UK considered military overthrow of ‘depressingly healthy’ Robert Mugabe
Newly declassified files reveal that military action to oust Robert Mugabe is not considered a “serious option” by the Foreign Office, despite growing frustration with Tony Blair’s government over the Zimbabwean dictator’s refusal to give up power.
Documents lodged at the National Archives at Kew show Downing Street pressured the Foreign Office to develop new strategies to apply pressure on Mugabe as the former British colony descended into widespread violence and economic chaos.
A No 10 adviser has warned the prime minister that the worsening situation could be a “real spoiler” to his ambition to make 2005 “the year of Africa” at the Gleneagles G8 summit.
But the Foreign Office was forced to admit there were few effective ways to intensify pressure on the senior Zanu-PF leader, who remains “depressingly healthy” at 80 and is determined to stay on until he has a successor of his own choosing.
An options document prepared in July 2004 immediately ruled out any use of military force. A year after joining the US-led coalition to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Britain will be on its own if it attempts to invade, the country has said.
“The only candidate to lead such a military option is Britain. No one else (not even the US) can be prepared to do this,” the newspaper said.
“Any military intervention by the UK would result in heavy casualties (including on the UK side). There would also be no end state or exit strategy.
“We are of the opinion that no African state will accept any attempt to remove Mugabe by force unless there is a major humanitarian and political disaster leading to major violence, large-scale refugee flows and regional instability.”
Thabo Mbeki, then president of South Africa, later claimed that in the early 2000s Blair tried to pressure him to join a military coalition to oust Mugabe.
Mr Blair vehemently denied this allegation; but the claim that military action had been discussed before may explain why the State Department was so quick to state publicly in 2004 that it would not take such action.
But the files show that Blair was influenced by a suggestion from British ambassador Sir Brian Donnelly, who urged him to contact Mugabe to persuade him to step aside once parliamentary elections were over in early 2005.
In his farewell telegram to the Prime Minister’s foreign policy adviser Sir Nigel Sheinwald, he noted Blair’s success in getting Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who had been treated as a pariah by the West for years, to give up his weapons of mass destruction.
“Given all that Mugabe has said and done, I can well understand why you and the Prime Minister are trembling,” he wrote.
“I am also aware that Mugabe’s unique place in our demonology creates some particular problems in the opinion of the UK public and parliament. This is a political call.
“All I can say is that you emboldened yourself to do this with Gaddafi, another megalomaniac, often irrational de facto dictator. The payoff more than justified the effort.”
Mr Blair seemed to like the idea, writing: “We must find a way to expose Zanu-PF’s lies and malpractices in the run-up to the elections, and then we can try to re-engage with a clear understanding of what this means.
“I can see a way of making this work but we need the FCO to develop a full strategy.”
But Foreign Office officials in London were highly skeptical, saying such an approach had been tried and failed before and would run the risk of “looking like a futile U-turn”.
They also warned that imposing new sanctions on top of international measures already in place would be counterproductive, harming ordinary Zimbabweans and allowing Mugabe to continue his “big lie” that the UK was responsible for all the country’s woes.
They concluded that after more than two decades of freedom fighting against the white minority rule that brought him to power, Mugabe would not step aside without “overwhelming pressure” and that the only realistic course was to “hang tight” until he chose to leave of his own accord.
Sir Brian’s successor, Rod Pullen, wrote: “He is not mad (as some have suggested) or clinging to power simply out of fear (as others have suggested). Rather, he seems to believe he has a job to finish.”
Ultimately, this work would remain unfinished for another 13 years, until he was overthrown in a coup in 2017, at the age of 93.
