WESTERN powers have tried many ways to bring down the Government of Zimbabwe.

They have created a political party, the MDC, whose policy platforms they have had a hand in shaping, to contest elections.

They have nurtured human rights and other civil society groups to oppose President Mugabe's Government.

They have funded community newspapers to spread anti-Government propaganda.

They have financed short-wave radio programmes to broadcast anti-President Mugabe programming.

They have materially backed campaigns of civil disobedience, in failed attempts to foment a colour revolution. And they have blocked, through the United States' so-called Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 (the Act), Zimbabwe's access to balance of payment support and development aid.

All of these attempts to force President Mugabe's Government into submission have failed.

I have elaborated elsewhere on the reasons why Western powers have sought President Mugabe's ouster.

The reasons can be briefly summarised as follows:

l President Mugabe's Government has acted to thwart imperialist designs on the Democratic Republic of Congo; it opposed the pro-foreign investment policies of the International Monetary Fund;

l it expropriated income-producing property (farms owned by Europeans and descendants of white settlers) without compensation -- an affront against private property that the United States, the guarantor of the imperialist system, could not let stand. The way the Western media tell the story, "Zimbabweans are eager to see Mugabe go".

But despite Western powers acting to poison public opinion against Cde Mugabe, the Zanu-PF Government retains considerable popular support.

One indication that President Mugabe commands the backing of at least a sizeable majority of the population is that the US has acknowledged that "a popular Zimbabwean uprising against Mugabe is unlikely".

In elections earlier this year, which featured massive Western interference on the side of the opposition, Cde Mugabe's Zanu-PF party won roughly half of the legislative assembly seats and roughly half of the Senate seats.

In the first round of presidential voting, President Mugabe got over 40 percent of the vote -- despite the considerable pressure Western powers put on Zimbabweans to reject the national liberation hero.

With the President retaining strong backing, Western powers are now using a cholera outbreak -- a not uncommon event in poor countries -- to argue that Zimbabwe has become a failed state.

By making the case that Zimbabwe's Government is no longer able to provide its citizens with basic hygiene and access to safe drinking water, Western powers hope to either secure a United Nations Security Council Resolution authorising the use of force to oust Cde Mugabe, or to pressure Zimbabwe's neighbours to close their borders to the landlocked country, starving the Government -- and the people of Zimbabwe -- into submission.

"The closure of the borders, literally, in a week, would bring this country to its knees," said a US official.

The readiness to escalate the misery Zimbabweans already endure with a total blockade undermines the Western powers' own claim that they are galvanised to act by humanitarian concern.

One need not be reminded that the greatest existing humanitarian catastrophes -- to wit, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- have been authored by the US and Britain (directly in Iraq and through Rwanda and Uganda in the Congo).

These are the very same powers that claim a "responsibility to protect".

According to the World Health Organisation, there were over 16 000 cases of cholera in Zimbabwe as of December 9, and 775 deaths.

The WHO attributes the outbreak to an under-resourced and under-staffed health care system, and to inadequate access to safe drinking water.

We should ask three questions:

1. How common are cholera outbreaks in the Third World?

2. Have Western powers sought to forcibly remove governments in other countries that have suffered comparable or greater cholera outbreaks?

3. Why is Zimbabwe's health care system under-resourced and under-staffed and why do Zimbabweans have inadequate access to safe drinking water?

Cholera outbreaks are hardly rare in the Third World.

Between February 13, 2006 and May 9, 2007, there were over 82 000 cases of cholera and almost 3 100 deaths in Angola.

Since May, there have been 13 781 cases of cholera in Guinea-Bissau, with 221 deaths as of November. There were 14 297 cases and 254 deaths in Tanzania in 2006.

Last year, there were 30 000 cases of cholera in Iraq, almost twice as many as in Zimbabwe this year.

In 2005, cholera swept through Western Africa, affecting 45 000 people in eight countries.

In none of these cases did Western powers call for the governments of the affected countries to step down, or seek authorisation to remove them by force.

The inadequacies of Zimbabwe's health care system are due, in part, to doctors being lured away by the higher wages and better working conditions of the West.

There are more than 13 000 doctors trained in sub-Saharan Africa who are now practising in the US, Britain, Canada and Australia.

This, according to the British medical journal, The Lancet, has led to the "dilapidation of health infrastructure" and has threatened to produce a "public health crisis".

The West's pilfering of sub-Saharan Africa's doctors is "an international crime".

Zimbabwe's health care system is also affected by the economic devastation wrought by the US, denying the country access to balance of payment support and development aid. If doctors are lured to the West under the best of circumstances, the incentives for abandoning a Zimbabwe in a virtual state of economic collapse are irresistible.

Add to that the reality that hyperinflation -- a by-product of Harare's attempts to deal with foreign exchange shortages caused by the Act -- has eroded the purchasing power of Zimbabwe's currency, deterring medical staff (and employees generally) from showing up for work.

The Act has also undermined the Government's ability to secure funds to make needed repairs to water and sewage treatment infrastructure and to import water purification chemicals.

While the purveyors of misinformation at the New York Times and other Western media outlets attribute the cholera outbreak to what are called President Mugabe's "disastrously failed policies", the origins lie closer to home.

Stephen Gowans is a Canadian writer and political activist based in Ottawa. This article is reproduced courtesy of gowans.wordpress.com