Inside Mugabe's Violent Crackdown
Notes, Witnesses Detail How Campaign Was Conceived and Executed by Leader, Aides
By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 5, 2008; A01

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- President Robert Mugabe summoned his top security officials to a government training center near his rural home in central Zimbabwe on the afternoon of March 30. In a voice barely audible at first, he informed the leaders of the state security apparatus that had enforced his rule for 28 years that he had lost the presidential vote held the previous day.

Then Mugabe told the gathering he planned to give up power in a televised speech to the nation the next day, according to the written notes of one participant that were corroborated by two other people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

But Zimbabwe's military chief, Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, responded that the choice was not Mugabe's alone to make. According to two firsthand accounts of the meeting, Chiwenga told Mugabe his military would take control of the country to keep him in office or the president could contest a runoff election, directed in the field by senior army officers supervising a military-style campaign against the opposition.

Mugabe, the only leader this country has known since its break from white rule nearly three decades ago, agreed to remain in the race and rely on the army to ensure his victory. During an April 8 military planning meeting, according to written notes and the accounts of participants, the plan was given a code name: CIBD. The acronym, which proved apt in the fevered campaign that unfolded over the following weeks, stood for: Coercion. Intimidation. Beating. Displacement.

In the three months between the March 29 vote and the June 27 runoff election, ruling-party militias under the guidance of 200 senior army officers battered the Movement for Democratic Change, bringing the opposition party's network of activists to the verge of oblivion. By election day, more than 80 opposition supporters were dead, hundreds were missing, thousands were injured and hundreds of thousands were homeless. Morgan Tsvangirai, the party's leader, dropped out of the contest and took refuge in the Dutch Embassy.

This account reveals previously undisclosed details of the strategy behind the campaign as it was conceived and executed by Mugabe and his top advisers, who from that first meeting through the final vote appeared to hold decisive influence over the president.

The Washington Post was given access to the written record by a participant of several private meetings attended by Mugabe in the period between the first round of voting and the runoff election. The notes were corroborated by witnesses to the internal debates. Many of the people interviewed, including members of Mugabe's inner circle, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of government retribution. Much of the reporting for this article was conducted by a Zimbabwean reporter for The Post whose name is being withheld for security reasons.

What emerges from these accounts is a ruling inner circle that debated only in passing the consequences of the political violence on the country and on international opinion. Mugabe and his advisers also showed little concern in these meetings for the most basic rules of democracy that have taken hold in some other African nations born from anti-colonial independence movements.

Mugabe's party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, took power in 1980 after a protracted guerrilla war. The notes and interviews make clear that its military supporters, who stood to lose wealth and influence if Mugabe bowed out, were not prepared to relinquish their authority simply because voters checked Tsvangirai's name on the ballots.

"The small piece of paper cannot take the country," Solomon Mujuru, the former guerrilla commander who once headed Zimbabwe's military, told the party's ruling politburo on April 4, according to notes of the meeting and interviews with some of those who attended.

'Professional Killers'
The plan's first phase unfolded the week after the high-level meeting, as Mugabe supporters began erecting 2,000 party compounds across the country that would serve as bases for the party militias.

At first, the beatings with whips, striking with sticks, torture and other forms of intimidation appeared consistent with the country's past political violence. Little of it was fatal.

That changed May 5 in the remote farming village of Chaona, located 65 miles north of the capital, Harare. The village of dirt streets had voted for Tsvangirai in the election's first round after decades of supporting Mugabe.

On the evening of May 5 -- three days after Mugabe's government finally released the official results of the March 29 election -- 200 Mugabe supporters rampaged through its streets. By the time the militia finished, seven people were dead and the injured bore the hallmarks of a new kind of political violence.

Women were stripped and beaten so viciously that whole sections of flesh fell away from their buttocks. Many had to lie facedown in hospital beds during weeks of recovery. Men's genitals became targets. The official postmortem report on Chaona opposition activist Aleck Chiriseri listed crushed genitals among the causes of death. Other men died the same way.

At the funerals for Chiriseri and the others, opposition activists noted the gruesome condition of the corpses. Some in the crowds believed soldiers trained in torture were behind the killings, not the more improvisational ruling-party youth or liberation war veterans who traditionally served as Mugabe's enforcers.

"This is what alerted me that now we are dealing with professional killers," said Shepherd Mushonga, a top opposition leader for Mashonaland Central province, which includes Chaona.

Mushonga, a lawyer whose unlined face makes him look much younger than his 48 years, won a seat in parliament in the March vote on the strength of a village-by-village organization that Tsvangirai's party had worked hard to assemble in rural Mashonaland.

After Chaona, Mushonga turned that organization into a defense force for his own village, Kodzwa. Three dozen opposition activists, mostly men in their 20s and 30s, took shifts patrolling the village at night. The men armed themselves with sticks, shovels and axes small enough to slip into their pants pockets, Mushonga said.

The same militias that attacked Chaona worked their way gradually south through the rural district of Chiweshe, hitting Jingamvura, Bobo and, in the predawn hours of May 28, Kodzwa, where about 200 families live between two rivers.

When about 25 ruling-party militia members attempted to enter the village along its two dirt roads, Mushonga said, his patrols blew whistles, a prearranged signal for women, children and the elderly to flee south across one of the rivers to the relative safety of a neighboring village.

Over the next few hours, the two rival groups moved through Kodzwa's dark streets. Shortly after dawn, Mushonga's 46-year-old brother, Leonard, and about 10 other opposition activists cornered five of the ruling-party militia members. One of the militia members was armed with a bayonet, another a traditional club known as a knobkerrie.

In the scuffle, Leonard Mushonga and his group prevailed, beating the five intruders severely. But he said that this small, rare victory revealed evidence that elements of the army had been deployed against them.

One of the ruling-party men, Leonard Mushonga said, carried a military identification badge. In a police report on the incident, which led to the arrest of 26 opposition activists, the soldier was identified as Zacks Kanhukamwe, 47, a member of the Zimbabwe National Army. A second man, Petros Nyguwa, 45, was listed as a sergeant in the army.

He was also listed as a member of Mugabe's presidential guard.

Terror Brings Results
The death toll mounted through May, and almost all of the fatalities were opposition activists. Tsvangirai's personal advance man, Tonderai Ndira, 32, was abducted and killed. Police in riot gear raided opposition headquarters in Harare, arresting hundreds of families that had taken refuge there.

Even some of Mugabe's stalwarts grew uneasy, records of the meetings show.

Vice President Joice Mujuru, wife of former guerrilla commander Solomon Mujuru and a woman whose ferocity during the guerrilla war of the 1970s earned her the nickname Spill Blood, warned the ruling party's politburo in a May 14 meeting that the violence might backfire. Notes from that and other meetings, as well as interviews with participants, make clear that she was overruled repeatedly by Chiwenga, the military head, and by former security chief Emerson Mnangagwa.

Mnangagwa, 61, earned his nickname in the mid-1980s overseeing the so-called Gukurahundi, when a North Korea-trained army brigade slaughtered thousands of people in a southwestern region where Mugabe was unpopular. From then on, Mnangagwa was known as the Butcher of Matabeleland.

The ruling party turned to Mnangagwa to manage Mugabe's runoff campaign after first-round results, delayed for five weeks, showed Tsvangirai winning but not with the majority needed to avoid a second round.

The opposition, however, had won a clear parliamentary majority.

In private briefings to Mugabe's politburo, Mnangagwa expressed growing confidence that the violence was doing its job, according to records of the meetings. After Joice Mujuru raised concerns about the brutality in the May 14 meeting, Mnangagwa said only, "Next agenda item," according to written notes and a party official who witnessed the exchange.

At a June 12 politburo meeting at party headquarters, Mnangagwa delivered another upbeat report.

According to one participant, he told the group that growing numbers of opposition activists in Mashonaland Central, Matabeleland North and parts of Masvingo province had been coerced into publicly renouncing their ties with Tsvangirai. Such events were usually held in the middle of the night, and featured the burning of opposition party cards and other regalia.

Talk within the ruling party began predicting a landslide victory in the runoff vote, less than three weeks away.

Mugabe's demeanor also brightened, said some of those who attended the meeting. Before it began, he joked with both Mnangagwa and Joice Mujuru.

It was the first time since the March vote, one party official recalled, that Mugabe laughed in public.

'Nothing to Go Back To'
The opposition's resistance in Chiweshe gradually withered under intensifying attacks by ruling-party militias. After the stalemate in Kodzwa, the militias continued moving south in June, finally reaching Manomano in the region's southwestern corner.

The opposition leader in Manomano was Gibbs Chironga, 44, who had won a seat in the local council as part of Tsvangirai's first-round landslide in the area. The Chirongas were shopkeepers with a busy store in Manomano. To defend that store, they kept a pair of shotguns on hand.

On June 20, a week before the runoff election, Mugabe's militias arrived in Manomano with an arsenal that had grown increasingly advanced as the vote approached.

Some carried AK-47 assault rifles, which are standard issue for Zimbabwe's army. For the attack on Manomano, witnesses counted six of the weapons.

About 150 militia members, some carrying the rifles, circled the Chironga family home. Gibbs Chironga fired warning shots from his shotgun, relatives and other witnesses recalled. Yet the militiamen kept coming. They broke open the ceiling with a barrage of rocks, then used hammers to batter down the walls.

When Gibbs Chironga emerged, a militia member shot him with an AK-47, said Hilton Chironga, his 41-year-old brother, who was wounded by gunfire. Gibbs died soon after.

His brother, sister and mother were beaten, then handcuffed and forced to drink a herbicide that burned their mouths and faces, relatives said.

Both Hilton Chironga and his 76-year-old mother, Nelia Chironga, were taken to the hospital in Harare, barely able to eat or speak. The whereabouts of Gibbs Chironga's sister remain unknown. The family home was burned to the ground.

"There's nothing to go back to at home," Hilton Chironga said softly, a bandage covering the wounds on his face and a pair of feeding tubes snaking into his nostrils.

"Even if I go back, they'll finish me off. That is what they want," he said.

Two days later, as Mugabe's militias intensified their attacks, Tsvangirai dropped out of the race.

Groups of ruling-party youths took over a field on the western edge of downtown Harare where he was attempting to have a rally, and soon after, he announced that the government's campaign of violence had made it impossible for him to continue. Privately, opposition officials said the party organization had been so damaged that they had no hope of winning the runoff vote.

On election day, Mugabe's militias drove voters to the polls and tracked through ballot serial numbers those who refused to vote or who cast ballots for Tsvangirai despite his boycott.

The 84-year-old leader took the oath of office two days later, for a sixth time. He waved a Bible in the air and exchanged congratulatory handshakes with Chiwenga, whose reelection plan he had adopted more than two months before, and the rest of his military leaders.

About the same time, a 29-year-old survivor of the first assault in Chaona, Patrick Mapondera, emerged from the hospital. His wife, who had also been badly beaten, was recovering from skin grafts to her buttocks. She could sit again.

Mapondera had been the opposition chairman for Chaona and several surrounding villages. If and when the couple returns home, he said, he does not expect to take up his job again.

"They've destroyed everything," he said.

Are you a “Liberal, “Conservative” or _______________?

With all the labeling going around of being a 'liberal' or 'conservative'.

Frankly, I'm not sure what I am so I call myself an independent.

So as we celebrate our Independence Day, July 4th, I decided to peck out what are the defining tenets of my views and let all of you who might ponder this join in the COMMENTS with your thoughts.

For me I'm for whatever strategy that will increase and maintain and reliable 'supply chains' for goods and services to the broadest band of the population of earth. The ultimate result is the broadest band of 'connectivity' in terms of economics opportunities, internet educations, and freedom of choice.

I believe that this type of connectivity is being accomplished by the rapid expansion of this new era of 'globalization' which is the most effective avenue to pluralistic types of governments which give the people a system to have a voice in their governance. With the rise of China, we have seen a one party capitalistic form of government experience a meteoric rise in pulling its people from poverty compared to a few decades ago. As discretionary incomes increase we are seeing a more vocal Chinese people, with more liberties within the populace. Plus we are coming to new era in the Chinese government where the next generation of leaders have been educated in the west. Give another 10 years and China will continue to liberalize its political system. I digress.

The question of representative governance is most often an issue of 'sequencing'... meaning that democracy isn't always the beginning step in the process. I believe that governance should be about establishing the broadest band of economic connectivity which generates 'discretionary' income which is the first real step of democracy or some form of pluralism.

Folks are much less concerned about who governs them when they are hand to mouth and much more interested in having a voice when their basic needs are met.

Could it be that the definitions of the baby boomers are becoming archaic? The idea that our foreign policy starts at our shores as Thomas Jefferson said (I am told), is still in many peoples tribal and village mentality. The idea that humanity benefits with secure supply chains (largely in part to the US Navy), as opposed to a line in the sand. Indeed we are in a new era of thinking.

I often think about the story I was told when President Nixon returned from China and stopped in Kurdistan on the way back to the USA. I understand the Kurds offered to be the next United State.
America isn’t about geography as much as it is about a system of laws, a codex that is trusted world wide and has become the source book for global economic connectivity. Why not 75 United States? Ever wonder how many would apply to be a United States if we put the shingle out? People die to reach the USA because our system of opportunity is still attractive to those who are inventive, work hard and smart and want a better future.

As I have looked closely at our foreign policy over the last few years, there is no question we are learning how soft tools of war (back to the economic, educational connectivity) can be more powerful than tanks and bombs. The balance of these tools is topic of great debate in our DOD and State Department Institutions and we are maturing one of the greatest generations of leaders in our history. Those that understand the cultural and tribal structures and how to leverage those with carrot/ stick diplomacy.

So I'm interested in comments on whether or not this description makes me a conservative, a liberal an independent, a globalist or ??

Comments?

Condoleezza Rice Says She's `Proud' of Decision to Invade Iraq
By Janine Zacharia

July 3 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she's ``proud'' of the U.S. decision to wage the Iraq war and insisted that the world is not more dangerous than it was when George W. Bush took office.
``We're now beginning to see that perhaps it's not so popular to be a suicide bomber. We're beginning to see that perhaps people are questioning whether Osama Bin Laden ought to really be the face of Islam,'' Rice, 53, said in an interview to be broadcast this weekend on Bloomberg Television's ``Conversations with Judy Woodruff.''
``And I am proud of the decision of this administration to overthrow Saddam Hussein,'' said Rice, who was Bush's national security adviser at the time of the March 2003 invasion. As of yesterday, 4,107 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq and more than 30,000 were wounded. She said the Iraq war has been ``tougher than any of us really dreamed.''
Rice, who backs the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Arizona Senator John McCain, said she ``thought it was great'' when the Democratic race came down to a woman and a black man. ``I didn't think it was surprising,'' she said.
People abroad are ``fascinated'' by Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, Rice added when asked what effect Obama's candidacy is having around the world.
``But I'll tell you something. Ultimately, whoever is elected president of the United States will represent the United States, not as a black president or as a woman president or as a black secretary of state or as a woman secretary of state, but the United States of America,'' Rice said.
North Korea
Rice, with only seven months left as secretary of state, has a wide diplomatic agenda, trying to make progress toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and a North Korean nuclear disarmament deal while trying to persuade Iran to accept incentives to abandon uranium enrichment, a process, once mastered, that could lead to a nuclear bomb.
While Rice was in Asia last week, North Korea submitted an inventory of nuclear plants and material to China, and the U.S. moved to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. The Bush administration was hammered by conservative critics, including House Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who called the deal ``cause for profound concern.''
In the interview, Rice cited as progress that the North Koreans were ``putting themselves out of the business of making plutonium'' even as many U.S. sanctions remain in place.
``So with all due respect to those who look at this deal and say somehow North Korea has gotten a great deal, I think one can say that this is a really good step for non-proliferation,'' Rice added.
China
On China, Rice said the Chinese were being ``somewhat more helpful on Darfur.'' Demonstrations over China's support for the Sudanese leadership in Khartoum as it wages war with rebel groups in the Darfur region, as well as China's rule in Tibet and its treatment of the Dalai Lama, could overshadow the Olympic Games, which open in Beijing August 8.
Rice reiterated that Bush plans to attend the games, even as some human rights activists have urged him to boycott the event. ``The president has been very clear that the Olympics is a sporting event and he's going to go to it as a sporting event,'' Rice said. In Beijing earlier this week, she said she'd be keen to watch some Olympic basketball and track-and-field competitions.
Iran, Pakistan
Asked if she thought it would be a mistake for Israel to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran over its nuclear program, Rice said the Israelis have been willing to work with the U.S. on a diplomatic solution.
``They, too, believe that it's possible to deal with this diplomatically. But we better have really robust diplomacy in order to deal with this threat because the Iranians are making progress,'' she said.
Rice said she believed Iran, which the administration has accused of funneling weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq, had ``vulnerabilities'' in Iraq that the U.S. could exploit. She did not specify what they were.
Rice defended the Bush administration's policies when asked about a June 30 New York Times report that al-Qaeda, since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has successfully shifted its base of operations from Afghanistan to Pakistan's tribal areas and has rebuilt much of its ability to attack.
Rice, acknowledging there are policy debates within the administration on how to confront al-Qaeda, said many of the terrorist group's leaders are ``either in custody or they're dead.''
`Certain Strengths'
``Yes, it has certain strengths and continues to have certain strengths in this area that is very difficult for anyone to govern and very difficult for anyone to operate in. But there have been successes there too,'' Rice said.
Rice, who has been suggested as a possible McCain running mate, has said repeatedly that she has no plans to seek elected office and will return to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where she was provost, after the end of the administration in January 2009.
She has said may write another book on foreign policy. And in the interview she noted: ``I have been very active in educational causes before, particularly for underprivileged kids. That's what I'll go back and do.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Janine Zacharia in Washington at jzacharia@bloomberg.net.

Guitarist and singer Raul Midon plays "Everybody" and "Peace on Earth" during his 2007 set at TED.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/raul_midon_plays_everybody_and_peace_on_earth.html

Colombia: Looking Ahead After a Wily Rescue
STRATFOR TODAY » July 3, 2008 | 1717 GMT

CESAR CARRION/AFP/Getty Images
Colombian former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt (L) greets Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez in Bogota after her July 2 rescue
Summary
Emboldened by its stunning July 2 rescue of several high-profile captives from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the government will begin looking ahead toward the next step in its security campaign: eliminating the drug trade as a whole.

Analysis
Reports are surfacing that the July 2 Colombian hostage rescue was achieved through a complex plan involving the infiltration of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group, along with signals interference that tricked the FARC into turning over the hostages without a fight.

The U.S. military reportedly had decoded FARC communications and was intercepting its radio traffic. The Colombians then sent a series of coded messages to the FARC saying that the hostages were going to be transported by a friendly nongovernmental organization to the southern part of the country on the orders of FARC leader Alfonso Cano, who was considering a hostage swap. The Colombians then landed their helicopters in the FARC camp, picked up the hostages and flew off. The operation appears to have gone off without a single shot being fired.

Pulled from the FARC jungle hideout after years of captivity were Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian citizen and former presidential candidate, three U.S. hostages and 11 captured Colombian soldiers.

The tactical success of the rescue mission speaks volumes for the progress the Colombian military has made in its operations against the FARC. U.S. forces did play a substantial role in aiding the Colombian forces by developing the signals and human intelligence used to locate the hostages and convince the FARC that the hostage move was legitimate. There are no outward indications that U.S. troops were involved in the mission’s execution, as their presence would have given away the ruse. However, the United States has been heavily involved in training and equipping the Colombian military, and U.S. military personnel have been known to participate in a wide variety of liaison and advisory activities.

Regardless of U.S. participation in the rescue mission, the operation has overwhelmingly beneficial implications for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez. Without these high-level hostages, the FARC has lost its political bargaining chips, and Uribe has achieved a major goal — rescuing the hostages and debilitating the FARC. In achieving these goals, Uribe has gained considerable credibility at home. This will help him with domestic political difficulties and might enable him to push through a legal measure that would eliminate term limits. Halfway through his second four-year term, Uribe has asked for an extension of his leadership so he can continue pursuing his policies. This mission might give him the boost he needs.

The rescue mission might also make it possible for Uribe to negotiate a final settlement with the FARC. The information that will be gained from debriefing the hostages could very well help the Colombians make even greater strides toward neutralizing the rebel group. With its number of fighters greatly reduced and many of its leaders dead or deserted, the FARC is at a severe disadvantage. Cano is considered to be more of a soldier and less of an ideologue, and without a guiding ideological mission, it might be easier for him to come to a negotiated agreement with the government and lay down arms.

It must be remembered, however, that while the FARC is weakening, it is not dead. The group still holds some 700 hostages, and retaliatory strikes against the government and civilians can be expected. It is not out of the question that the FARC could seek to replenish its stock of high-profile hostages.

Nevertheless, the weakening of the FARC has Colombians looking ahead, and hopes are high throughout the country that they might finally be able to move beyond their decades-long war against leftist insurgents and drug traffickers. The demise of the FARC, however, should not be confused with the demise of the drug industry in Colombia.

Although the FARC would not exist without the financial support provided by the drug trade, the opposite is not true. Without the FARC, the drug trade would still flourish, since a host of smaller actors are actually responsible for the production and processing of Colombian cocaine. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that there might be up to 300 of these groups operating throughout Colombia.

For Uribe, taking down the drug trade is the next step, and the momentum and success he has maintained thus far will give him the political support he needs to push forward. Although Uribe could use such tools as subsidies for coca growers to encourage crop replacement, he will likely rely on a military strategy to regain control of the country.