It's hard to see it any other way: Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is killing his country; so says the Human Rights scholar Samantha Power.
Six years ago, Zimbabwe had the fastest growing economy in all of Africa. Now unemployment stands at 80 percent. Torture is rampant. Corruption is common. The warehouse of the country's sole maize and wheat distributor is empty.
With Mugabe's recent decision to quit the Commonwealth, many fear the worst has just begun -- that the nation once considered the heart of Africa's bread-basket, could become the location for widespread famine as early as next year. Already close to half the people there depend on the U.N. for food hand-outs. Samantha Power has seen the destruction of nations. She says Mugabe is on target to destroy his own.
Samantha Power, founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard University, and author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning book, A Problem from Hell. Her most recent essay is How To Kill a Country --featured in the Demember issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
