THE recent ‘admission’ by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair that he made ‘mistakes’ by aiding the US to wage a war against Iraq, is not only a vindication of President Robert Mugabe’s stance that the war was unjustified and based on false intelligence, but confirmation that the ex-UK leader is a suitable candidate for indictment at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
There was nothing surprising and unusual about Blair’s admission.
Blair’s disastrous decade reign was littered with war-mongering tendencies that almost spilled to Zimbabwe if former South African President Thabo Mbeki and Field Marshal Charles Guthrie, who served as Chief of General Staff from 1994 to 97 had not stood their ground.
In November 2013, in an interview with Al-Jazeera, Mbeki said Blair’s government asked South Africa to help Britain invade Zimbabwe and topple President Mugabe by force.
When Britain and America slapped Harare with illegal economic sanctions at the turn of the millennium, there was a mutual feeling from both sides of the Atlantic that sanctions alone were not enough to ‘separate that man Robert Mugabe and his ZANU PF from the people’ as former US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Chester Crocker said in September 2001.
As a result and expectedly, South Africa and Britain were at loggerheads on how to tackle problems caused by the sanctions.
Mbeki said he favoured a negotiated settlement; while Blair wanted President Mugabe to go, by force if necessary.
“The problem was, we were speaking from different positions,” said President Mbeki.
“There were other people saying ‘yes indeed there are political problems, economic problems, the best way to solve them is regime change.
“So Mugabe must go’.
“This was the difference. So they said ‘Mugabe must go’.
“But we said ‘Mugabe is part of the solution to this problem’.”
Mbeki recalled an interview given by Guthrie.
In 2007, Lord Guthrie disclosed that ‘people were always trying to get me to look at’ toppling President Mugabe by force.
And Mbeki noted: “There is a retired chief of the British armed forces and (he) said that he had to withstand pressure from the then prime minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, who was saying to the chief of the British armed forces, ‘you must work out a military plan so that we can physically remove Robert Mugabe’.”
“We knew that, because we had come under the same pressure, and that we need to cooperate in some scheme — it was a regime change scheme — even to the point of using military force, and we said ‘no’,” said President Mbeki.
Blair himself, in his autobiography A Journey, revealed a frustrated desire to topple Mugabe. 
John Kampfner’s book, Blair’s Wars, according to UK-based Zimbabwean academic Blessing Miles-Tendi, also records that, “On one trip Blair found himself in the company of (former International Development Secretary) Clare Short.
“They talked for long periods about intervention.
“Blair confided in her that ‘if it were down to me, I’d do Zimbabwe as well’ — that is send troops.”
But it is the latest embarrassing episode in Blair’s troubled career that is set to consolidate Africa’s call for fairness in the manner the Hague based ICC has handled operations with regards to its definition and meaning of what it says are ‘crimes against’ humanity.
Accusations that the ICC only targets leaders from Africa are certainly going to have more credence if the international prosecution court, as widely expected, remains mum on Blair’s admission. There are ‘elements of truth’ in the theory that the invasion helped feed the rise of ISIS, a notorious terrorist outfit.
The ICC is a creation of the West.
The West own, run and dictate the operations of the widely discredited ICC.
In an interview with CNN last week, Blair said he was ‘sorry’ that the intelligence behind the decision to attack Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 was wrong, and admitted there had been mistakes in the planning of the operation.
“I apologise for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong,” he said.
“I also apologise, by the way, for some of the mistakes in planning, and certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime.
“But I find it hard to apologise for removing Saddam.”
In September 2004, months after the launch of the Iraq war, President Mugabe accused US leader George W Bush of behaving as though he is God, with Blair his prophet.
The Zimbabwean leader has consistently called for an inquiry into how UK and America, disregarded the United Nations and went on to invade Iraq.
He said the US and the UK were ‘raining bombs and hell-fire on innocent Iraqis, purportedly in the name of democracy’.
“We are now being coerced to accept and believe that a new political-cum-religious doctrine has arisen, namely that there is, but one political God, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair is his prophet,” President Mugabe said to applause at the UN headquarters. If there was doubt about the callousness of the Blair and Bush alliance, the former British premier has just provided evidence to that effect.
Africa has to stand its ground and call for Blair’s prosecution.