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Britain appears to be preparing for a possible military intervention in Zimbabwe, with Defense Ministry officials recently telling U.K. papers that contingency plans are being finalized for road- and air evacuations for an estimated 20,000 British citizens, mostly white farmers. The reports come amid rising tensions in the country following President Robert Mugabe’s Aug. 8 order that thousands of white farmers leave their lands to allow for redistribution to landless blacks.

Elite British Special Air Services, now engaged in military exercises in South Africa, already have conducted reconnaissance along the South Africa-Zimbabwe border in anticipation of an evacuation, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Aug. 30. But such a plan would require the cooperation and support of the government in Harare, and that is not assured.

Moreover, the scale and scope of the operation -- along with heightened violence such as the recent bombing of an independent radio station -- raises the possibility of firefights between British forces and Zimbabwean security forces. Such a confrontation could quickly transform the evacuation into a full-scale British military intervention, which also would create problems in South Africa from where the British troops will be operating.

Mugabe has used the country’s white farmers -- most of whom have ignored his repeated eviction orders despite attacks by Mugabe-backed militias -- as scapegoats for Zimbabwe’s economic troubles and as geopolitical hostages to prevent total isolation from the international community. Mugabe may want the farmers off the land, but having them completely removed from the country will leave him with few levers for dealing with Western entities like the European Union and the United States, which have imposed sanctions on his regime and have blamed its policies for leaving half the population facing starvation.

Even if the government in Zimbabwe did not interfere in Britain’s evacuation plans, such an operation would still be daunting. According to the Telegraph report, military personnel could fly British citizens from the Harare airport or take them by road to South Africa. But either route would be dangerous. Moreover, white farmers are scattered all over the country, and even getting them to rendezvous points would be a major undertaking. The logistics of transporting several thousand people to safety would be nightmarish, and the bigger the operation, the greater chance for trouble -- including violent confrontation.

STRATFOR sources in Zimbabwe say mobs of militants already have begun harassing local whites, in what is likely to turn into the latest round of violent clashes between the government-sanctioned "war veterans" and white farmers. The presence of British SAS troops inside Zimbabwe could further enflame the conflict, leading to fights with militants.

Military planners in Britain will need to account for all possible scenarios and their outcomes. A key question, for instance, will be how should the government respond if things start to go bad and firefights break out between the British military and Zimbabwean forces, either militants or the regular military? If several thousand British citizens are still in the country when fighting starts, their lives will be in immediate danger.

This would mean that the British military will not have the option of disengagement but may need to take the next logical step: a full military intervention to oust Mugabe. Such a move, which would be labeled by the Mugabe government as a colonial invasion, would need the direct support of South Africa and at least the tacit acceptance of other regimes in the region.

South Africa has also suffered from Mugabe’s land redistribution program, with its currency, the rand, dropping drastically at least in part because of the land seizures next door. But both South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) and Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) began as liberation movements that fought against white colonial rule.

Both of these governments also like to blame colonialism and Western intervention for the region’s political and economic woes. And the issue of land redistribution has been debated openly in countries like South Africa and Namibia, where whites still control the vast majority of the rich, arable land.

Yet the fears of wreaking the type of economic havoc now evident in Zimbabwe and scaring off foreign investors have limited these countries’ political calls for seizing white-owned farms. South Africa has been especially careful to tiptoe around the land issue, promising reform but moving at a snail’s pace.

As white farmers in South Africa are already key targets of organized violence, with hundreds of farmers murdered since the end of apartheid, Pretoria is reluctant to play on the issue. Moreover, the ANC’s political popularity gives it plenty of political breathing space, unlike Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, which has come under pressure in the last few years from a well-organized, well-funded and black opposition -- the Movement for Democratic Change.

A British intervention in Zimbabwe will raise the specter of colonial rule in southern Africa only a few decades after that rule ended. British troops are now conducting weeks-long exercises in South Africa, which the Defense Ministry has denied have any connection to the situation in neighboring Zimbabwe. However, it’s likely that the troops on the ground think differently. They are looking at the field of options and seeing an extremely difficult and likely protracted campaign that could redefine Britain’s relations with southern Africa.

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MUGABE IS STARVING HIS OWN PEOPLE

Date Added: Thursday, August 8th, 2002
Contributed by: RCN Administrator