referring to the Berlin Conference of 1884 which laid the ground rules for the partitioning of Africa, while averting likely conflict between and among Europe's rapacious participants. Creating a sub-category in this invading group ranged against Libya is America and Canada, themselves offshoots and creatures of another colonialism.

Together, they make a statement about latter-day colonialism spearheaded by erstwhile colonies. That is how rich imperialism is today, how weak Africa is today and, God forbid, tomorrow. Being a colony of a colony is the worst fate for a people, a continent. Being unsure of your futures is worse.

It is a despairing thought.

Tahrir in London?

The abstainers are not any more righteous. I contest any such claims. Merkel faces a political meltdown by way of her personal political prospects and those of her party. She cannot afford a war even though Germany is the only economy in Europe that can sustainably pay for a war as things stand.

Her economy has held firm and is in fact the motive force for the rest of Europe whose economic fortunes are worse than those of any sick "man" ever to inhabit Europe in lived history. Britain - our Britain - is among the worst, which is why its youths are now threatening to turn Trafalgar Square into another Tahrir, this time in the heart of Europe.

Of course it won't happen but that isn't the point of the preceding sentence. Things have really gone down for Albion and most probably are set to be much worse. Tahrir is a statement of Anglo-pessimism, a statement of a people overborne by a sense of entrapment.

Ascendency of Merkel

Merkel is aware she needs to consolidate the German economy while European folly drives the rest of his peers down an abyss, goes to war with lame consensus, sparse means, fragile economies, a tattered causa belli. Is it not wars that raise some powers while destroying others?

And great powers are hardly great warriors; rather, they are great economies that assert their might on the smouldering ruins of war; nations that suture gaping wounds, plaster broken limbs, of gasping warrior states now prostrated by the cost and fatigue of war.

America consolidated her global power through some gentleman called Alfred Marshall and his Marshall Plan, itself a post-Second World War economic recovery package for war-weary Europe.

Germany herself was the aggressor and loser of that war, and the recipient of that recovery package. As was Britain, as was France, but seemingly with diminishing lessons for these two. Having caused, fought and lost two wars, Germany knows wars do not pay, indeed that wars are bad business for those embroiled.

Rather, wars create opportunities for dominance only for nations that either do not get involved militarily, or do so marginally. As US did in both world wars, while revving up its munition economy.

Reverse Marshall Plan.

In both wars, US was in this curious habit of waiting for the eleventh minute to intervene, even then doing so well away from home. Except for Pearl Harbour, damage was largely overseas, and on affected families who lost loved ones. See what has happened to US now, having for the first time fought wars it conceived, wars it declared but cannot finish.

Its economy is on a tailspin and a new world power, or powers are set to emerge, all on the back of a reverse Marshall Plan to America itself. So, Germany will not go to war and has said so in the Security Council.

Commentators piqued by this German decision, and playing a goading game on it, claim Germany has lost international influence. I doubt that very much. It has ducked international obloquy, while gaining another day to consolidate its economy so as to rule Europe with a smile. Let time tell.

Careful Portugal

Well, Portugal cannot play war games any more, now or in future. It shall only fight wars that she must, and these have to be wars that threaten its very soil. Colonies undid it in the 1970s, giving it the dubious profile of being the only coloniser in history to be undone by struggles in its colonies. Never before had overseas wars in colonies back-lashed in that very direct way on the metropolis.

Never before had such wars caused regime change in the metropolis. Since 1974-75, Portugal has learnt to be careful abroad, very careful, which is what has rehabilitated her on the, itself the setting for its dishonor in the previous century. I have dwelt a little too long on history. I need to come back to today.

Operation Odyssey Dawn
The powers that are burning Libya are doing so under what they have termed Operation Odyssey Dawn, itself an operational code name fraught with augury for Africa. If it is the dawn of a journey, are we in for a long haul, a long march?

Who is the traveller? Journeying to where? Someone else must deal with that. Suffice to say, the code does imply not just a shared military strategy but also a shared global prognosis and goal, with Africa as the setting for this Conradian odyssey whose rallying cry remains unchanged: exterminate the brutes!

Conradian surreality

As with Conrad's Heart of Darkness, what is happening along that vast sand river we call Libya, is surreal. The French fired the first aerial salvo and it imparted much honour on the French escutcheon.

Sarkozy - the outsider - is now plumed in bright armour of revived Gaul militarism. You want to understand that what stings French honour is validation of the phrase from an ancient writer: "Gallos quoque in bellis floruisse audivimus (We have heard that the Gauls, too, once excelled in war"). No nation once the grandeur of memory.

Only contemporary fearsomeness can be deployed, indeed can yield result in realpolitik. French honour sorely needed a chivalric fillip. There is a loud military hardware marketing text that is running well ahead of the whole war against Libya.

All the participating nations behave like they are at an air show set in a vast desert where only the sand is the limit. You cannot miss the voyeurism that has accompanied the assault on Libya, as each assaulting nation displays practically what it is capable of militarily.

It is a huge selling effort, only with a little bit of Afro-Arab blood, bad blood of a brute at that!

Legal versus just war

But it is also a war of yawning holy ironies, which is what makes it a fitting tribute to the land of Allah. This is a cynical point to make and I make it to sting insensate Africa, most insensate Arab League.

The Western world has intervened in Libya under a UN resolution numbered 1973, itself a significant year for an Africa struggling against Western colonialism. That fateful resolution made the war itself legal.

When you read coverage of that war, you wonder whether these so-called experienced Western journalists know the difference between a legal war and a just war. But then how can they ever do given that the West is still to give the world, let alone fight, a just war?

Legal wars do satisfy and fulfill statutes, whether national, regional or international, as appears to be the case in this one. As for just wars, well, the proposition gets slightly more entangled with human values, indeed gets value-laden. The ends have to be noble, indeed have to justify the sacrifices of war as a means.

I am oversimplifying a complex matter and I prefer it that way. Please don't impugn my knowledge on this one. I could take you along and along with analysis until the morrow, like the proverbial light but incessant rains of mubvumbi, whose seepage is known to go very far, indeed to reach the core and pith of the earth!

Usadheerere!!

Very wide remit

Operation Odyssey Dawn, we are told, is meant to save Libyan civilians in danger from a bloody dictator in the form of their leader, one Muammar Gaddafi, Brother Leader as he prefers to be called. The resolution does not require Gaddafi to actually harm his people.

Rather, it requires the assaulting powers to merely think he intends to do so for them to attack. And they need not attack Gaddafi's advancing infantry. They are empowered to take "all the necessary measures" to avert what they think may pose a threat to Libyan civilians, including, nay especially, those in rebellious Benghazi!

Now, let us be fair. There appears to be a whiff of nobility in the reference to saving Libyan civilians, a whiff that appears to make the war eligible to be considered just. That hint is further reinforced by the requirement of a ceasefire in Libya, a development and condition that can only make civilian life thrive and multiply, consistent with God's vision for mankind. That, ladies and gentlemen, is noble, is nobility itself.

Surfeit of morality

Even much better, the resolution forbids deployment of ground troops by any foreign power, all to uphold Libya's sacred sovereignty. That too, ladies and gentlemen, is laudable and most consistent with the raison d'etre of the AU and the vision of its founding fathers.

It also strikes a happy code with Zanu-PF, does it not? That party's vocabulary begins and ends with this complex word, does it not? The resolution also says the participating nations must report to the Secretary General and through him to the Security Council within set times. Real accountability!

Even much, much better, the resolution recognises the right of the Libyan people to decide their own futures.

It does, too, recognise the Arab League as siblings of Libya. Even the AU is referred to by the resolution. At face value, the resolution appears aware of the need to address the morality of that war.

That means there is moral awareness, in which case any failures and lapses that follow cannot be exculpated on grounds of amorality (being unable to grasp or discern what is moral).

They have to be dealt with as culpable instances of immorality (conscious violation of known and believed moral standards). I am being commonsensical and I like it too. After all, is not the absence of common sense the bane of our world?

All under a war chapter

Before we see how well the invading countries have lived up to the moral ideals and requirements of the resolution, let us deal with the environment and architecture of the resolution itself. It is a United Nations Security Council Resolution, taken under Chapter 7, which allows for intervention.

That is the same resolution Britain and America would have wanted invoked against our country in 2008. Read together with the brand new notion of "responsibility to protect" which is now a UN stricture, Chapter 7 does allow for international intervention in circumstances in which developments in a given country is thought to endanger world peace and life of the citizenry of the affected country, while the responsible government is either unable or unwilling to protect the affected citizens.

That is why it is called a war chapter. I am mangling complex issues to simplify what is happening in Libya, what could happen to any other part of the world. Let us make another point.

A resolution that could have flopped

The Security Council as presently constituted has African states seconded there on a non-permanent basis. These are South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon.

It has Arab states who are expected to represent that part of humanity. Let us for a moment refuse to be bogged down by who is permanent and who wields or does not wield veto power, important though these matters are. We can debate that another day. In any case no veto power was used, regrettably. In any case, no member was barred from voting, again regrettably.

Within built-in limits we have suffered as Africa since the launch of the UN, the decision on Libya was taken by a relatively representative structure of the world body.

As already stated, Africa was represented, the Arab world was represented, Asia was represented, Latin America was represented, Europe and America were over-represented, as indeed they have always been historically.

Even Germany too, was represented! It was within the means of that body - through its representative membership - to give the resolution another direction, other than the one it eventually took. There was no fait accompli for anyone.

Only dilemmas arising from decisions and stances taken by those responsible for Libya, both consanguineously and hemispherically. The Security Council needs a minimum of 9 votes for a resolution to carry the day. This rule is only bent by the exercise of a veto by any one or group of its permanent members.

As matters developed, resolution 1973 won by well over the minimum nine, with no veto exercised and with numerically significant abstentions to have taken the vote in another direction. Russia, China, India, Brazil, Germany and possibly one or two others abstained. All have given reasons for their abstentions, reasons clearly indicating that they could have voted against the resolution if only, if only

. . . But it is still too early to make the point.

Afro-Arab complicity

Developments on that fateful day for Libya, for the Arab League and for Africa, as well as the mathematics of the vote, seem to indicate that resolution against Libya was legal, just and deserved. Three African countries - South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon - voted for action against Libya as proposed by the resolution.

All countries representing the Arab world in the Security Council voted for action against Libya. In any case prior to the resolution, the Arab League had actually passed a resolution endorsing the idea of a no-fly zone ostensibly to save endangered civilians. The resolution amounted to endorsing foreign intervention in Libya.

The secretary general of the Arab League is one Amry Moussa from Egypt, itself a foremost member of the League, but also an African country. Potentially the Arab League had a good leg in the Arab world, a better leg on the African continent. Its resolution and that of the UN could have been different, except by choice.

Betrayal of the continent.

Just before the UN resolution, the Security organ of the AU had met in Addis Ababa and had issued a resolution which did three fundamental things. It decried Gaddafi's undemocratic ways at home, stressing the entitlement of the Libyan people to good, democratic government available to all peoples of the world.

It decried the situation of conflict inside Libya and agreed on a five-presidential team to find facts on what was happening on the ground, for purposes of recommending an AU-supervised package for stabilising and reforming Libya. Thirdly, it affirmed the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Libya, warning foreigners to keep off the Libyan soil until Africa asked for help.

The Peace and Security Council (PSC) which met in Addis never, never endorsed what was to follow under the UN resolution. But the three African countries did not uphold the AU position in voting with the West for intervention in Libya, a resolution sweetly couched as a no-fly zone.

Africa had triggered a mechanism for remedial action and some of the countries representing Africa on the Security Council were part of the African remedy as proposed by the PSC. Those countries chose to take narrow national positions, as opposed to the continental one to whose development they were either a party or bound by.

The triad strength that did not help

Much worse, coincidentally two of Africa's giant states are in the Security Council. I am referring to South Africa and Nigeria. The third - Egypt - had had an opportunity as holding executive chair of the Arab League.

That means Africa fell in its triad strength, betrayed by its lead nations. Ironically, these are the nations with ambitions to gain permanent seats in the Security Council, however emasculated.

They have been departing from the Ezeluwini consensus during which Africa demanded permanent and fully dressed seats to match and countervail any other permanent member of the Council. Could national positions and ambitions have got the better of Africa's principle and vision on Libya, thereby on itself?

Recanting Arab League

As things went, the fact of an African and Arab block vote for intervention in the Security Council amounted to legitimizing a war and an intervention which imperialism had long planned but was hesitant to execute unilaterally. Once those block votes came, imperialism wasted no time in declaring an unjust war Africa and the Arab League made both legal and symbolically defensible.

We gave the West the moral symbolism, which is why President Mugabe spoke of self-treason. It is telling that apart from President Mugabe and the ANC Youth League, no one else on the African continent has spoken against what is going on in Libya.

Moussa seems to suggest the Arab League, having noticed what its resolution and vote have occasioned, is beginning to recoil. Far from redeeming the League, this actually deepens its moral crisis, its political failures.

The power that Africa misused

With the stance taken by South Africa and Nigeria in the Security Council, it is difficult to see how Africa can repose trust in a leadership which cannot defend it against ravishment by imperialism.

Or a leadership which votes for itself and not for principles and positions Africa will have taken. South Africa and Nigeria have failed the test of African trusteeship, but in a way that warns the continent against thinking that a seat or seats on the Security Council brings to it foolproof defense and security.

That status would have to come with parameters binding which ever country attains it, to prevent national unilateralism and mortagaging Africa's Security Council resource to foreign causes. Whatever the circumstances, foreign encroachment on a continent with a past we have had, can never be justified, except if and when it unfolds on our terms as Africans.

All the horror scenarios are now possible

Much worse, the UN resolution seems to be a package in either regime change or/and secession. Neither are values of the AU. In a very short time in the invasion, the issue of Gaddafi's fate both as a human being and as a leader of Libya, came up.

Was he fit to live? Was he fit to remain president of Libya? Or would one action - seemingly unintended and accidental - resolve both? Such as hitting him to smithereens by a stray missile? Or bombing his compound as indeed happened, for the second time by the way?

This is where the issue of the remit of the UN resolution comes in. As it stands, resolution 1973 does allow and accommodate just about anything anyone with a fighter jet or warship wants and pleases to do. It allows for "all measures necessary" to protect civilians anyone thinks are about to be endangered by the Libyan regime.

The civilians it protects are dissenters who have rebelled against central authority in Libya. That means if Obama wakes up thinking a-ahh Gaddafi should be punished for escaping American bombs in 1989, he can legitimately send his boys to take him out for being the most probable source of orders to Libya's fighting army.

Or if Cameroon thinks the spirit of Lockerbie has not been expiated by oil deals which Blair secured and the billions which Gaddafi paid by way of compensation, he can easily make the physical elimination of Gaddafi part of the necessary measures.

Or much worse, if this invading concert of the West thinks Libyan oil is "endangering civilians", they can legitimately take full control of it in a way that feeds into their anemic economies as an unintended and much regretted consequence of a UN war! Thanks to Africa and the Arab world, all these horror scenarios are now possible.

Libya's own Taiwan

Much worse, if Gaddafi survives to fight another day, he will find himself presiding over a new Libya with its small "Taiwan" whose centre is Benghazi. Elsewhere in Europe, divisions of Cold War era have given way to unification, which is why we now have greater Germany.

Or where these have led to guided fragmentation as in the former Soviet Union, these have been to prepare for the reincorporation of these smaller states under the European Union in a way that makes them perpetual underdogs barking against threats of, or from a resurging Russia.

Worse, for America, any state that is silly enough to want to secede, must be in a position to subdue the rest militarily, a requirement written into the American constitution. This trend towards larger polities in Europe, towards maintaining territorial integrity of America, is what is being challenged in Libya which does not deserve it.

And that means Africa, too, does not deserve larger formations, which is why its already fragmented states are being attacking even further. A major principle of the AU is taking a major knock.

No fly-zone in history

I said if Gaddafi survives, he has to fight another war. I mean it literally, not figuratively. Judging by what happened to Saddam, the no-fly zone is just a phase, a battle, in a war which a marked state has to lose, in which a marked leader has to be guillotined.

A no-fly operation is meant to degrade defences, allows invading countries to rehearse for a full, televised war. Gaddafi can only postpone his demise, delay the occupation of his country, indeed delay the take-over of Libya's oil assets. We need to understand imperialism from history, recent history in this case.

Degrading moral pretences

How has the war itself panned out, in relation to its moral bearings, assuming war can ever have that? Prior to the war and even the UN resolution, the West evacuated all its personnel in Libya.

That amounted to two things, namely that westerners were above Libyan civilians who deserved collective "protection" under a no-fly zone resolution. That made them a superior race, a superior citizenry, did it not?

They are the residents of Libya for fat, peaceful days of oil rigs, opulent banking, and construction tenders, but endangered species to be saved from wars triggered by their home governments, is it not? Secondly, the evacuation was an admission that the resolution and the operations would cost civilian lives, whether from direct hits or vengeance.

This is where irony and moral bankruptcy begins. By evacuating their own nationals, the invading countries confirmed they would be spilling civilian blood, Libyan blood, well against the dictates of the resolution.

Already, a lot of blood has been drawn by those blind missiles lobbed into urban cornubations, whether from the sea or from the air. The West's fighter planes have been degrading not just Gaddafi's defences, but resolution 1973's moral pretences.

Our next sight will be of Libyan civilians either trekking out as refuges or hurdled on an open desert as war displaced. All these men and women are civilians and would have had food and shelter under Gaddafi.

Rebels with multinational airforce

Much worse, assuming the air attacks stop Gaddafi by way of a stalemate, what happens when anti-Gaddafi begin to advance on other cities en route to Tripoli as desired by the invading West? Surely there will be fierce fighting in and around civilian-filled cities and towns?

Will the West still enforce a no-fly zone between rebels and Libyan army, indeed adopt "all measures necessary" to dissuade rebels from advancing towards cities they wish Gaddafi is ejected from? Or will they - as we all fear they will - will they become the airforce of Libya's "democratic demonstrators"?

In which case a real first will have emerged from Libya where "civilian demonstrators" who have already notched a half-first by being the first ever to demonstrate with small arms, tanks, and huge anti-aircraft guns, will be the first to afford a multinational western airforce, indeed will be the first ever group to command American forces abroad.

When little Qatar does not make an Arab summer

I ask more of moral questions? Why have the Arab nations refused to participate? Don't tell me this nonsense about Qatar and United Arab Emirates. These are not Arabs, whether by bearing or by size, if you get what I mean. Egypt "will none of it", to use Shakespearian English.

Saudi Arabia, far from showing up this campaign, is in fact doing the exact opposite, that is by rolling its tanks into Bahrain to support Gaddafi's poor alter ego.

By the way, Bahrain houses American bases, which is why monkey business will not be allowed from demonstrators in that country. Change will come to Bahrain, but on Washington's terms. So, why are Arabs not backing their resolution?

Or extending the revolution which started in Tunisia to other climes such as Yemen and Saudi Arabia itself? As for Qatar, what its Aljazeera has been doing through airwaves, its small army is now prepared to do together with western invaders.

The story of Gaza

Still I ask more of moral questions. Gaza. What happened in 2008/9? Israel moved in and pulverized the civilians of Gaza. These are no less civilian than the blest Libyans; no less visible to the Arab League and United Nations than the civilians of Benghazi. Equally, the intervening countries of today were there in those years of Gaza's assault.

Why no resolution imposing a no-fly zone on Israel? Why no attack on the compound of Israeli president who even in personal moral terms, was a failure? Not even an enquiry? And as events would dictate, the militants of Gaza have now goaded Israel which as always has responded disproportionately. Civilians have already died. No UN meeting. No UN resolution. No Arab League resolution.

No Vote for Veto

Were countries which abstained complicit in the ravishment of Libya? Of course not. Veto countries like China and Russia might see the moral principle at stake, but they need a cue from regions and continents which house the country under assault. We saw it here when SADC said no to Zimbabwe's planned assault.

South Africa took a firm stance which it has now undermined. In the case of Libya, both Africa and the Arab League undermined any likely support, whether by veto or by vote, from China and Russia, Brazil and India. They failed to use their vote or the threat of it, to trigger a veto which was sure to come.

That is how Libya was let down. Or more accurately, how Libya let itself down and, with that, the rest of Africa. It sounds paradoxical, callous even as I appear to be blaming the victim. Yes I am.

Libya's own failures

Firstly, the autocracy in Libya exposed the Libyan Republic. It was needless, counterproductive even. It was gratuitous and little was at stake to derogate from civil liberties of Libyans. Gaddafi was and is an unmitigated despot who thought he could use oil and cross-border investments to stave off threats.

Secondly, Gaddafi was not a principled politician. His mercurial character made it very difficult to tell what he represented, beyond the wish for eternal power itself. He caused and sponsored many wars on the continent, indeed destabilized many states on the continent simply out of cynicism or to create client states that would cheer him at home and abroad. That was despicable. Very few wars on the continent did not have his meddlesome hand.

Libya and Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe got Libyan assistance in its fight against British colonialism and this must be acknowledged publicly. We have a lot to thank Gaddafi for that. Equally, Gaddafi took a firm stance on the land issue, even driving from Lusaka to Harare to visualize the scope of the land issue here.

That, too, was laudable. Well, after the land acquisition, Gaddafi sent in a tillage unit to help us fight off sanctions and sanctions-related limitations. The equipment is still here, helping out with food security.

There are other instances and forms of assistance which one cannot write about. But something went drastically wrong in the mid 2000s. Because of sanctions, Zimbabwe desperately needed Libyan oil, on generous terms too. We already owed Libya, but still counted on her support.

Little did Zimbabwe know that around that time, Libyan foreign policy was undergoing sea-change. She was making overtures to Europe and America, and was using Britain and Blair for that, including the Italians.

She sought to close the chapter on nuclear weapons and Lockerbie and sold its own mother for that consuming goal. To succeed, she dangled billions of dollars by way of compensating Scotland for Lockerbie, dangled oil deposit permits soon to be auctioned off. She also dangled her country's huge reserves which looked for commercial homes. Above all, she flayed friends and fellow Africans for Europe.

The story of Tamoil

In this great courtship, Zimbabwe became one of the early casualties. Tamoil, the Libyan oil concern with which Zimbabwe sought a supply relationship, gave part of its shareholding to British interests, thereby creating a situation where we were actually negotiating with the British for oil supplies meant to fight off British punitive measures. It never worked. Given the role that President Mugabe had played in campaigning against western sanctions on Libya during his tenure as AU chairman, this Libyan action was not very nice. Here was Zimbabwe facing the same sanctions Libya had gone through, and had defeated them using Africa, specifically Zimbabwean support. Why would Libya not help out a brother country in similar predicament?

Africa and the Victorians

Much worse, oil Libyan concessions went up for auctioning, all of them ending up with western oil conglomerates. The man was investing in his relations with the West. Russia took note. China took note. Libya had crossed the floor, was in mad dalliance with the Wes, mistaking itself for an equal partner.

At the AU, Libya was beginning to play big, even using traditional structures in many African countries to legitimse its quest for continental leadership. Uganda was furious. South Africa was furious. Nigeria felt challenged.

Zimbabwe was critical but accommodative.

This is key to understanding the Security Council vote. The dominant feeling was one of jeering distraught Libya, or simply showing indifference to its fate, with very few countries - among them Zimbabwe - excavating vital principles underlain by Gaddafi's personal offensiveness.

The last straw came during the Africa-Europe Summit last year in Tripoli. The cup of African tolerance simply overflowed. Far from standing with Africa against Europe, Gaddafi was pleading with Europe to get specialized surveillance aircraft with which to fight African immigrants using Libya as entrepot.

And when the attack on his country began, he threatened to allow African immigrants free passage into paranoid Europe. He sought to play on Europe's fears of the black peril, to stave off attack. Africa took note.

In that same meeting with Europeans, Gaddafi showed a schizophrenia which upset many Africans. Was he Arab; was he African? Europe sought to drive a wage between Africans and Arab Africans, all in the name of developmental differential. Gaddafi seemed to find that uplifting, more so given that the distinctions put him well above generalised African poverty.

Just before the attack, Gaddafi made mediation proposals that marginalized Africa and privileged Western countries that are part of its assault. France was supposed to lead in brokering peace, the same France which fired the first salvo.

Again Africa took note of a Gaddafi whose heart was in Europe, his country and contempt on African soil. That did not help. But his fate illustrates one important lesson for Africa and those who wield African power. It is when you have done all to appease the West, including selling off family silver to it, that you are at your most vulnerable.

After that, you will be so worthless to the West, that only your own death becomes the last rite. You can never placate the Victorians, more so when capitalism is in crisis.

Icho!


This article is reproduced from The Herald.

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(TALKZIMBABWE) Libya, Africa and the Victorians

Libya, Africa and the Victorians
By: Nathaniel Manheru
Posted: Saturday, March 26, 2011 2:24 am

As I write, Libya is burning. It is in the throes of war, more accurately, of a "righteous" aggression. The list of the aggressor nations is as familiar as it is predictable: US, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Denmark and Canada.

Missing in this Western league is Portugal. Missing in this unholy league is Germany, itself historically the venue and convenor of the 19th Century meeting that made the colonial phase of imperialism an abiding ethos in international relations.

I am referring to the Berlin Conference of 1884 which laid the ground rules for the partitioning of Africa, while averting likely conflict between and among Europe's rapacious participants. Creating a sub-category in this invading group ranged against Libya is America and Canada, themselves offshoots and creatures of another colonialism.

Together, they make a statement about latter-day colonialism spearheaded by erstwhile colonies. That is how rich imperialism is today, how weak Africa is today and, God forbid, tomorrow. Being a colony of a colony is the worst fate for a people, a continent. Being unsure of your futures is worse.

It is a despairing thought.

Tahrir in London?

The abstainers are not any more righteous. I contest any such claims. Merkel faces a political meltdown by way of her personal political prospects and those of her party. She cannot afford a war even though Germany is the only economy in Europe that can sustainably pay for a war as things stand.

Her economy has held firm and is in fact the motive force for the rest of Europe whose economic fortunes are worse than those of any sick "man" ever to inhabit Europe in lived history. Britain - our Britain - is among the worst, which is why its youths are now threatening to turn Trafalgar Square into another Tahrir, this time in the heart of Europe.

Of course it won't happen but that isn't the point of the preceding sentence. Things have really gone down for Albion and most probably are set to be much worse. Tahrir is a statement of Anglo-pessimism, a statement of a people overborne by a sense of entrapment.

Ascendency of Merkel

Merkel is aware she needs to consolidate the German economy while European folly drives the rest of his peers down an abyss, goes to war with lame consensus, sparse means, fragile economies, a tattered causa belli. Is it not wars that raise some powers while destroying others?

And great powers are hardly great warriors; rather, they are great economies that assert their might on the smouldering ruins of war; nations that suture gaping wounds, plaster broken limbs, of gasping warrior states now prostrated by the cost and fatigue of war.

America consolidated her global power through some gentleman called Alfred Marshall and his Marshall Plan, itself a post-Second World War economic recovery package for war-weary Europe.

Germany herself was the aggressor and loser of that war, and the recipient of that recovery package. As was Britain, as was France, but seemingly with diminishing lessons for these two. Having caused, fought and lost two wars, Germany knows wars do not pay, indeed that wars are bad business for those embroiled.

Rather, wars create opportunities for dominance only for nations that either do not get involved militarily, or do so marginally. As US did in both world wars, while revving up its munition economy.

Reverse Marshall Plan.

In both wars, US was in this curious habit of waiting for the eleventh minute to intervene, even then doing so well away from home. Except for Pearl Harbour, damage was largely overseas, and on affected families who lost loved ones. See what has happened to US now, having for the first time fought wars it conceived, wars it declared but cannot finish.

Its economy is on a tailspin and a new world power, or powers are set to emerge, all on the back of a reverse Marshall Plan to America itself. So, Germany will not go to war and has said so in the Security Council.

Commentators piqued by this German decision, and playing a goading game on it, claim Germany has lost international influence. I doubt that very much. It has ducked international obloquy, while gaining another day to consolidate its economy so as to rule Europe with a smile. Let time tell.

Careful Portugal

Well, Portugal cannot play war games any more, now or in future. It shall only fight wars that she must, and these have to be wars that threaten its very soil. Colonies undid it in the 1970s, giving it the dubious profile of being the only coloniser in history to be undone by struggles in its colonies. Never before had overseas wars in colonies back-lashed in that very direct way on the metropolis.

Never before had such wars caused regime change in the metropolis. Since 1974-75, Portugal has learnt to be careful abroad, very careful, which is what has rehabilitated her on the, itself the setting for its dishonor in the previous century. I have dwelt a little too long on history. I need to come back to today.

Operation Odyssey Dawn
The powers that are burning Libya are doing so under what they have termed Operation Odyssey Dawn, itself an operational code name fraught with augury for Africa. If it is the dawn of a journey, are we in for a long haul, a long march?

Who is the traveller? Journeying to where? Someone else must deal with that. Suffice to say, the code does imply not just a shared military strategy but also a shared global prognosis and goal, with Africa as the setting for this Conradian odyssey whose rallying cry remains unchanged: exterminate the brutes!

Conradian surreality

As with Conrad's Heart of Darkness, what is happening along that vast sand river we call Libya, is surreal. The French fired the first aerial salvo and it imparted much honour on the French escutcheon.

Sarkozy - the outsider - is now plumed in bright armour of revived Gaul militarism. You want to understand that what stings French honour is validation of the phrase from an ancient writer: "Gallos quoque in bellis floruisse audivimus (We have heard that the Gauls, too, once excelled in war"). No nation once the grandeur of memory.

Only contemporary fearsomeness can be deployed, indeed can yield result in realpolitik. French honour sorely needed a chivalric fillip. There is a loud military hardware marketing text that is running well ahead of the whole war against Libya.

All the participating nations behave like they are at an air show set in a vast desert where only the sand is the limit. You cannot miss the voyeurism that has accompanied the assault on Libya, as each assaulting nation displays practically what it is capable of militarily.

It is a huge selling effort, only with a little bit of Afro-Arab blood, bad blood of a brute at that!

Legal versus just war

But it is also a war of yawning holy ironies, which is what makes it a fitting tribute to the land of Allah. This is a cynical point to make and I make it to sting insensate Africa, most insensate Arab League.

The Western world has intervened in Libya under a UN resolution numbered 1973, itself a significant year for an Africa struggling against Western colonialism. That fateful resolution made the war itself legal.

When you read coverage of that war, you wonder whether these so-called experienced Western journalists know the difference between a legal war and a just war. But then how can they ever do given that the West is still to give the world, let alone fight, a just war?

Legal wars do satisfy and fulfill statutes, whether national, regional or international, as appears to be the case in this one. As for just wars, well, the proposition gets slightly more entangled with human values, indeed gets value-laden. The ends have to be noble, indeed have to justify the sacrifices of war as a means.

I am oversimplifying a complex matter and I prefer it that way. Please don't impugn my knowledge on this one. I could take you along and along with analysis until the morrow, like the proverbial light but incessant rains of mubvumbi, whose seepage is known to go very far, indeed to reach the core and pith of the earth!

Usadheerere!!

Very wide remit

Operation Odyssey Dawn, we are told, is meant to save Libyan civilians in danger from a bloody dictator in the form of their leader, one Muammar Gaddafi, Brother Leader as he prefers to be called. The resolution does not require Gaddafi to actually harm his people.

Rather, it requires the assaulting powers to merely think he intends to do so for them to attack. And they need not attack Gaddafi's advancing infantry. They are empowered to take "all the necessary measures" to avert what they think may pose a threat to Libyan civilians, including, nay especially, those in rebellious Benghazi!

Now, let us be fair. There appears to be a whiff of nobility in the reference to saving Libyan civilians, a whiff that appears to make the war eligible to be considered just. That hint is further reinforced by the requirement of a ceasefire in Libya, a development and condition that can only make civilian life thrive and multiply, consistent with God's vision for mankind. That, ladies and gentlemen, is noble, is nobility itself.

Surfeit of morality

Even much better, the resolution forbids deployment of ground troops by any foreign power, all to uphold Libya's sacred sovereignty. That too, ladies and gentlemen, is laudable and most consistent with the raison d'etre of the AU and the vision of its founding fathers.

It also strikes a happy code with Zanu-PF, does it not? That party's vocabulary begins and ends with this complex word, does it not? The resolution also says the participating nations must report to the Secretary General and through him to the Security Council within set times. Real accountability!

Even much, much better, the resolution recognises the right of the Libyan people to decide their own futures.

It does, too, recognise the Arab League as siblings of Libya. Even the AU is referred to by the resolution. At face value, the resolution appears aware of the need to address the morality of that war.

That means there is moral awareness, in which case any failures and lapses that follow cannot be exculpated on grounds of amorality (being unable to grasp or discern what is moral).

They have to be dealt with as culpable instances of immorality (conscious violation of known and believed moral standards). I am being commonsensical and I like it too. After all, is not the absence of common sense the bane of our world?

All under a war chapter

Before we see how well the invading countries have lived up to the moral ideals and requirements of the resolution, let us deal with the environment and architecture of the resolution itself. It is a United Nations Security Council Resolution, taken under Chapter 7, which allows for intervention.

That is the same resolution Britain and America would have wanted invoked against our country in 2008. Read together with the brand new notion of "responsibility to protect" which is now a UN stricture, Chapter 7 does allow for international intervention in circumstances in which developments in a given country is thought to endanger world peace and life of the citizenry of the affected country, while the responsible government is either unable or unwilling to protect the affected citizens.

That is why it is called a war chapter. I am mangling complex issues to simplify what is happening in Libya, what could happen to any other part of the world. Let us make another point.

A resolution that could have flopped

The Security Council as presently constituted has African states seconded there on a non-permanent basis. These are South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon.

It has Arab states who are expected to represent that part of humanity. Let us for a moment refuse to be bogged down by who is permanent and who wields or does not wield veto power, important though these matters are. We can debate that another day. In any case no veto power was used, regrettably. In any case, no member was barred from voting, again regrettably.

Within built-in limits we have suffered as Africa since the launch of the UN, the decision on Libya was taken by a relatively representative structure of the world body.

As already stated, Africa was represented, the Arab world was represented, Asia was represented, Latin America was represented, Europe and America were over-represented, as indeed they have always been historically.

Even Germany too, was represented! It was within the means of that body - through its representative membership - to give the resolution another direction, other than the one it eventually took. There was no fait accompli for anyone.

Only dilemmas arising from decisions and stances taken by those responsible for Libya, both consanguineously and hemispherically. The Security Council needs a minimum of 9 votes for a resolution to carry the day. This rule is only bent by the exercise of a veto by any one or group of its permanent members.

As matters developed, resolution 1973 won by well over the minimum nine, with no veto exercised and with numerically significant abstentions to have taken the vote in another direction. Russia, China, India, Brazil, Germany and possibly one or two others abstained. All have given reasons for their abstentions, reasons clearly indicating that they could have voted against the resolution if only, if only

. . . But it is still too early to make the point.

Afro-Arab complicity

Developments on that fateful day for Libya, for the Arab League and for Africa, as well as the mathematics of the vote, seem to indicate that resolution against Libya was legal, just and deserved. Three African countries - South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon - voted for action against Libya as proposed by the resolution.

All countries representing the Arab world in the Security Council voted for action against Libya. In any case prior to the resolution, the Arab League had actually passed a resolution endorsing the idea of a no-fly zone ostensibly to save endangered civilians. The resolution amounted to endorsing foreign intervention in Libya.

The secretary general of the Arab League is one Amry Moussa from Egypt, itself a foremost member of the League, but also an African country. Potentially the Arab League had a good leg in the Arab world, a better leg on the African continent. Its resolution and that of the UN could have been different, except by choice.

Betrayal of the continent.

Just before the UN resolution, the Security organ of the AU had met in Addis Ababa and had issued a resolution which did three fundamental things. It decried Gaddafi's undemocratic ways at home, stressing the entitlement of the Libyan people to good, democratic government available to all peoples of the world.

It decried the situation of conflict inside Libya and agreed on a five-presidential team to find facts on what was happening on the ground, for purposes of recommending an AU-supervised package for stabilising and reforming Libya. Thirdly, it affirmed the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Libya, warning foreigners to keep off the Libyan soil until Africa asked for help.

The Peace and Security Council (PSC) which met in Addis never, never endorsed what was to follow under the UN resolution. But the three African countries did not uphold the AU position in voting with the West for intervention in Libya, a resolution sweetly couched as a no-fly zone.

Africa had triggered a mechanism for remedial action and some of the countries representing Africa on the Security Council were part of the African remedy as proposed by the PSC. Those countries chose to take narrow national positions, as opposed to the continental one to whose development they were either a party or bound by.

The triad strength that did not help

Much worse, coincidentally two of Africa's giant states are in the Security Council. I am referring to South Africa and Nigeria. The third - Egypt - had had an opportunity as holding executive chair of the Arab League.

That means Africa fell in its triad strength, betrayed by its lead nations. Ironically, these are the nations with ambitions to gain permanent seats in the Security Council, however emasculated.

They have been departing from the Ezeluwini consensus during which Africa demanded permanent and fully dressed seats to match and countervail any other permanent member of the Council. Could national positions and ambitions have got the better of Africa's principle and vision on Libya, thereby on itself?

Recanting Arab League

As things went, the fact of an African and Arab block vote for intervention in the Security Council amounted to legitimizing a war and an intervention which imperialism had long planned but was hesitant to execute unilaterally. Once those block votes came, imperialism wasted no time in declaring an unjust war Africa and the Arab League made both legal and symbolically defensible.

We gave the West the moral symbolism, which is why President Mugabe spoke of self-treason. It is telling that apart from President Mugabe and the ANC Youth League, no one else on the African continent has spoken against what is going on in Libya.

Moussa seems to suggest the Arab League, having noticed what its resolution and vote have occasioned, is beginning to recoil. Far from redeeming the League, this actually deepens its moral crisis, its political failures.

The power that Africa misused

With the stance taken by South Africa and Nigeria in the Security Council, it is difficult to see how Africa can repose trust in a leadership which cannot defend it against ravishment by imperialism.

Or a leadership which votes for itself and not for principles and positions Africa will have taken. South Africa and Nigeria have failed the test of African trusteeship, but in a way that warns the continent against thinking that a seat or seats on the Security Council brings to it foolproof defense and security.

That status would have to come with parameters binding which ever country attains it, to prevent national unilateralism and mortagaging Africa's Security Council resource to foreign causes. Whatever the circumstances, foreign encroachment on a continent with a past we have had, can never be justified, except if and when it unfolds on our terms as Africans.

All the horror scenarios are now possible

Much worse, the UN resolution seems to be a package in either regime change or/and secession. Neither are values of the AU. In a very short time in the invasion, the issue of Gaddafi's fate both as a human being and as a leader of Libya, came up.

Was he fit to live? Was he fit to remain president of Libya? Or would one action - seemingly unintended and accidental - resolve both? Such as hitting him to smithereens by a stray missile? Or bombing his compound as indeed happened, for the second time by the way?

This is where the issue of the remit of the UN resolution comes in. As it stands, resolution 1973 does allow and accommodate just about anything anyone with a fighter jet or warship wants and pleases to do. It allows for "all measures necessary" to protect civilians anyone thinks are about to be endangered by the Libyan regime.

The civilians it protects are dissenters who have rebelled against central authority in Libya. That means if Obama wakes up thinking a-ahh Gaddafi should be punished for escaping American bombs in 1989, he can legitimately send his boys to take him out for being the most probable source of orders to Libya's fighting army.

Or if Cameroon thinks the spirit of Lockerbie has not been expiated by oil deals which Blair secured and the billions which Gaddafi paid by way of compensation, he can easily make the physical elimination of Gaddafi part of the necessary measures.

Or much worse, if this invading concert of the West thinks Libyan oil is "endangering civilians", they can legitimately take full control of it in a way that feeds into their anemic economies as an unintended and much regretted consequence of a UN war! Thanks to Africa and the Arab world, all these horror scenarios are now possible.

Libya's own Taiwan

Much worse, if Gaddafi survives to fight another day, he will find himself presiding over a new Libya with its small "Taiwan" whose centre is Benghazi. Elsewhere in Europe, divisions of Cold War era have given way to unification, which is why we now have greater Germany.

Or where these have led to guided fragmentation as in the former Soviet Union, these have been to prepare for the reincorporation of these smaller states under the European Union in a way that makes them perpetual underdogs barking against threats of, or from a resurging Russia.

Worse, for America, any state that is silly enough to want to secede, must be in a position to subdue the rest militarily, a requirement written into the American constitution. This trend towards larger polities in Europe, towards maintaining territorial integrity of America, is what is being challenged in Libya which does not deserve it.

And that means Africa, too, does not deserve larger formations, which is why its already fragmented states are being attacking even further. A major principle of the AU is taking a major knock.

No fly-zone in history

I said if Gaddafi survives, he has to fight another war. I mean it literally, not figuratively. Judging by what happened to Saddam, the no-fly zone is just a phase, a battle, in a war which a marked state has to lose, in which a marked leader has to be guillotined.

A no-fly operation is meant to degrade defences, allows invading countries to rehearse for a full, televised war. Gaddafi can only postpone his demise, delay the occupation of his country, indeed delay the take-over of Libya's oil assets. We need to understand imperialism from history, recent history in this case.

Degrading moral pretences

How has the war itself panned out, in relation to its moral bearings, assuming war can ever have that? Prior to the war and even the UN resolution, the West evacuated all its personnel in Libya.

That amounted to two things, namely that westerners were above Libyan civilians who deserved collective "protection" under a no-fly zone resolution. That made them a superior race, a superior citizenry, did it not?

They are the residents of Libya for fat, peaceful days of oil rigs, opulent banking, and construction tenders, but endangered species to be saved from wars triggered by their home governments, is it not? Secondly, the evacuation was an admission that the resolution and the operations would cost civilian lives, whether from direct hits or vengeance.

This is where irony and moral bankruptcy begins. By evacuating their own nationals, the invading countries confirmed they would be spilling civilian blood, Libyan blood, well against the dictates of the resolution.

Already, a lot of blood has been drawn by those blind missiles lobbed into urban cornubations, whether from the sea or from the air. The West's fighter planes have been degrading not just Gaddafi's defences, but resolution 1973's moral pretences.

Our next sight will be of Libyan civilians either trekking out as refuges or hurdled on an open desert as war displaced. All these men and women are civilians and would have had food and shelter under Gaddafi.

Rebels with multinational airforce

Much worse, assuming the air attacks stop Gaddafi by way of a stalemate, what happens when anti-Gaddafi begin to advance on other cities en route to Tripoli as desired by the invading West? Surely there will be fierce fighting in and around civilian-filled cities and towns?

Will the West still enforce a no-fly zone between rebels and Libyan army, indeed adopt "all measures necessary" to dissuade rebels from advancing towards cities they wish Gaddafi is ejected from? Or will they - as we all fear they will - will they become the airforce of Libya's "democratic demonstrators"?

In which case a real first will have emerged from Libya where "civilian demonstrators" who have already notched a half-first by being the first ever to demonstrate with small arms, tanks, and huge anti-aircraft guns, will be the first to afford a multinational western airforce, indeed will be the first ever group to command American forces abroad.

When little Qatar does not make an Arab summer

I ask more of moral questions? Why have the Arab nations refused to participate? Don't tell me this nonsense about Qatar and United Arab Emirates. These are not Arabs, whether by bearing or by size, if you get what I mean. Egypt "will none of it", to use Shakespearian English.

Saudi Arabia, far from showing up this campaign, is in fact doing the exact opposite, that is by rolling its tanks into Bahrain to support Gaddafi's poor alter ego.

By the way, Bahrain houses American bases, which is why monkey business will not be allowed from demonstrators in that country. Change will come to Bahrain, but on Washington's terms. So, why are Arabs not backing their resolution?

Or extending the revolution which started in Tunisia to other climes such as Yemen and Saudi Arabia itself? As for Qatar, what its Aljazeera has been doing through airwaves, its small army is now prepared to do together with western invaders.

The story of Gaza

Still I ask more of moral questions. Gaza. What happened in 2008/9? Israel moved in and pulverized the civilians of Gaza. These are no less civilian than the blest Libyans; no less visible to the Arab League and United Nations than the civilians of Benghazi. Equally, the intervening countries of today were there in those years of Gaza's assault.

Why no resolution imposing a no-fly zone on Israel? Why no attack on the compound of Israeli president who even in personal moral terms, was a failure? Not even an enquiry? And as events would dictate, the militants of Gaza have now goaded Israel which as always has responded disproportionately. Civilians have already died. No UN meeting. No UN resolution. No Arab League resolution.

No Vote for Veto

Were countries which abstained complicit in the ravishment of Libya? Of course not. Veto countries like China and Russia might see the moral principle at stake, but they need a cue from regions and continents which house the country under assault. We saw it here when SADC said no to Zimbabwe's planned assault.

South Africa took a firm stance which it has now undermined. In the case of Libya, both Africa and the Arab League undermined any likely support, whether by veto or by vote, from China and Russia, Brazil and India. They failed to use their vote or the threat of it, to trigger a veto which was sure to come.

That is how Libya was let down. Or more accurately, how Libya let itself down and, with that, the rest of Africa. It sounds paradoxical, callous even as I appear to be blaming the victim. Yes I am.

Libya's own failures

Firstly, the autocracy in Libya exposed the Libyan Republic. It was needless, counterproductive even. It was gratuitous and little was at stake to derogate from civil liberties of Libyans. Gaddafi was and is an unmitigated despot who thought he could use oil and cross-border investments to stave off threats.

Secondly, Gaddafi was not a principled politician. His mercurial character made it very difficult to tell what he represented, beyond the wish for eternal power itself. He caused and sponsored many wars on the continent, indeed destabilized many states on the continent simply out of cynicism or to create client states that would cheer him at home and abroad. That was despicable. Very few wars on the continent did not have his meddlesome hand.

Libya and Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe got Libyan assistance in its fight against British colonialism and this must be acknowledged publicly. We have a lot to thank Gaddafi for that. Equally, Gaddafi took a firm stance on the land issue, even driving from Lusaka to Harare to visualize the scope of the land issue here.

That, too, was laudable. Well, after the land acquisition, Gaddafi sent in a tillage unit to help us fight off sanctions and sanctions-related limitations. The equipment is still here, helping out with food security.

There are other instances and forms of assistance which one cannot write about. But something went drastically wrong in the mid 2000s. Because of sanctions, Zimbabwe desperately needed Libyan oil, on generous terms too. We already owed Libya, but still counted on her support.

Little did Zimbabwe know that around that time, Libyan foreign policy was undergoing sea-change. She was making overtures to Europe and America, and was using Britain and Blair for that, including the Italians.

She sought to close the chapter on nuclear weapons and Lockerbie and sold its own mother for that consuming goal. To succeed, she dangled billions of dollars by way of compensating Scotland for Lockerbie, dangled oil deposit permits soon to be auctioned off. She also dangled her country's huge reserves which looked for commercial homes. Above all, she flayed friends and fellow Africans for Europe.

The story of Tamoil

In this great courtship, Zimbabwe became one of the early casualties. Tamoil, the Libyan oil concern with which Zimbabwe sought a supply relationship, gave part of its shareholding to British interests, thereby creating a situation where we were actually negotiating with the British for oil supplies meant to fight off British punitive measures. It never worked. Given the role that President Mugabe had played in campaigning against western sanctions on Libya during his tenure as AU chairman, this Libyan action was not very nice. Here was Zimbabwe facing the same sanctions Libya had gone through, and had defeated them using Africa, specifically Zimbabwean support. Why would Libya not help out a brother country in similar predicament?

Africa and the Victorians

Much worse, oil Libyan concessions went up for auctioning, all of them ending up with western oil conglomerates. The man was investing in his relations with the West. Russia took note. China took note. Libya had crossed the floor, was in mad dalliance with the Wes, mistaking itself for an equal partner.

At the AU, Libya was beginning to play big, even using traditional structures in many African countries to legitimse its quest for continental leadership. Uganda was furious. South Africa was furious. Nigeria felt challenged.

Zimbabwe was critical but accommodative.

This is key to understanding the Security Council vote. The dominant feeling was one of jeering distraught Libya, or simply showing indifference to its fate, with very few countries - among them Zimbabwe - excavating vital principles underlain by Gaddafi's personal offensiveness.

The last straw came during the Africa-Europe Summit last year in Tripoli. The cup of African tolerance simply overflowed. Far from standing with Africa against Europe, Gaddafi was pleading with Europe to get specialized surveillance aircraft with which to fight African immigrants using Libya as entrepot.

And when the attack on his country began, he threatened to allow African immigrants free passage into paranoid Europe. He sought to play on Europe's fears of the black peril, to stave off attack. Africa took note.

In that same meeting with Europeans, Gaddafi showed a schizophrenia which upset many Africans. Was he Arab; was he African? Europe sought to drive a wage between Africans and Arab Africans, all in the name of developmental differential. Gaddafi seemed to find that uplifting, more so given that the distinctions put him well above generalised African poverty.

Just before the attack, Gaddafi made mediation proposals that marginalized Africa and privileged Western countries that are part of its assault. France was supposed to lead in brokering peace, the same France which fired the first salvo.

Again Africa took note of a Gaddafi whose heart was in Europe, his country and contempt on African soil. That did not help. But his fate illustrates one important lesson for Africa and those who wield African power. It is when you have done all to appease the West, including selling off family silver to it, that you are at your most vulnerable.

After that, you will be so worthless to the West, that only your own death becomes the last rite. You can never placate the Victorians, more so when capitalism is in crisis.

Icho!


This article is reproduced from The Herald.

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(NEWZIMBABWE) Kagame: why Gaddafi must be stopped

COMMENT - Paul Kagame is the US/UK backed Rwandan president and dictator, who set off the Rwandan genocide by assassinating the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, shooting down their helicopter with a US financed surface to air missile. He was educated at the School of the Americas, Fort Huachuca, New Mexico (HQ of US Army Intelligence), and is former head of the Ugandan army's military intelligence. When he was indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague's lead prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, ms. del Ponte was fired. He's 'protected'.

Kagame: why Gaddafi must be stopped
25/03/2011 00:00:00
by President Paul Kagame I Rwanda

MY COUNTRY is still haunted by memories of the international community looking away No country knows better than my own the costs of the international community failing to intervene to prevent a state killing its own people.

In the course of 100 days in 1994, a million Rwandans were killed by government-backed “genocidaires” and the world did nothing to stop them.

So it is encouraging that members of the international community appear to have learnt the lessons of that failure. Through UN Resolution 1973 we are seeing a committed intervention to halt the crisis that was unfolding in Libya.

From what the world saw on the sidelines of this conflict, had this action not been taken, the bombardment of that country’s towns and cities would have continued, Benghazi most likely would have borne the brunt of a furious administration and hundreds of thousands of lives could well have been lost.

Given the overriding mandate of Operation Odyssey Dawn to protect Libyan civilians from state-sponsored attacks, Rwanda can only stand in support of it.

Our responsibility to protect is unquestionable — this is the right thing to do, and this view is backed with the authority of having witnessed and suffered the terrible consequences of international inaction.
My main concern however, is whether this necessary action will not be compromised by ambivalence and wavering arguments.

Now that the UN Security Council has taken a strong stand and sent the message that our global community will be relentless in protecting civilians under threat, particularly from their own leaders, we cannot be seen to be indecisive about moving forward in completion of this aim.

There are no two ways about it: the resolution authorises the use of all necessary means to protect Libyans — so wherever there is need of protection, the allied coalition should act, and do so in no uncertain terms.

The issue is not so much about regime change as it is about saving lives, but we cannot ignore the link between what is happening in Libya and the acts of the current administration.

From the African perspective there are important lessons to learn, the main one being that we as the African Union need to respond faster and more effectively to situations such as these.

Despite the AU Peace and Security Council holding consultations early this month to discuss the crisis in Libya, and subsequently deciding to send a fact-finding mission to that country, this response was slow and in the end overtaken by events on the ground.

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However, let me also contend that the international community would have done well to include the African Union in the decision-making process in the same way that, for example, the Arab League was consulted: this certainly would have lent added legitimacy to the operations we are now witnessing.

It is regrettable that although Libya is a member of our regional community, Africa’s only voice on this crucial issue was that of the few countries that sit on the UN Security Council.

This is not sufficient for our Continent: we should be doing, and seen to be doing, the right thing at the right time — not from the sidelines of operations such as this, but right at the heart of solutions to the problems that are facing our people.

We cannot assume that there would have been a unanimous consensus on what course of action to pursue, but I do believe the majority of member states would have supported Resolution 1973 for the simple reason that we cannot continue watching the chaos that was consuming Libya while its people were crying out for help.

While the support may not have been military, the AU could have offered something far more valuable — political support and moral authority for the coalition’s actions on the ground.

There would have been other advantages to Africans having been more actively involved in the process that led to this joint action in Libya: first, it would have shown that African nations were ready to step up to the plate, accept their responsibilities and do the right thing.

To that extent it might have helped to erode the outdated and negative perception of Africa as a place destined for conflict and endemic poverty.

The truth is that African countries, including Rwanda, have made concerted efforts at political and economic reform in recent years, and should now be highly attractive to foreign investors. I am convinced that Africa presents the next frontier for business.

Second, African Union support for Operation Odyssey Dawn would have acted as a further deterrent to other African leaders who might be tempted to target their own people with violence.

The uprising in Libya has already sent a message to leaders in Africa and beyond. It is that if we lose touch with our people, if we do not serve them as they deserve and address their needs, there will be consequences.
Their grievances will accumulate — and no matter how much time passes, they can turn against you.

This article first appeared in Rwanda's The Times newspaper

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Friday, March 25, 2011

(TALKZIMBABWE) Biti buckles under pressure from war vets

Biti buckles under pressure from war vets
By: Ralph Mutema
Posted: Friday, March 25, 2011 4:19 am

FINANCE Minister Tendai Biti yesterday buckled under pressure from Zimbabwe's War Veterans who demanded payment of their children's school fees. Biti had dodged the veterans for two days, but finally agreed to meet them as it became clear they were not going to give up.

The minister finally met the war veterans' representatives at his offices and undertook to pay school fees arrears that Government owes them. The war veterans first tried to meet him on Monday and then on Wednesday without success.

The wa veterans also wanted Biti to clarify statements he made to private media saying "If Zanu-PF wants war, we will give them war".

Yesterday war veterans expressed satisfaction with Minister Biti's commitment to pay outstanding arrears for their children's school fees within two days.

They said the Finance Minister also promised to pay next term school fees within seven days of opening.

However, they said Minister Biti did not make any commitment to improve civil servants salaries.

They said the minister had also not undertaken to pay their healthcare dues and to raise their monthly pensions from US$116 to at least US$200.

The war veterans are also furious that Minister Biti - who was exposed as a key figure in structuring illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe - had done nothing to call for the end to the widely-discredited embargo as required of him and his MDC-T party in the Global Political Agreement.

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