Zimbabwe Question

My recent posting on Britain's contingency plans for dealing with Zimbabwe have received a few comments and emails that basically said that my idea of Britain going in and sorting out Mugabe the old fashioned way was not necessarily a good idea and, as this is not the day of the gunboat, we might get our heads handed back to us .

On the former I am entirely willing to concede the point that perhaps military intervention (i.e. pounding Mugabe and his ilk into the ground like a nail) is not the wisest course of action (though not for the craven reasons that Mr. Brown subscribes to, which is what really gets up my nose). The day I present a plan of attack and everyone else says "goodo" is the day I give up on the sanity of the world. I have trouble organising a trip to the swimming pool, so military options I leave to more experienced minds.

On the latter point, though, I must stand firm. True, Britain's might is not what it was, though this is largely a matter of numbers rather than quality, as comparable unit for comparable unit and man for man the British armed forces excel against anyone in the world. And we are not talking about taking on Red China in a land war here. We are talking about east Sub-Saharan Africa with armed forces for whom the glory days of the Impi are a faded memory and whose main experience is in pushing around poor farmers and tradesmen like Cossacks in a somewhat warmer climate. There are only two countries that need to be looked at for overflights to Zimbabwe: Mozambique and South Africa. Mozambique's air force is so small that it doesn't even show on the charts and South Africa only fields one fighter aircraft. I don't mean one type of fighter plane, I mean one plane. Even Zimbabwe only boasts half a dozen clapped-out Chinese fighters and God knows what condition they're in. As for ground defences, I doubt if they field anything that the RN or RAF couldn't take out before breakfast.

But for what happens when the SAS or whoever reach Harare, I submit for comparison the 1981 SAS mission where a force of three men was sent into Gambia to rescue the President's wife and family from left-wing rebels who'd seized the capital. Long story short, the three SAS men got the hostages out safe and for good measure liberated the country with the aid of a contingent of Seneglese paras that they hooked up with. Hopefully they got a commendation for initiative.

As I said, whether that sort of thing is wise is one question, but whether it is possible is another thing entirely.