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	Renewed doubts of honesty & ethics of Bush White House by AFP / NYT / LA Times / Boston Globe USA   October 30, 2005   "US Senate Democratic leader: Karl Rove should resign over Valerie Plame Leak", by Nedra Pickler . (Associated Press)   The Senate Democratic leader said Sunday that presidential adviser Karl Rove should resign because of his role in exposing the identity of Valerie Plame.   Rove has not been charged, but he continues to be investigated in the CIA leaks case that brought the indictment and resignation Friday of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, an adviser to Bush and the top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not made a decision on whether Rove gave false testimony during his four grand jury appearances. Rove is President Bush"s most trusted adviser.   Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said he is disappointed that Bush and Cheney responded to the indictment by lauding Libby and suggested they should apologize for the leak that revealed the identity of Valerie Plame. There has not been an apology to the American people for this obvious problem in the White House," Reid, D-Nev., told ABC"s "This Week."   Meanwhile, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said Cheney should "come clean" about his involvement and why he discussed Plame with Libby before Libby spoke to reporters about her. "What did the vice president know? What were his intentions?" Dodd asked on "Fox News Sunday."   Democrats appearing on Sunday talk shows portrayed Libby"s indictment as one of many serious problems surrounding the White House and one of several allegations raising questions about Republican ethics.   Public opinion appears to be running against President Bush. Almost half the public, 46 percent, say the level of ethics and honesty in the federal government has fallen with Bush as president, according to an ABC News-Washington Post poll. That"s three times the number who say ethics and honesty have risen during that time.. 58% were unhappy with Mr Bush"s performance. Only 39% approved.   October 29, 2005   “White House on the ropes - and a bigger fight ahead”, by Julian Borger in Washington. (The Guardian)   It could have been worse for the Bush White House, but not very much worse. Karl Rove has not been charged for leaking intelligence, but he remains the subject of an investigation that will continue to gnaw away at the administration"s weakest point: its justification for going to war in Iraq.   Meanwhile, Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been indicted and will face trial for perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice. He is no mere extra in this drama. He is the right-hand man of the most powerful vice-president in modern American history, and he got himself in trouble trying to protect his boss over the critical issue of US pre-war intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.   Mr Libby told the grand jury he had learned the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame from journalists. It turned out, according to yesterday"s indictment, that he had been told about her in June 2003 by Dick Cheney, who had discovered that her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador, had been telling journalists the administration had "twisted" the WMD evidence to sell the war to America and the rest of the world.   At the same time, Mr Rove was also talking to journalists about Mr Wilson and his secret-agent wife in a concerted White House effort to rebut his WMD allegations. The continuing investigation into the president"s closest adviser will inevitably explore what the White House had to hide about how far it went to make the case for an invasion.   So will Mr Libby"s trial. Mr Libby is a top neo-conservative, a protege of Paul Wolfowitz, and, like his mentor, he came to work in a Bush administration already pushing to oust Saddam Hussein in early 2001. The witness list at his trial could well include CIA and state department officials who did battle with him over WMD intelligence.   It could become a forum in which CIA officials, who feel they were made a scapegoat for the intelligence debacle, try to focus attention back on the White House"s role in shaping the evidence.   Every investigation of the Iraqi WMD fiasco so far has avoided directly tackling the politicisation of intelligence in the run-up to the war, when Mr Cheney and Mr Libby visited the CIA headquarters in Langley several times to chivvy analysts who were sceptical about tales of banned weapon systems told by Iraqi exiles.   A trial could fill that gap. Mr Cheney would almost certainly be a witness in the Libby case. His cross-examination could be extremely uncomfortable for the vice-president and the White House.   "We"re likely to move to a trial of the war in Iraq and how we got into that war," David Gergen, a former adviser to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, told CNN. "The trial would inevitably bring a lot of witnesses who would have to explain what the administration was doing from one day to next. If you are in the White House you profoundly do not want that to be occurring when you are trying to keep a focus on the war itself, on how to win the war."   It adds up to a serious distraction for an administration that has already lost its way. Its second-term agenda, supposed to focus on pension and tax reform, has been shelved as the White House struggles to deal with the tenacious insurgency in Iraq, the resounding rejection of its supreme court nominee by its own political footsoldiers and the rising tide of scandal lapping at the White House door.   The president"s two top allies in Congress - Bill Frist, the senate majority leader, and Tom DeLay, the House of Representatives majority leader - are both in legal trouble. Mr DeLay has been charged with laundering campaign donations to bypass Texan election laws. Mr Frist is being investigated for a suspiciously lucrative sale of stock in his family"s medical corporation just before it announced bad financial news.   In fact, all the major players who would otherwise be expected to drive the administration"s programme in the last three years of the Bush presidency will be spending more time with their lawyers, leaving a vacuum at the inner circle around the president.   The whole affair will also hack away another plate of the administration"s armour. And Mr Bush minus Mr Rove would be an unknown quantity. He has been there from the genesis of the Texan"s political career. Before throwing their hat in for the Texas governorship election in 1994, Mr Rove sequestered his protege for weeks, drilling him on public policy and instilling the discipline of picking a simple message and sticking to it.   Mr Rove found Mr Bush as a gland-handing good ol" boy trading on his family name and his charm. He turned him into an effective candidate, and eventually, a president.   Mr Fitzgerald has clearly not made up his mind whether Mr Rove"s role in the leak was inadvertent or part of a deliberate campaign. If Mr Rove is ultimately forced to step down or is neutralised by his legal problems, the president could lose his political compass, and will have to go looking for another.   Meanwhile, almost every sentence uttered by the hapless White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, in recent days, has been engineered to convey the message that it was business as usual on Pennsylvania Avenue. That is no longer possible after yesterday. Whatever now happens in Mr Rove"s investigation or at Mr Libby"s trial, it is fair to say that nothing will ever be the same again for the Bush presidency.   When he was first running for president, Mr Bush sold himself as a breath of fresh air after the months of tawdry revelations about Mr Clinton"s sex life. "I will restore honour and dignity to the Oval Office," he told America. It is that pledge that is now in question.   Mr Bush had been hoping to use his last three years to build a lasting legacy. He may need that long just to climb out of a hole he dug when he ordered the invasion of Iraq.   Backstory: The Plame scandal is about the Iraq war and the US justification for it. In 2002 Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador, was sent to Niger to check intelligence reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there. He found scant evidence, and was surprised to hear President Bush repeat the claim when addressing the nation in January 2003. After complaining privately to no effect, Mr Wilson wrote an angry article in the New York Times in July 2003, alleging the administration had "twisted" the intelligence. A conservative columnist, Robert Novak, then quoted "two senior administration officials" as saying Mr Wilson was sent to Niger by his wife, Valerie Plame, a "CIA operative". Whoever leaked the name of an undercover agent might have committed a serious felony. The 22-month investigation led by Patrick Fitzgerald sought to find out who, and whether there was a government conspiracy to discredit Mr Wilson and his mission.   Oct. 28, 2005   What did Vice-President Cheney know and when was he talking about it? Those were the questions today after the "New York Times" reported that it was Mr Cheney himself who first told his top aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby about the CIA official whose name was leaked to reporters in 2003, triggering this whole investigation. This could be very significant because Libby has reportedly told grand jurors he first learned of the CIA official from reporters. But the "Times", citing lawyers involved in the case, reported that prosecutors now have notes Libby took of a previously undisclosed conversation with Cheney on June 12, 2003. Those notes show it was the Vice-President who told Libby about the CIA official Valerie Plane, apparently as part of an effort to discredit her husband, Joe Wilson, a fierce critic of the Bush Administration"s case for war in Iraq. But now Mr Cheney"s own credibility may be on the line. While his conversation with his aide Libby would not be illegal, Mr Cheney has publicly denied knowing Wilson.   October 27, 2005   The colonel"s critique. (The Boston Globe)   The recent scalding criticism of the Bush administration by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell until last January, should be welcomed for its patriotic intent and its therapeutic value. Speaking last week to a Washington think tank, Wilkerson lamented that a "cabal" led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld engaged in secret decision-making that inflicted grave harm on the United States.   Wilkerson"s castigation is good to have out in the open not merely because of the particular blunders he attributes to Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their collaborators, or because of his unfavorable comparison of President George W. Bush with his father as a steward of U.S. foreign policy. Wilkerson is justified in excoriating the cabal for its conduct of the war against Saddam Hussein, its refusal over four years to negotiate with North Korea, and its unnecessarily belated support of the European diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.   Still, his most damning critique was reserved for the group"s secrecy and its evasion of the transparent give-and-take among policy makers that is needed to expose delusions and help avoid blunders. The administration "made decisions in secret, and now I think it is paying the consequences of having made those decisions in secret," Wilkerson said. "But far more telling to me is that America is paying the consequences of having made those decisions in secret." These include the demoralization of the U.S. military and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.   Wilkerson recounted how Cheney and Rumsfeld "made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made." He described how the formal process of decision-making, with its "policy coordinating committee, the deputies" committee, the principals" committee," was allowed to putter along, bereft of the ability to decide on policy and thereby rendered dysfunctional. Then, as though he were describing the workings of a Soviet Politburo, Wilkinson explained that "the dysfunctionality camouflaged the efficiency of the secret decision-making process."   This is Wilkerson"s way of denouncing the cabal"s deliberate crippling of the visible policy-making bodies so a small clique, hidden from view, could make crucial decisions without debate or dissent.   In the American system, the ultimate responsibility for preventing the rise of a secretive government within the government belongs to the president. Bureaucratic and legislative mandates for a transparent policy-making process will be futile if the president is not a leader who demands to hear dissent and insists that all his advisers assumptions be challenged by other advisers.   October 25, 2005   “The White House Cabal", by Lawrence B. Wilkerson. (Los Angeles Times)   In President Bush"s first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.   When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New American Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.   But it is absolutely true. I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.   Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf."   But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well.   I watched these dual decision-making processes operate for four years at the State Department. As chief of staff for 27 months, I had a door adjoining the secretary of State"s office. I read virtually every document he read. I read the intelligence briefings and spoke daily with people from all across government.   I knew that what I was observing was not what Congress intended when it passed the 1947 National Security Act. The law created the National Security Council — consisting of the president, vice president and the secretaries of State and Defense — to make sure the nation"s vital national security decisions were thoroughly vetted. The NSC has often been expanded, depending on the president in office, to include the CIA director, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Treasury secretary and others, and it has accumulated a staff of sometimes more than 100 people.   But many of the most crucial decisions from 2001 to 2005 were not made within the traditional NSC process.   Scholars and knowledgeable critics of the U.S. decision-making process may rightly say, so what? Haven"t all of our presidents in the last half-century failed to conform to the usual process at one time or another? Isn"t it the president"s prerogative to make decisions with whomever he pleases? Moreover, can he not ignore whomever he pleases? Why should we care that President Bush gave over much of the critical decision-making to his vice president and his secretary of Defense?   Both as a former academic and as a person who has been in the ring with the bull, I believe that there are two reasons we should care. First, such departures from the process have in the past led us into a host of disasters, including the last years of the Vietnam War, the national embarrassment of Watergate (and the first resignation of a president in our history), the Iran-Contra scandal and now the ruinous foreign policy of George W. Bush.   But a second and far more important reason is that the nature of both governance and crisis has changed in the modern age.   From managing the environment to securing sufficient energy resources, from dealing with trafficking in human beings to performing peacekeeping missions abroad, governing is vastly more complicated than ever before in human history.   Further, the crises the U.S. government confronts today are so multifaceted, so complex, so fast-breaking — and almost always with such incredible potential for regional and global ripple effects — that to depart from the systematic decision-making process laid out in the 1947 statute invites disaster.   Discounting the professional experience available within the federal bureaucracy — and ignoring entirely the inevitable but often frustrating dissent that often arises therein — makes for quick and painless decisions. But when government agencies are confronted with decisions in which they did not participate and with which they frequently disagree, their implementation of those decisions is fractured, uncoordinated and inefficient. This is particularly the case if the bureaucracies called upon to execute the decisions are in strong competition with one another over scarce money, talented people, "turf" or power.   It takes firm leadership to preside over the bureaucracy. But it also takes a willingness to listen to dissenting opinions. It requires leaders who can analyze, synthesize, ponder and decide.   The administration"s performance during its first four years would have been even worse without Powell"s damage control. At least once a week, it seemed, Powell trooped over to the Oval Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet. He held a youthful, inexperienced president"s hand. He told him everything would be all right because he, the secretary of State, would fix it. And he did — everything from a serious crisis with China when a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was struck by a Chinese F-8 fighter jet in April 2001, to the secretary"s constant reassurances to European leaders following the bitter breach in relations over the Iraq war. It wasn"t enough, of course, but it helped.   Today, we have a president whose approval rating is 38% and a vice president who speaks only to Rush Limbaugh and assembled military forces. We have a secretary of Defense presiding over the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of our overstretched armed forces (no surprise to ignored dissenters such as former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki or former Army Secretary Thomas White).   It"a disaster. Given the choice, I"d choose a frustrating bureaucracy over an efficient cabal every time.   October 25, 2005   "Cheney"s given in to neocons". (AFP)   Former US national security adviser Brent Scowcroft has revealed new evidence of divisions in the Republican establishment over the Iraq war - and particularly the role of Vice-President Dick Cheney.   In an interview with The New Yorker, Mr Scowcroft said the promotion of US-style democracy should not be used as an excuse to use force abroad, as he launched a rare open attack on Mr Cheney.   "The real anomaly in the administration is Cheney," Mr Scowcroft, the national security adviser under presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush Sr, was quoted by the magazine as saying. "I consider Cheney a friend - I have known him for 30 years. But Dick Cheney I don"t know any more."   Mr Cheney is one of the leading White House hawks who, along with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are considered chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That invasion once had considerable support, but is now broadly unpopular with the US public. While the White House seems to have been taken over by hawkish "neoconservatives" Mr Scowcroft said the Vice-President defied easy categorisation. "I don"t think Dick Cheney is a neocon, but allied to the core of neocons is that bunch who thought we made a mistake in the first Gulf War, that we should have finished the job," he said.   "There was another bunch who were traumatised by 9/11 and who thought: "The world"s going to hell and we"ve got to show we"re not going to take this, and we"ve got to respond, and Afghanistan is OK but it"s not sufficient."   Mr Scowcroft spoke against completing the downfall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War because "at the minimum we"d be an occupier in a hostile land". He went on: "This is exactly where we are now. We own it. And we can"t let go. We"re getting sniped at. Now, will we win? I think there"s a fair chance we"ll win. But look at the cost."   Mr Scowcroft"s criticism of the actions of President George W. Bush are startling, given his close friendship with the President"s father. He was also a longtime mentor of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.   24 October 2005   "How Scary is This", by Bob Herbert. (The New York Times)   The White House is sweating out the possibility that one or more top officials will soon be indicted on criminal charges. But the Bush administration is immune to prosecution for its greatest offense - its colossal and profoundly tragic incompetence.   Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, addressed the administration"s arrogance and ineptitude in a talk last week that was astonishingly candid by Washington standards.   "We have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran," said Mr. Wilkerson. "Generally, with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita ... we haven"t done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence."   The investigation of Karl Rove, Scooter Libby et al. is the most sensational story coming out of Washington at the moment. But the story with the gravest implications for the U.S. and the world is the overall dysfunction of the Bush regime. This is a bomb going "Tick, tick, tick . . ." What is the next disaster that this crowd will be unprepared to cope with? Or the next lunatic idea that will spring from its ideological bag of tricks?   Mr. Wilkerson gave his talk before an audience at the New America Foundation, an independent public policy institute. On the all-important matter of national security, which many voters had seen as the strength of the administration, Mr. Wilkerson said:   "The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made."   When the time came to implement the decisions, said Mr. Wilkerson, they were "presented in such a disjointed, incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn"t know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out."   Where was the president? According to Mr. Wilkerson, "You"ve got this collegiality there between the secretary of defense and the vice president, and you"ve got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either."   One of the consequences of this dysfunction, as I have noted many times, is the unending parade of dead or badly wounded men and women returning to the U.S. from the war in Iraq - a war that the administration foolishly launched but now does not know how to win or end.   Mr. Wilkerson was especially critical of the excessive secrecy that surrounded so many of the most important decisions by the Bush administration, and of what he felt was a general policy of concentrating too much power in the hands of a small group of insiders. As much as possible, government in the United States is supposed to be open and transparent, and a fundamental principle is that decision-making should be subjected to a robust process of checks and balances.   While not "evaluating the decision to go to war," Mr. Wilkerson told his audience that under the present circumstances "we can"t leave Iraq. We simply can"t." In his view, if American forces were to pull out too quickly, the U.S. would end up returning to the Middle East with "five million men and women under arms" within a decade.   Nevertheless, he is appalled at the way the war was launched and conducted, and outraged by "the detainee abuse issue." In 10 years, he said, when this matter is "put to the acid test, ironed out, and people have looked at it from every angle, we are going to be ashamed of what we allowed to happen."   Mr. Wilkerson said he has taken some heat for speaking out, but feels that "as a citizen of this great republic," he has an obligation to do so. If nothing is done about the current state of affairs, he said, "it"s going to get even more dangerous than it already is."
	Zimbabwe in Crisis by UN News / BBC News   December 2005   UN emergency coordinator says Zimbabwe’s humanitarian situation is worsening.   United Nations Emergency Coordinator Jan Egeland, just back from a four-day mission to Zimbabwe on behalf of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said today that the humanitarian situation in the southern Africa is “extremely serious and it is worsening as we speak.”   Speaking to journalists at UN headquarters in New York, Under-Secretary-General Egeland said he met a range of officials and representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and had two meetings with President Robert Mugabe on the UN’s work in the country.   He voiced hope that the UN and donor countries could contribute to breaking the vicious circle which had locked the Zimbabwean people into declining standards of living. The country that had enjoyed a life expectancy of more than 60 years about 16 years ago now has seen that cut to only 32 years today, he said.   Mr. Egeland said it was “heartbreaking” to meet with AIDS orphans, who number about a million in Zimbabwe.“It’s heartbreaking to meet with people who are fearing the future because of food insecurity, which is affecting the majority of the people. Prices are spiralling as food is becoming increasingly scarce. It was heartbreaking to meet victims of the eviction campaign last summer, who now are back in the same place, only in much worse shelter than the house that was bulldozed.”   The UN wants to do more to help, he said, noting that it launched an appeal last week for $276 million for food aid, medical assistance, safe water and sanitation, as well as general assistance for Zimbabwe’s people.   In that regard, he made progress in talks with the Government in some crucial areas. Officials agreed to cut some of the red tape, which was an obstacle to the UN’s work in a crisis situation, Mr. Egeland said.   He said he wanted a “one-stop shop” on the Government’s side, with the UN on the humanitarian side working with NGOs which have been facing many obstacles.   He agreed to establish a task force on food insecurity, where such UN agencies as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) could work with the Government to transform the country from one where food production is in decline into one that could feed itself. They were feeding 2 million people and that number could jump to 4 million before the April harvest was brought in, he said.   Asked about the Government removing tents put up as temporary shelters in October, he said officials, especially Mr. Mugabe, believed the tents gave the impression that there was a shelter crisis.   Mr. Egeland said he explained that, with permanent housing taking a long time to build, the procedure was to put up tents, then move people from tents into prefabricated shelters and then into permanent housing.   Secretary-General Kofi Annan remains deeply concerned about Humanitarian Situation in Zimbabwe. The United Nations continues to receive reports that tens of thousands of people are still homeless and in need of assistance, months after the eviction campaign began in May 2005.   He is particularly dismayed to learn that the Government of Zimbabwe"s Ad-Hoc Inter-Ministerial Cabinet Committee has rejected offers of UN assistance. In an official communication, the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development stated that there is no longer a compelling need to provide temporary shelter as there is no humanitarian crisis. The Minister, in the same communication, also claims that Government interventions have addressed the most urgent shelter needs.   The above statements directly contradict the report by the Secretary-General"s Special Envoy on Human Settlements Issues in Zimbabwe, Anna Tibaijuka, as well as the most recent reports from the United Nations and the humanitarian community. A large number of vulnerable groups, including the recent evictees as well as other vulnerable populations, remain in need of immediate humanitarian assistance, including shelter. Furthermore, there is no clear evidence that subsequent Government efforts have significantly benefited these groups.   The Secretary-General notes the Government"s decision to decline assistance comes despite extensive consultations on relief efforts that ensued in the past months between the United Nations and the Government. Meanwhile, the impending rainy season threatens to worsen the living conditions of the affected population.   The Secretary-General is disturbed by the continued suffering and makes a strong appeal to the Government of Zimbabwe to ensure that those who are out in the open, without shelter and without means of sustaining their livelihoods, are provided with humanitarian assistance in collaboration with the United Nations and the humanitarian community in order to avert a further deterioration of the humanitarian situation.   Nov 2005 (BBC News)   The Zimbabwean economy is in freefall and inflation has soared to an annual rate of 360%. More than 75% of the population live below the poverty line and there are shortages of basic foods, such as sugar, maize meal, oil and margarine.   Church leaders in Zimbabwe have accused President Mugabe of deliberately starving his people. They say the regime has forced thousands from their homes into camps, in the drought-ravaged countryside, where there is very little food or medicine.   When there"s nothing, tempers flare over the simplest things - a can of petrol. Zimbabwe, short of every basic now, is in ruins. A man being arrested here is a street trader. President Mugabe is picking off the last of the poor he"s been ousting from the cities. He"s called it a "clean-up", but there"s been brutality against those who have resisted, and devastating consequences. One 2-year-old stepped on the embers of his house after it had been razed to the ground. Five months later, he still can"t walk. This year, Mugabe has destroyed the homes of an estimated 700,000 people. Many have been moved on by police time and again. And now, unseen by the world, thousands have been quietly dumped across desolate rural areas, where there is a drought.   Aug 2005   Justin Pearce reports that the government policy of moving city dwellers to rural areas is worsening the effects of food shortages.   For Thomas and his wife, Charity, it was not a happy homecoming. In fact, it was not really a homecoming at all. The Zimbabwean government had decided that the young couple belonged in a village deep in the dry bush of Matabeleland North province, in western Zimbabwe.   Thomas was born there, but had not lived there since childhood. His ageing grandmother is his only relative still living in the village. "They were not pleased to receive us since we came empty-handed," Thomas said. "They are in a difficult situation with drought. It was a difficult moment for them."   The United Nations estimates that up to four million Zimbabweans will need food aid over the coming year - mostly in rural areas.   Thomas, 23, and Charity, 21, had made a living as informal traders in a squatter camp in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe"s second largest city, some 200 km away. That came to an end in July, when the government"s Operation Murambatsvina [Drive Out Rubbish] reached the place where they were living.   "We were harassed by police who destroyed our shack - that"s why we had to come to this place," Thomas said. "The police said there was too much filth in this city."   The story he tells is typical of the unknown numbers of Zimbabwean city dwellers who have been dumped in country districts where they have few useful survival skills.   Zimbabwean humanitarian staff say that after destroying homes in the cities and moving people into transit camps, the government assigned people to rural areas on the basis of their identity numbers.   On the identity cards carried by all Zimbabwean citizens, the first few digits form a code for the bearer"s home area. This, however, reflects one"s ancestral home rather than one"s own birthplace.   "Some don"t want to go home because they have nothing there," says a Zimbabwean who is involved in church-based relief efforts. "Some may be the second or third generation to be born in the cities. There are some Zimbabweans who don"t have a rural area."   The relocations are part of a strategy to reassert control over urban people who have voted overwhelmingly for the opposition in recent elections. "They want total political control - they want to peasantify people like [former Cambodian leader] Pol Pot - force them into they country so they can control them," says the Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube. "In the countryside they have no newspaper or radio except Zanu-PF propaganda, and they are controlled by the chiefs, who support the government."   Thomas and Charity were forced onto a truck which took them out of Bulawayo, then a local bus, and ended up walking for several hours through the bush. They say they received no food during the journey. Charity says she did not even have a chance to say goodbye to her own family: "Since I came here they don"t know I"m here. I want to go and tell them where I am."   The relocations from cities to villages have affected many thousands throughout Zimbabwe. At just one church in Harare, charity workers have compiled a list of 700 people who have lost their homes and are looking for food and blankets.   Madeleine, 29, was born in Harare but is being sent to the district of Murewa, her husband"s birthplace, about 70km from the city. "We are going because we have nowhere to live, no way to survive here," she says. Asked whether her husband has land to farm there, she shakes her head. "Sometimes we were helping my husband"s family by sending money," Madeleine says. "My in-laws are having a problem with drought - there"s been no rain this year."   With their livelihood as informal traders destroyed, Madeleine, her husband and their three young children will now be a burden on the rural community to which they used to provide financial support.   (All names in this piece were changed to protect interviewees).
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