THE TONE: Sanctions in Sudan and Zimbabwe

Why has the United States imposed some crippling sanctions and travel bans to the Zimbabwean government, which has resulted in the Zimbabwean economy’s decapitation and has, without a doubt, brought it to its knees? That is to put it lightly because it is more like a spiral to an abyss grave of unfathomed depth that has resulted from the grim slaughter on the nation of Zimbabwe. Is it for bad governance and human rights violations? Interestingly on the other hand, in the face of the whole world - which by the way includes the US, the Sudanese government was handed down some target economic sanctions on May 29 2007 by the US government, as a humanitarian statement against the slaying of Africans there. The sanctions package; nothing compared to the butchering one in Zimbabwe. The Sudanese government has officiated state sponsored terror on it own citizens by aiding the Janjaweed - Arab militia, to displace and maim millions of black Africans without much regret about it. Comparably, the Zimbabwean government has annihilated and sacrificed its own people in atonement to fallen diplomacies with the former colonial government of Britain.

In my simple analysis, there is a huge inconsistency from the same bodies of governments in the US, namely the US Senate and the Congress, that make such different decisions for roughly the same crimes by different perpetrators. By pure body count alone, Darfur atrocities are by far more calamitous and are at a notable biblical scale than that in Zimbabwe. The original cause for both catastrophes in the two African nations is roughly the same - a rising desperation and scramble for fertility in the context of each nation’s most fertile natural resources largely in the form farm lands, by previously well co-existed ethnic groups.

Darfur is located in the West of Sudan and is about the size of France - (the size of Texas). The eroding farmland’s most arable lands were for many years, the cause and the scene of aggressive sporadic clashes between native farming communities of different tribes which resulted in destruction and looting of homes. The government blamed competition over scarce resources for the clashes. In February 2003 a new armed opposition group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) took up arms against the government, for what they perceived as the lack of government protection for their people. Support for SLA mainly came from the agricultural groups in the region. The government of Sudan responded by allowing free rein to Arab militias known as the Janjaweed (guns on horseback) who began attacking villages, killing, raping and abducting people, destroying homes and other property, including water sources and looting livestock. They were literally handed a license to kill. Government troops aided the Janjaweed in the ensuing attacks. Despite the Sudanese’s government denial, the Janjaweed’s arsenal had the Sudan Military signature marks from their military regalia in which they clad to the AK-47s used as their weapon of choice.

Four years earlier, in 1999, similar turmoil was plaguing a much smaller nation roughly 2330 miles south of Darfur, Sudan – the nation of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe was hailed as the regional hero to many nations in Africa, mainly for the emancipation from the imperialist British colonial yoke that bond many Africans in chains, as they ruled for about 100 years. Until 1980, it was known as Rhodesia, the Queen’s Paradise, and this is reference to Queen Elizabeth II in the British monarchy. Like Sudan, the natural resource of land acutely reached dire levels of desperateness. The colonial rulers gave themselves land and simply displaced the African natives inhabiting the land. After the guerilla war of independence was over in 1980, there was a notable imbalance on the distribution of wealth in the country. 4% of the country’s farmers, who happened to be of white British ancestry, controlled and owned 80% of the Zimbabwe’s most arable lands and the other 96%, who were native Zimbabweans, only had entitlement to just 20% of the country’s farmlands. The British Government, headed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at that time, signed an agreement with the new Zimbabwean government under the sovereignty of Hon. Robert Mugabe, which is known today as the Lancaster House Agreement. This signatory ceremony transpired in London, and ensured good diplomatic relations between the two nations as Zimbabwe was ushered into the Commonwealth group of nations. The Lancaster House Agreement's quest was to create a situation in which all Zimbabweans were to be free from fear, including the fear of the oppression of one national group by another, the fear of the disempowerment of one social echelon by another, the fear of the use of state power to deny anyone their fundamental human rights and the fear of tyranny.The Lancaster House Agreement had in it, a land redistribution program that was to be funded by Britain. The British reign changed hands from Thatcher to Sir. John Major in 1990 and yet again in 1997 to Tony Blair. Blair made it clear that he was not part of the Lancaster House Agreement and knew very little about it and was not going to fund the program to redistribute the land. This forced Mugabe, who is still in power today, to deploy so called war veterans, to snatch the land by force, from the white farmers by way of state sponsored hoodlums wreaking the havoc and hooliganism in the country. This menacing faction of the government reigned terror that had most white Zimbabweans fearing for the lives. The Zimbabwean government, by way of the war veterans, ruthlessly massacred any opposition in the mayhem. The name “Zimbabwe” itself, means “House of Stones” but many would agree today that like the biblical city of Jericho, it stones walls of that house have come tumbling down. The victims were initially white farmers and their African workers and then it spread to all corners of the nation to perturb and bewilder any opposition. This was the beginning of the end of the Agriculture based economy that used to known as the “bread basket of Africa”.

Of course there are different socio-economic and political connotations that punctuate each situation. The question is; why should the "world police", treat differently, the same crimes from two different criminals? In some sense, the more gruesome criminal has got preferential treatment! How genocidal should the situation in Zimbabwe be for all the sanctions to be dropped by the US, a key ally to Britain? One wonders what is really behind some decisions, one wonders what kind of demise Zimbabwe would face if they were floating on oil like Iraq, Iran or Sudan. Granted, the masses in Zimbabwe do not condone the current political policies in place but the economic sanctions have done nothing but massacre and butcher the average citizen. The victims are always the innocent ones, as is the case with both Zimbabwe and Sudan.

Sudan has a population of about 39 million, according to the CIA. Out of that number, 400,000 have died and 2.5 million are displaced. This, by all means, is a genocide in progress. Iraq, a country of about 27 million has, as a result of U.S. invasion and occupation, about 600,000 killed and about 2 million refugees, roughly comparable in body count to Sudan, which has a larger population. Why is the death and destruction in Iraq not genocide? Zimbabwe on the other hand, has had only under a thousands dead and over 3 million displaced to neighboring countries, far from what a genocide would be by definition, but contrary to all of that the economic sanctions on Zimbabwe are by the far the worst from the three nations. Already an ailing nation crippled by bad governance, a harsh economy, an unsparing climate change and scourged by conflict diamonds that have not really done much for much of Africa, Zimbabwean citizens have seen the worst that can be seen from sanctions. The US’ mentality is to fuel an internal uprising that will eventually overthrow the Mugabe government and facilitate a much needed regime change.

Meanwhile, both Sudan and Zimbabwe have found oriental economic sanctuaries in the name of China and Russia, the latter more directed to Sudan's arms deal. If they really cared for Zimbabwe and Darfur, they would lift economic sanctions and travels bans off Zimbabwe where the ordinary man and women has suffered, or perhaps impose the heaviest sanctions ever seen in history on Sudan and its "allies" - China and Russia. That is just a little fairness. The latter option is probably impossible, because how heavy can sanctions get for them to be worse than those imposed on Zimbabwe? Think about this, if some non-Western, non-EU powerful nation backed Zimbabwe for any reasons, like oil or an arms deal, perhaps there would have never been sanctions in the first place or they would be light target sanctions like those imposed on Sudan, but Zimbabwe is only vaguely backed by a handful of barely influential SADC nations of southern Africa. This “support”, in my opinion, is somewhat a mirage by many counts, because it is only in the interest of regional sub-Saharan stability and not so much a humanitarian cause.