Zimbabwe's reign of terror

In his cynical and bloody bid to hang on to power, Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, has bet on the indifference of his neighbors and the rest of the world. So far he has been right.

On Tuesday, three-and-a-half weeks before a runoff presidential election, Mugabe's henchmen detained Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader and likely winner of the first round, for nine hours.

International aid agencies reported this week that they had been ordered to stop distributing food to hundreds of thousands of hungry Zimbabweans, at least until the June 27 vote. Officials working for Mugabe claimed that the aid groups were backing the opposition, but it is clear that the government wants to further intimidate voters while reducing the number of possible outside witnesses to its campaign of terror.

At least 50 people have been killed since March, when the first round of voting took place. Still, the international community and African leaders have done nothing more than wring their hands.

The spectacle of Mugabe attending a UN food conference in Rome this week as if he was just another world leader was especially shameful. Mugabe used the conference to blame the West - again - for his country's implosion.

The truth is that it is his own destructive 30-year rule that destroyed commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe, frightened away foreign investment, pushed inflation to more than 100,000 percent and made millions of people dependent on foreign assistance.

Mugabe was not invited to a ceremonial leaders' dinner in Rome, and some officials, including from the United States and Britain, refused to meet with him. That may have assuaged some consciences. But it clearly had no effect at all on Mugabe, who is a master at feeding racial resentments.

That is why African leaders urgently need to use all of their clout to halt the reign of terror.

They need to demand freedom for Tsvangirai and others to campaign. They need to send high-level envoys to warn Mugabe, his generals and other cronies that they will pay a high, personal price - including frozen foreign bank accounts and denied visas - if these abuses continue. (Mugabe is unlikely to listen, but the rest may be more willing to recalculate their loyalties.) And they need to blanket Zimbabwe with election monitors.

Until now, the United States has chosen a comparatively low-key role, rather than feeding Mugabe's anti-Western rants. The time for low-key is past. Washington should use its presidency of the UN Security Council this month to rally international condemnation of Mugabe and forge a plan that might have a chance of averting disaster in Zimbabwe.

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