UPDATED:Botswana expels Zimbabwe Embassy Attachés as hostilities escalate.

HARARE – Diplomatic relations between governments of Botswana and Zimbabwe took a major tumble on Thursday after the former recalled key Embassy Attachés from Harare in protest of the continued incarceration of its Wildlife officers held after crossing into Zimbabwe by mistake during a patrol along the Lesoma Border.

UPDATE:

As a last endeavour, His Honour the Vice President, Lieutenant General Mompati Merafhe, attempted, through the Foreign Minister of Zimbabwe, to meet with President Mugabe at the recently held African Union Meeting in Addis Ababa Ethiopia but was unsuccessful. In view of the stance taken by the Government of the Republic of Zimbabwe to rebuff all attempts by the Government of Botswana to find diplomatic and amicable solution to the problem, Botswana has taken a decision to recall its Defence and Intelligence Attachés from Zimbabwe by the end of February 2010. The Government of the Republic of Botswana expects the Government of the Republic of Zimbabwe to reciprocate by recalling its Defence and Central Intelligence Organisation Attachés from Botswana by the same date. The position of the Government of Botswana is that these two posts should be frozen and never to be filled.

The government of Botswana has recalled its Defence and Intelligence Organisation Attachés and it has also asked Zimbabwean Defence and Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) Attachés in Botswana to leave the country as the as the fall-out out takes a dramatic turn into a fully fledged regional coflict amid reports of troop movements on both sides of the border. Botswana President Ian Khama has been at the forefront of international condemnation of President Mugabe and his regime and Zimbabwean State media has hit back at Khama calling him a homosexual.

On his State of Union address after he was re-elected into office, Khama gave the simmering Zimbabwe crisis a stir with a state of the union speech in which he accused Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF of violating the 2008 Global Political Agreement for power-sharing in Harare and suggesting that new elections in Zimbabwe may be required to end a power stalemate. It was only a matter of time that Robert Mugabe would find something with which to blackmail or lynch his Botswana counterpart for daring to speak out on the political situation in his country.

It would seem like a new tactic that Robert Mugabe has borrowed from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regime which has nicely played into his hands following the capture of innocent Wildlife officers. The objective of the tactic is to deflect the public’s attention from the crimes of such rogue regimes like Zimbabwe and Iran. Last week The Zimbabwe Mail reported that the Zimbabwean regime was building up a case for its neighbour and some Western countries on a trumped up conspiracy to use armed forces for regime change. In a statement issued on Friday, the Government of Botswana said it expressed its deep disappointment over the detention of the three wildlife officers in Zimbabwe despite attempts at finding an amicable diplomatic solution.

Efforts by Botswana have included phone calls by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Hon. Phandu Skelemani and the Botswana Police Commissioner, Mr. Thebeyame Tsimako to their counterparts in Zimbabwe to resolve this issue. These phone calls remain unreturned, giving the impression that the Government of Zimbabwe does not want to discuss this issue with Botswana. The statement went on to say, “additional efforts have included our Ambassador in Harare going to the Zimbabwe Foreign Ministry several times to seek their intervention on the matter as well as the Ambassador of Zimbabwe to Botswana being summoned twice to the Foreign Ministry to seek the Zimbabwe Government’s intervention in finding an amicable diplomatic solution to the problem.”

As a last endeavour, His Honour the Vice President, Lieutenant General Mompati Merafhe, attempted, through the Foreign Minister of Zimbabwe, to meet with President Mugabe at the recently held African Union Meeting in Addis Ababa Ethiopia but was unsuccessful. In view of the stance taken by the Government of the Republic of Zimbabwe to rebuff all attempts by the Government of Botswana to find diplomatic and amicable solution to the problem, Botswana has taken a decision to recall its Defence and Intelligence Attachés from Zimbabwe by the end of February 2010.

The Government of the Republic of Botswana expects the Government of the Republic of Zimbabwe to reciprocate by recalling its Defence and Central Intelligence Organisation Attachés from Botswana by the same date. The position of the Government of Botswana is that these two posts should be frozen and never to be filled. Botswana has been a vocal critic of neighbouring Robert Mugabe’s rule and the Zimbabwean media has hit back at President Ian Khama calling him a homoesexual. In 2008 Robert Mugabe’s justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa, accused Botswana of acting as a surrogate for western imperial interests by providing “human and material resources for the training of MDC bandits”. “Botswana has availed its territory, material and logistical support to MDC for the recruitment and military training of youths for the eventual destabilisation of the country with a view to effecting illegal regime change,” he told the state-run Herald newspaper.

The paper claimed the opposition had recruited former military personnel for a plot to “instigate instability that would give the west a pretext to get the United Nations security council leeway to authorise a military invasion of Zimbabwe”. The armed Botswana Wildlife officers, travelling in a government vehicle, were tracking lions that had killed two cows in Lesoma village along the border between the two countries. The brief history and source of the two countries’ fall-out dates back to the 90s when Robert Mugabe as Chairman of SADC’s organ for Politics and Security backed his ally Sam Nunjoma, the then President of Namibia over Botswana over a border dispute.

The two neigbouring countries had a long-running dispute about ownership of the Kasikili / Sedudu Island in the Chobe River, which forms part of the border between the two countries.

The conflicting border claims resulted in some military reinforcements of the area and a propaganda campaign waged in the media of both countries, though tensions subsided when both agreed to international arbitration in 1995. However, by 1998 a low-intensity secessionist insurgency had sputtered to life in Namibia’s Caprivi Strip (the narrow strip of Namibian territory bordering Botswana on the north). Namibian refugees and insurgents sought safe-haven in Botswana, requiring additional BDF attention to the security of the northern border.

In December 1999, Judges at the World Court ruled that the island belongs to Botswana. In the Caprivi Strip, the UNHCR reported that between October 1998 and February 1999 more than 2,400 Namibians crossed south into Botswana.

Botswana’s security forces led by Ian Khama, the then army commander occupied the island in 1991, shortly after Robert Mugabe threatened to intervene on the side of Namibia and it is from that incident that the two regional prontagonists have not seen eye to eye. More than 1 500 American soldiers are believed to be permanently based in Botswana as part of the US defence policy in Africa where it has created Africa Command (Africom). Africom is aimed at stemming the assumed threat posed by swathes of Africa’s “ungoverned” spaces, feared to be potential hide-outs and training fields for terrorists and according to the “Failed States Index” released by the US-based Foreign Policy, Africa tops the list of failed states and it is this threat which has put Robert Mugabe and his cronies in a permanent state of paranoia and added to this are the growing Chinese influence on the Zimbabwean dictator.

IMET (International Military Education and Training) funds from the USA remain important to Botswana’s army officers’ training programme. Over 30 Botswana officers receive military training in the US each year; by 1999 approximately 85% of the BDF officers are said to have been trained under this system. At the time of independence Botswana’s new leaders deliberately rejected the opportunity to establish a national army, opting instead for a small para military capability in a Police Mobile Unit.5. The country’s modest resources reinforced the decision: there simply was no money for a larger public sector. That choice, however, was soon severely challenged by the violent decolonisation struggles in the region, a traumatic process directly involving several of Botswana ’s neighbours including Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe ).

As a result, in April 1977 the country reversed its earlier decision, and by Act of Parliament, established the Botswana Defence Force (BDF), an unambiguously military establishment.

Within a decade of its founding, the BDF had grown by a factor of ten – to approximately 6 000 personnel. By 1988 its ground forces had been organised into two infantry brigades, one based in Gaborone and the other in Francistown. By the mid-1980s, US and British forces were conducting small-scale annual combined exercises with the BDF in Botswana. At the same time, the country engaged in a vigorous effort to broaden its military officers, sending them en masse to military schools in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India.

The 1980s were troubled years in southern Africa, and Botswana’s military struggled during this period to define itself and its role. Its continuing inability to protect the country’s long and porous borders eroded public confidence, and several egregious acts of indiscipline by BDF personnel in the 1980s tarnished its image in Botswana.

Military incursions from neighbouring Rhodesia continued until that country’s transition to majority rule (as independent, majority-ruled Zimbabwe) in 1980, and the border remained tense for years afterwards as competing parties in Zimbabwe struggled for ascendancy. A significant milestone occurred in 1989, when the founding commander of the BDF, Lieutenant General Mompati Merafhe, retired to enter politics31 and his former deputy, Seretse Khama Ian Khama, was appointed the new commander. Khama brought a different leadership style and new priorities to this role. Like his predecessor, Khama was a strict disciplinarian, bordering on the puritanical. However, he had the reputation of being a ‘hands-on’ leader who cared about his troops, inspected frequently, and fought successfully for troop benefits. This made him popular among the rank and file. One of Khama’s first endeavours was construction of a major new military facility –Thebephatshwa Airbase – near the town of Molepolole, some 50 km north-west of the capital – a massive project begun in 1989 and completed only in the mid-1990s.

This base would ultimately house Botswana’s growing inventory of military aircraft and its commando squadron. The new military commander was secretive about his base and about BDF operations in general, which generated some unease among neighbouring countries and unanswered questions in Botswana itself. Botswana army is believed to have about 10 000 personnel compared to Zimbabwe’s 45 000 and The Botswana Defence Force Air Arm, a force of about 500 personnel organised into five squadrons, compared to Zimbabwean Airforce’s 8000 officers.

Warmonger Robert Mugabe and his newly found wealth in piles of cash from blood diamonds, has just snatched up a place on the African Union Peace and Security Council, one of the bloc’s most powerful organs, and his regional close ally and Malawi’s President Bingu Wa Mutharika has taken over as the new Chairman of the continent’s influential body, and in SADC, all regional leaders live in fear of the 85 year old dictator.

The Zimbabwean

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Posted by Raymond Mhaka on February 5, 2010. Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.