The Sunday Mail
THE year 2001 changed the course of history, including for a small country in Southern Africa called Zimbabwe.
In March, the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) — a unilateral and punitive piece of legislation meant to collapse the regime in Harare that had the audacity to redistribute land pillaged during colonialism — was introduced in the US congress.
In August, it was passed in the US senate.
A month later, the unthinkable happened: Al-Qaeda operatives launched the most audacious attacks on American soil.
The world watched graphic visuals of hijacked planes torpedoing into New York skyscrapers and the Pentagon — US military headquarters — in horrid disbelief.
It prompted a vengeful America, which was then under President George Bush, to unleash its wrath on the world.
By October 2001, the US military was already raining fire and brimstone in Afghanistan to collapse the Taliban regime, which was accused of the unpardonable sin of offering sanctuary to Al-Qaeda.
Two months later, the Bush administration signed ZDERA into law. Well, for the US, it has not quite worked out as expected.
The regime in Harare still stands, and, as Bishop Lazi writes this, American troops, with their tails firmly between their legs, are withdrawing from Kabul after a senseless and bloodletting 20-year campaign.
According to the Costs of War project by the US-based Brown University, the war in Afghanistan has killed 47 000 civilians, 72 journalists, 444 aid workers, 70 000 Afghan troops and more than 2 442 American servicemen. All this came at a stupendous cost of US$2,3 trillion.
Nowhere to hide
As the American troops continue their withdrawal, after accomplishing virtually nothing, swathes of territory is naturally falling into the hands of the Taliban in the north, as they continue their whirlwind march on the capital.
The quisling regime installed by the occupying force might possibly be on its last legs, a prospect that is proving to be nightmarishly unnerving for the hordes of sellouts that were actively collaborating with foreign forces.
History always has a crude and twisted sense of humour. It is now becoming increasingly apparent that these so-called “allies” of America will be left to their own indeterminate fate at the hands of the Taliban, and there are no prices for guessing what would be the likely outcome.
Although more than 17 000 of these unfortunate Afghans, who are euphemistically referred to as “interpreters”, “translators” and “local allies” of the US, have applied for the Special Immigrant Visa Programme, it has emerged that it could take more than four years for them to be processed.
The Americans do not seem to be in a hurry to put the poor souls out of harm’s way and evacuate them to safety, as they are doing their own kith and kin.
Again, history is repeating itself all over again. This is not the first time for Americans to betray their so-called local allies who would have betrayed their own people.
There have been grisly precedents in the past. Many might not know of the Hmong people who sided with the Americans against the North Vietnamese army in the 20-year Vietnam War. The alliance between this tribe, which lived on the Laotian highlands, had been cobbled by a CIA officer called William Sullivan, who was also an American ambassador to Laos.
However, by the time the war ended in 1975, between 30 000 and 40 000 Hmong soldiers had been killed, while many fled. But the Bishop would like to draw your attention to what happened when Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) fell to North Vietnamese troops on April 29, 1975.
The Americans, through “Operation Frequent Wind”, evacuated their people to safety, while thousands of South Vietnamese who had worked directly with the US mission in Vietnam swarmed the US embassy gates desperate to flee.
“During the last day, we played God,” Frank Snepp, a former CIA chief strategist in Vietnam, is reported to have said.
“We determined who would be saved and who wouldn’t, and it was heart-wrenching. You would get one person in the family, but not the child, not the mother, not the father. We separated families in a wink . . . because we hadn’t planned adequately.”
It is the same fate that also recently befell the Kurds in Syria, who allied with the US in an attempt to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime. The American troops have since left, leaving them to the mercy of the Syrian army.
All this validates the clichéd political expression that America does not have permanent friends, but permanent interests.
No room on the ship
It reminds Bishop Lazarus of what happened in Mozambique when the Portuguese fled in 1976, a year after the country’s independence. From the outset, the no-nonsense Samora Machel, then leader of the triumphant Frelimo, ordered that in all workplaces and residences, the compromised (or sellouts) had to be known by all.
Their names and “sins” of collaborating with the colonialists were also to be written down and posted on boards in all workplaces together with their mugshots.
This culminated in the 1982 five-day “Meeting of the Compromised” at Josina Machel Secondary School in the capital city of Maputo, where more than a 1000 of the compromised were gathered to publicly confess their sins.
Machel himself personally interrogated some of the accused.
In one famous instance, a fiery Samora questioned a former agent of the colonial dreaded spy agency, PIDE, who used to sell out student leaders sympathetic to Frelimo, why the Portuguese did not take him with them.
“There was no room for you on the ship?” he rhetorically quipped.
But Samora so ka? Kikikikiki.
Of course, there will never be room enough for sellouts when things go pear-shaped, as is so often the case. It is a lesson that has to be painfully learnt by those who ill-advisedly ally with hostile foreign forces that when push comes to shove, they will be hung out to dry.
Sellouts are always fated to an ignominious end. Many might recall the Biblical story of this chap who was called Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ disciples.
He had the privilege of hearing the gospel from the horse’s mouth and to bear witness to the countless miracles.
However, when the time came, he was prepared to betray the Son of Man for 30 pieces of silver.
It did not end well for him.
In Matthew 26 verse 23-24, Jesus cursed him: “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.” As it turned out, he did not take his reward and sail into the sunset, but actually made the inglorious exit from life by committing suicide. Do not kid yourselves: Apart from greasing their palms with a filthy “30 pieces of silver”, sellouts do not actually need any meaningfully reasons to sell out — they just do it anyway.
ED might buy as many zupco buses as possible, he might build many dams to breathe life into communities, he might rebuild world-class roads and restore the country’s regional breadbasket status, including moving mountains, but this will not stop “allies” of hostile forces from selling out.
We know them! It is in their nature!
But they should learn from experiences from Iraq, Syria, Bolivia and lately Afghanistan that sellouts have a short expiry date and will never win – and can never find peace.
The irrepressible spirit of a people will always triumph — however hostile and powerful hostile forces might be.
Bishop out!
