POVERTY is increasing in Pakistan. It is not increasing marginally or slowly, but substantially and steadily, contrary to official assumptions, and it is too upsetting. Top officials like finance minister Shaukat Aziz who were sceptical about such non-official assertions and assumed that the situation was getting better because of stabilization of the macro-economy, will now have to exert themselves far more vigorously to reverse the trend.

Unable to reverse the trend, the government has tried to do a a smart thing. It has adopted its own yardstick for measuring poverty and thereby sought to reduce the number of people regarded as too poor. Instead of applying the universal formula of one dollar a day of earnings per capita to count the absolute poor, it now considers a monthly income of Rs 748, enough to afford 2,350 calories a day, or almost a Rs 1,000 less, as being poor. Those having less than that income are held as too poor now.

What that means is that instead of an income of Rs 1,710 a month on the basis of Rs 57 for a dollar for 30 days, one has to get Rs 25 per day or Rs 748 in a month not to be regarded as poor.

In spite of reducing the yardstick so drastically to conform to old oriental standards and believe the maxim that man does not live by bread alone, those who live below the lowered official poverty line has increased to 38.1 per cent of the 149 million people. On the same basis the total of the poor calculated last year was 30.6 per cent of the people.

The report has been prepared by the Centre for Research on Poverty Reduction and Income Distribution, UNDP, and UNOPS, hence both the Pakistan government and international organizations have to accept that, and make that as the basis for effective action.

The Economic Survey of Pakistan says that those living below the poverty line fell from 29 per cent in 1986-87 to 26 per cent in 1990-91 and then rose by five per cent in 1992-93. And it now has reached 38.1 per or almost 40 per cent.

The report says that since markets and prices often fail to produce the desired outcomes, government intervention through its re-distributive role is needed to achieve economic stability, reduce poverty and inequality, improve human development conditions ad reduce the vulnerability of the marginalised, the destitute and the poor by creating sustainable livelihood opportunities. The report reaffirms education as the key factor for lifting communities and individuals out of poverty, but while the merit of education for getting employment and higher wages is not disputed, Pakistan has for long been facing the problem of educated people’s unemployment. A great many educated people have no jobs or are grossly underemployed. Recently, the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan said that while the Bank advertized for 50 jobs it received 11,000 applications. Unless the economy expands fast enough and creates enough number of suitable jobs the educated young may be taking to crimes, including kidnapping for large ransom. And other families may not send their children for higher education or merely buy certificates as many are doing now.

The report does some hair-splitting in respect of the varieties of the poor or shades of the poor, and says that out of 32.1 per cent officially regarded as poor, five per cent are extremely poor, while more than 62 per cent are transitorily poor. Lurking below the poverty line, they can be expected to move above it.

The report divides the total population into six bands which are: the non-poor, transitory non-poor, transitory vulnerable which is above the poverty line, chronically poor and extreme poor. Poverty has forced households to increase their income by sending their children for work and not to schools. And that has swelled the number of child workers.

The report quotes the Pakistan Socio-Economic Survey by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics and says that only a quarter of the poorest households moved out of poverty during the period 1998-2001. A substantial number of people just below the poverty line moved out of poverty.

Dr Mushtaq A. Khan who heads the Poverty Research Centre says that in spite of the substantial improvement in the food supply over the last three decades malnutrition continues to be one of the serious problems in Pakistan and remains a major cause of high mortality among children and high morbidity among mothers. The connection between malnutrition, disease and poverty has so far not received the priority it deserves.

Prevalence of malnutrition has changed very little over the last 20 years, he says. Instead it had doubled with the number of malnourished children estimated at 8 million. Elimination of malnutrition could cut child mortality by more than 50 per cent and reduce the burden of diseases in developing countries by 20 per cent, he says.

While the extremely poor have small means to feed themselves, the state and society do not have the mechanism to take care of their minimum needs. And the scope of the international aid is too limited. Safety nets for the poor have been the minimal.

In a country in which the poor are getting poorer, only 29 per cent of the people are employed when jobs are available. And while the poor are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer. The poor 20 per cent of the people or those with the lowest income have a share of 6.2 per cent of the income of the nation. In 1987-88 their share was 8 per cent but now it has declined to 6.2 per cent, while the rich 20 per cent have 50 per cent share. The middle 60 per cent have 44.1 per cent of the national income. In the case of the rich 20 per cent of the people, their share of the national income was 45 per cent in 1979 and 43.7 per cent in 1990-91, but has gone on rising since then gradually. If a new survey of the income distribution is conducted the real share of the rich 20 per cent may exceed 50 per cent.

Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali has responded to the upsetting report by setting up a large task force which has the size of a large commission, which could use its many members to set up several task forces. The task force headed by the minister for privatization and investment Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh has been given just a month to come up with a report on how to cope with the problem. If they have to produce a report that quick they have to sit day after day from now on.

But the task force is flawed by the fact that its members are the same men who are in every committee to deal with economic and social problems of the country. Most of the non-officials chosen too have been members of such committees. So what new mantra will they come up with to solve the tough problem while they have hardly done anything effective so far in this regard.

Since most of them are officials, always doing the government’s bidding, will they now do again what the government wants in view of its apparent sense of urgency? If the task force does not come up with the recommendations acceptable to the country or appropriate for solving the problem, the prime minister should be ready to set up a smaller and more independent minded committee.

It remains to be seen how the flourishing feudalism can co-exist with effective anti-poverty measures and the economic rights of the citizens. Effective citizens organisations will be necessary to fight for their rights in a country in which the political parties too are under the control of the feudal lords.

If poverty is on the increase in the country effective human development which is necessary to combat that has also been going down and down. Pakistan’s Human Development Index on a global scale has been slipping year after year and stands at 144 in the table of 173 nations, far behind many African countries.

International aid agencies are concerned with the increasing poverty in Pakistan. Hence the three-year-old IMF Programme for 1.4 billion dollars is called the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility. And the World Bank has come up with the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund Project-II with 238 million dollars. It is an interest-free loan from the IDA which carries only a service fee of 0.75 per cent, and 35 years’ maturity, and 10 year grace period. The World Bank is to move from micro-credit to micro-finance and provide one million loans for over half a million borrowers to reduce the poverty of 5 million poor. It is also to help finance 7,000 community projects.

The second project follows the success of the first which provided infrastructure loans for 3,414 projects from well-building to small road-paving. More importantly the maintenance of these projects is now looked after by the beneficiary communities.

The Asian Development Bank is now offering 2.7 billion dollar aid for 26 “firm development projects” which will improve the human development index and reduce the high incidence of poverty in the country. ADB’s country director Marshouk Ali Shah says that under 890 million dollar a year programme ADB would intensify its emphasis on rural development and employment generation to ensure the growth is “pro-poor”. Achieving that in the rural areas with feudal dominance can be very tough, while the officials are not willing to risk upsetting that apple cart.

The immediate solution to the pervasive poverty is large scale employment creation by the government, by the private sector and through external aid agencies. The government instead of stuffing the secretariat with more officers with high perquisites should launch more infrastructure projects which are useful to the country.

It has to encourage and assist in the setting up of large scale industries, small and medium enterprises and provide micro credit liberally. And it has to make the best and quickest use of foreign aid for various projects when the external agencies are so anxious to help us.

And there has to be far better contacts and understanding between the government and the investors. Industrial investors have to be helped to import machinery without import duties and their cost of power has to be lowered. The number of taxes on industry should be reduced and cost of production made lower. Governments in the East and West are doing that now and Pakistan should not be lagging far behind. Land should also be made available to the industrial investors at reasonable prices so that the cost of industrial investment is not too high.

SOON after the end of the second world war there was a flurry of diplomatic activity leading to the formation of inter-governmental organizations in various parts of the world. South Asia was perhaps the only region without any such forum.

Unfortunately, after independence, India developed serious political differences with almost all its neighbours who, for this very reason, were hesitant to participate in any endeavour in partnership with that country.

When the late president of Bangladesh, Ziaur Rahman, mooted the idea of South Asian association for regional cooperation (Saarc), in 1980, most of the countries in the region looked upon it with suspicion. They apprehended that India would use this forum to formalize its political and military hegemony in South Asia. These apprehensions were not ill-founded. Since the inception of the Saarc, India has held it hostage to its political agenda. It also made a deliberate attempt to browbeat other members which caused problems.

At India’s insistence, the Saarc charter excluded the bilateral political issues from its purview. As a result India succeeded in preventing the member states from raising, formally or informally, their differences with it. No meaningful cooperation could be possible in a multilateral organization if political differences among its constituents remained unsettled.

Regrettably, even after the passage of 18 years, there has been little progress in the realization of Saarc’s objectives. The strategic disharmony between India and other member states has been responsible for the sorry state of affairs in the region. The unresolved political issues perpetuated tension among them and impeded conducive environment which was indispensable for the pursuance of Saarc’s economic agenda. It, therefore, became imperative to evolve a mechanism for the resolution of all the outstanding disputes between the Saarc members.

The leaders of the Saarc countries, however, ultimately recognized the need for enhancing mutual political cooperation which was reflected in the declarations issued at the conclusion of 9th summit, held in Male in May 1997, and the 10th summit held in Colombo in July 1998. Both these declarations stated that “the aims of promoting peace, stability and amity and accelerated socio-economic cooperation may best be achieved by fostering good neighbourly relations, relieving tensions and building confidence, and agreed that a process of informal political consultations would prove useful in this regard”.

To enable the Saarc to solve bilateral political disputes between its members a suggestion has been made to broaden the base of the Saarc by inducting new members like Japan, China, Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Thailand and possibly the Central Asian states. The opponents of this idea, however, favour the strengthening of the Saarc with its present composition, as in their opinion, the infusion of extra-regional influence into it could be anathema to building confidence within the region for promoting regional stability. They also maintain that the Saarc countries have enormous potential which, if harnessed, can transform the region into one of self-sustaining growth and development and may serve as a model for regional cooperation.

In any case, there cam be no harm if the proposal for Saarc’s expansion is examined objectively. Technically the new countries, proposed to be brought into Saarc’s fold, are excluded from South Asia. However, they have political and geographical cohesion with the region and face identical problems in pursuing the goal of economic development and the well-being of their peoples.

A peaceful and enabling environment is indispensable to realize the full economic potential of the Saarc countries with a view to improving the quality of life of their peoples the majority of whom are living below the poverty line. All members of the Saarc are committed to making a concerted effort to achieve this objective. However, being the largest and relatively affluent country of the region, India has a bigger responsibility to ensure a level playing field for all Saarc countries.

The Saarc charter neither provides for the postponement of a summit nor is the participation of all member states in a summit mandatory. However, as laid down in the charter, the decision making involves the principle of unanimity. Taking advantage of this provision, India thrice managed the postponement of summits in Saarc’s history, on some pretexts. The 12th SAARC summit, that was scheduled to be held in Islamabad in April this year, had to be postponed owing to India’s non-confirmation of its participation and is now rescheduled for January next year.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan.

AT first glance, Sudan is just one more proof that Muslims and non-Muslims cannot live peacefully together; that ‘Islam has bloody borders’, as rent-a-sage Samuel Huntington put it in his mid-’90s book ‘The Clash of Civilisations’. After all, Sudan’s north is Muslim, the south is mostly Christian, and the country has been ravaged by north-south civil war for all but eleven years since independence in 1956. But things really aren’t that simple.

“There is no reason why Garang cannot play a role both on the national and regional level,” said Sudan’s Vice-President Ali Osman Taha last year, as peace talks between the central government and John Garang’s Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) were getting underway. And that really is the key to a lasting peace in Sudan.

The northern two-thirds of Sudan’s 38 million people are Muslim and Arabic-speaking, and they are the people who have traditionally run the country. The latest round of fighting between them and the Nilotic peoples of the south, who speak African languages and have Christian or animist beliefs, started twenty years ago in 1983, and there would be no prospect of peace even now if not for two new factors: oil, and strong pressure from the United States.

Sudan’s oil production has soared from almost nothing to a quarter-million barrels a day in only a decade, but the oil-fields are mostly in the south, which means that well-heads, pipelines and ports are all SPLA targets in the ongoing civil war. That’s one reason that the US wants an end to the fighting; the other is that the Christian right in America has taken up the cause of the Sudanese Christians. Nevertheless, US mediation in Sudan has been both even-handed and effective.

The deal could be done by the end of the year, and this time it actually recognises that the long southern rebellion has been fuelled more by the resentment of southern elites at being excluded from power and perks in Khartoum than by religious differences. In twenty years as leader of the southern rebellion John Garang has never once said flatly that he seeks independence for the southern provinces of Sudan — and there is a reason for his reticence.

The idea that independence would solve all the south’s problems is juvenile romanticism, and there are not many romantics left twenty years into a civil war. In fact, Garang has been signalling all these years that he and his colleagues can be bought, though the price would be high. Nor is there anything wrong with being bought, if what that means in practice is good jobs for southerners, influence at the centre for southerners, and a fair share of oil revenues for southerners.

That would certainly be a better outcome for the rest of Africa than partition, because there are a dozen other countries in the continent with a similar Muslim-Christian split.— Copyright

WHEAT is the staple food of almost all Pakistanis. The poor Pakistanis take ‘roti’ in all their three meals whereas the rich Pakistanis take bread instead of roti in their breakfast. Hence there is no Pakistani meal without a wheat content.

The weight of wheat in the Sensitive Price Index (SPI) is 16 per cent. In the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for middle-income groups it is 10 per cent. The weight of wheat in agricultural output is 16 per cent. As agriculture contributes 25 per cent to the GDP, the weight of wheat in Pakistan’s GDP is about 4 per cent. Hence both from consumption and production viewpoints, wheat is the most important commodity in Pakistan.

However, from FY 1949 to FY 1999, a period of half a century, Pakistan has been a net wheat importer. The situation changed dramatically when wheat output in FY 2000 jumped to over 21 million tons resulting in a surplus of four million tons. We could not handle the situation of plenty as we lacked the storage capacity and the modalities for exporting it even to our neighbours in the Middle East which are all importers of wheat. But now it seems that an output of 21 million tons was a one-year shot. In FY 2001 the output declined to 19 million tons and in FY 2002 it fell further to 18.2 million tons.

The output figure for FY 2003 is still being debated, as the very powerful price signal indicates an output level no higher than in FY 2002. The wholesale price of wheat has increased between December 2002 and December 2003 by 23 per cent and price of atta has risen by 19 per cent during the same period.

The wheat commissioner of government of Pakistan announced on December 5, 2003, that the federal government had decided to import half a million tons of wheat to stabilize the price of atta. Hence there has been a dramatic shift from the position of a surplus stock of four million tonnes in FY 2000 to the position of dependence on net import in FY 2004 in a period of four years.

Agricultural output in any country is subject to weather and unexpected pest attacks but the slew of wrong policies has also contributed to this sharp deterioration in the wheat situation.

The output ballooned in FY 2000 because the government increased the support price of wheat from Rs 260 to Rs 300. After a gap of four years the government has announced a substantial increase in the support price of wheat to Rs 350 per 40 kg for Rabi 2004. There was no increase in the support price for wheat in the intervening three years and the government policy on support price became ambivalent on the advice of the IMF.

The IMF ideologues are of the opinion that the price support mechanism is useless and the market should determine prices without governmental intervention. It fails to appreciate that support prices are not strictly implemented by the government as it never buys all the stocks that are offered at the support price but the support price gives an indication to the farmer as to the price which is likely to prevail at the time of harvest. Hence, it eases calculation and induces him to produce more if the ratio between input and output prices is favourable. By weakening the support price mechanism the government has put the wheat market in disarray.

Moreover, the support prices, instead of leaping after four years, should increase gradually from year to year. India increases its support price by two to three per cent every year, whereas Pakistan likes to give a jump of more than 16 per cent after four years. A gradual increase is better than a sharp jump. Nobel Laureate Tinbergen in his famous book “Theory of Economic Policy” has strongly advocated gradual changes in economic policies pertaining to all spheres.

Traditional agriculture has been transformed into modern agricultural by use of hybrid seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and mechanization. In the case of Pakistan, big storage dams — Mangla and Tarbela — and greater use of tube-wells has also contributed to raising agricultural output.

The government has mismanaged its policies on seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. At a recent seminar arranged by the Farmers Association of Pakistan (FAP) it was pointed out that certified seed is provided by the Punjab Seed Corporation, as per its charter to the extent of 10 per cent only for the new variety every year. The private sector is expected to provide the remaining 90 per cent, which it has failed to do for decades. The public sector seed corporations should expand their activities to fill the vacuum created by the private sector.

The rising cost of urea and DAP was also highlighted by the farmers. A GST of 15 per cent has been imposed on urea from March 2001 and DAP from September 2001. At a recent seminar at Islamabad attended by international agricultural economists, it was highlighted and confirmed that Pakistan is the only country in the world which charges GST at 15 per cent on fertilizers and pesticides. No other country charges GST on these agricultural inputs even at 5 per cent.

The retail price of urea for a 50 kg bag has increased from Rs 324 in FY 2000 to Rs 411 in FY 2003 — an increase of 27 per cent. Similarly, DAP price has increased from Rs 632 to Rs 765 during the same period — an increase of 21 per cent. Price of urea in India in FY 2003 was Rs 242 per 50 kg. Even if we convert Indian rupees into Pakistani rupees at the current parity of Pak Rs 1.3 equal to Indian Re 1, the fertilizer is cheaper in India by 29 per cent at international exchange parity.

Similarly, DAP is cheaper in India by 24 per cent at international exchange parity. No wonder, the Indian wheat yield per hectare is more than 20 per cent higher than Pakistan’s. The cotton crop in Kharif and the Rabi 2003 crop were both adversely affected by unexpected and sudden attack of pests and adequate and timely pesticides were not available in the market. The GST on pesticides is not only discouraging farmers from using it but also preventing traders from maintaining an adequate stock because of higher financial costs.

The irony of the whole situation is that we will be importing half million tons of wheat from India which is the cheapest source for import because it is pursuing better agricultural policies than Pakistan. It gives a fertilizer subsidy of Rs 90 billion or two billion dollars whereas Pakistan has imposed a GST of 15 per cent on fertilizers and pesticides. Subsidies are bad in theory and practice but GST on agricultural inputs is unique in the world and beyond reason.

Not only does it discourage use of fertilizers and pesticides by raising their price, it also aggravates rural poverty, estimated at 40 per cent as poor farmers on the margin are driven out from the market by higher price. Wrong policies stunt domestic output, exacerbate poverty and encourage farmers of the country from where imports are taking place.

The government has done well to increase the support price to Rs 350 but it must also immediately withdraw the GST on fertilizers and pesticides. It only collects on billion rupees from GST on fertilizers and pesticides but the economy loses an output worth more than five billion rupees. Secondly, the seed corporations of provincial governments should supply as much seed as possible. Thirdly, the price support mechanism, instead of being abandoned, should be strengthened. Wheat is far too important a commodity for Pakistan to be mismanaged.

The writer is a former Secretary, Planning, Government of Pakistan.

SO Robert Mugabe has carried out his threat: when the Commonwealth failed to lift its suspension of Zimbabwe he pulled his country out of the organization. Zimbabwe’s exit is the latest twist in the story of a nation that has seen many changes over the past four decades — colonialism, independence, apartheid, its collapse, and 23 years of rule by Robert Mugabe. Sadly, it is another twist for the worse.

But Zimbabwe’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth raises issues far wider than that country’s internal politics. For tied up in the Zimbabwe debate are allegations and counter-allegations of human rights abuse, racism, colonialism, and double standards, as well as questions about the role and future of the Commonwealth. It is a fascinating debate.

The opening argument made by the anti-Mugabe camp is that his government (and he personally) has been responsible for massive human rights abuses. Zimbabwe’s suspension from the Commonwealth came in March 2002, after election observers reported widespread irregularities in Mugabe’s re-election as president. But for many years before that there were accusations that his regime had imprisoned, tortured and executed hundreds of opponents. As opposition to Mugabe has mounted, so has his use of coercive suppression. Parallel with this has been the regime’s hijacking of the judiciary and other state institutions, and the muzzling of the press. Add corruption on a gluttonous scale, and you end up with the classic dictator.

The anti-Mugabe camp points to the devastating effect his rule has had on ordinary Zimbabweans. Remember that this is a country that has enough natural resources to feed itself and to export to others. There is no reason why Zimbabwe should be poor. Yet today, according to a UNOCHA report, it has just enough food to feed its people for four to five months. Mugabe’s land redistribution policy, in which white-owned farms were forcibly seized and allocated to blacks (including his cronies), led to the huge drop in food productivity. Next year, an estimated 5.5 million Zimbabweans will need food aid.

And the humanitarian disaster gets worse: for the country is also suffering from an Aids pandemic. More than 2,500 people die every week from Aids-related causes: 34 per cent of Zimbabwe’s 15-40 age group is infected — meaning many more will die. With the economy in collapse, the IMF threatening to pull out because arrears of $273 million have not been paid, and with inflation in October running at a massive 526 per cent, Zimbabwe is in crisis.

The solution, according to the anti-Mugabe camp is that Robert Mugabe must go. Pressure must be applied on Zimbabwe — in the form of sanctions, travel restrictions, suspensions, international condemnation — until a regime change takes place. This camp, which features Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada as well as Zimbabwe’s main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was adamant that Zimbabwe’s Commonwealth suspension should not be lifted and Mugabe should not be invited to the Heads of Government meeting in Nigeria.

Now for the counter-arguments. These too are many, with some more rational than others. The least rational, not surprisingly, come from Mugabe himself. He accuses the Commonwealth of interference in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs, and characterizes it as an ‘Anglo-Saxon unholy alliance’. Zimbabwe’s economic problems are blamed on attempts by Britain, the former colonial power, to sabotage the white farms’ seizure policy. For Mugabe, that policy has been a ‘success for all of Africa’.

Mugabe’s accusations of racism and a return to colonial control might sound irrational to most, but they do have a receptive audience. It comprises other former African colonies/apartheid states, including South Africa, Zambia and Nigeria. South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki is particularly blinkered when it comes to facing up to the crisis in Zimbabwe — he still sees Mugabe as the man who ousted Ian Smith and apartheid, not as the brutal dictator he is now. [Aids, killing thousands of South Africans, is the other crisis that Mbeki does not see.] African leaders sympathize with Mugabe and advocate dialogue and engagement; they oppose sanctions and suspension.

Back in the anti-camp, the counter-argument is that most of Robert Mugabe’s African supporters are guilty of the same kinds of abuses. Nigeria, for example, was suspended from the Commonwealth in 1995 after the military regime executed writer Ken Saro-Wiwa; the election of President Obasanjo, which paved the way for its re-entry, was itself controversial. Leaders like Obasanjo know that a vigorous policy pursued against Mugabe to improve his human rights record could tomorrow be applied against them.

But human rights is a two-way stick, used effectively by the pro- camp too. They argue that, OK, Zimbabwe’s human rights record might be bad, but why is it being picked out for criticism when so many other abusers are left untouched? The common example cited in this argument is Pakistan, also undemocratic (at least as long as General Musharraf keeps his army uniform) but treated comparatively lightly because of its support for the US-led war against terror. What is this if not double standards?

And it is not just fellow developing countries that are vulnerable to counter-accusations: so too is the developed world. Look at British participation in the occupation of Iraq — without any international mandate. Look at the UK’s Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, allowing foreign nationals to be detained for up to two years without charges or a trial. Look at Australia’s draconian asylum policy. Aren’t these human rights abuses? Why doesn’t the international community condemn and take action against those countries? Why does it ‘pick’ on Zimbabwe?

Tony Blair would argue that Britain is not violating human rights by occupying Iraq, or by the Security Act: it is helping the Iraqi people and protecting its own citizens. And he vehemently rejects the charges of racism and colonialism. But is it just a coincidence that, of Africa’s myriad problems and abuses, the ‘white’ section of the Commonwealth is focussing on Zimbabwe’s white-hitting land reforms?

What of the Commonwealth? Robert Mugabe asserts that Zimbabwe can do without the Commonwealth — ‘there are plenty of other clubs we can join’. But his anger at Zimbabwe’s suspension from the body suggests it matters to him more than he admits. The Commonwealth has many times been relegated to the dustbin of history — an irrelevance dating from a long-gone colonial era. Does its success in taking action against Mugabe belie that relegation, and show that it can be a force in international politics?

Or does the Commonwealth’s inability to force Mugabe to comply with its demands confirm its impotence? Believers in the Commonwealth counter that it has moral authority, if not military or financial clout. But there are many disbelievers, some of whom see the current divisions within the Commonwealth over Zimbabwe as auguring its break-up along racial lines. Only time will tell who is right.

A fascinating debate, then, and one that shows the reality of international politics in the twenty-first century: a reality comprising very few black-and-whites, lots and lots of greys. As Zimbabwe shows, making policy decisions in the face of these ‘grey’ realities is no easy task.