I have spent most of the week since the terrorist attacks in the US attending exhumations of massacre victims in Matabeleland in Zimbabwe. Not only did Firoze Manji articulate perfectly my own reactions to the attacks and the US response; every individual here who expressed a view shared the same sentiments. This is hardly a scientific cross-section, but it suggests that many of the natural constituency of your newsletter is at one on this issue. So it is disappointing that you felt unable to publish Firoze’s article as an editorial.

No one suggests that the US supported the Matabeleland killings in the 1980s (which claimed many more lives than the recent terrorist attacks), unlike the apparently endless list of atrocities where there was US complicity: Angola, Chile, Guatemala, Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor and so on. But Mugabe’s regime was until very recently regarded as a reliable military ally in the region. The extermination of thousands of his own (black) citizens was a little local difficulty and certainly no business of the US. Recent attacks on white farmers are of course a different matter. But I suspect that even white corpses are less important to the US than the tottering Zimbabwean economy and the rapacity of the leadership here when it comes to strategic minerals in the DRC. The US is anxious to see the back of Mugabe now and is promoting the idea that he should be granted an amnesty for past human rights violations. My guess is that next time a US diplomat proposes that line to a Zimbabwean human rights group, s/he will be asked about the prospects of an amnesty for Osama bin Laden.

There is of course a difference between the two cases, but is not the one that the US draws. Zimbabweans propose that Mugabe should be dealt with judicially, reinforcing the rule of law. The US intends to kill bin Laden without any legal sanction or process. I understand (though mercifully I have been beyond the reach of CNN et al) that Bush has refused to give the Taliban evidence of bin Laden’s involvement in the attacks as a precondition to expulsion or extradition. After all, who needs evidence? As Firoze correctly points out, the US has shown contempt for international legal and human rights standards and refuses to respect court judgments against it. It has done its best to sabotage the development of institutions such as the International Criminal Court, which might offer a means of tackling certain types of terrorism.

People here feel a sadness and empathy over the killings in the US. I don’t presume to speak on their behalf, but Zimbabweans have known too much violence and tragedy over the generations to do anything other than share in that loss. It is a pity that the West – or at least its official spokespeople – are apparently incapable of exhibiting that same common humanity.