An urgent mess

I'm not sure what can be said about what's happening in Zimbabwe. Clearly the west needs to intervene, but how?

Churches in the eastern Manicaland region said in a statement that they were ``left shocked and numbed by the utter havoc and destruction wreaked in Mutare townships.''

``What we have seen would reduce the hardest heart to tears,'' the churches said, adding that babies, nursing mothers, the sick and the elderly had been left amid smoking ruins to face biting cold.

Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk 50 percent during the past five years, and the unemployment rate is at least 70 percent. Agriculture - the country's economic base - has collapsed, and at least 70 percent of the population lives in poverty.