LONDON

Newly released UK government documents show that former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration briefly considered the possibility of military intervention to remove Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe before ultimately rejecting it as “not a serious option.”

The papers, released by the National Archives, reveal that ahead of Zimbabwe’s 2005 parliamentary elections, the Foreign Office explored a range of policy approaches to tackle "Mugabe’s increasingly authoritarian rule, economic collapse, and human rights abuses."

According to British media reports, options considered included tougher sanctions, cutting aid, freezing Zimbabwean assets, withdrawing the UK ambassador, and, in the most extreme scenario, doing “to Mugabe what we have just done to Saddam.”

The briefing, titled Zimbabwe: Policy Options and dated July 2004, was sent to Laurie Lee, a foreign policy adviser in No. 10, following a stark report from Brian Donnelly, the departing British ambassador in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital.

Donnelly warned that British policy had failed to deliver democratic change and said that, if Mugabe won the 2005 elections, “we should be ready to consider a radical new approach.”

However, Donnelly was clear about the limits of action: “Short of a truly catastrophic breakdown in public order, armed intervention is a nonsense. And even then it should be an African not a British lead.” He also suggested Blair could seek closer engagement with Mugabe, using the prime minister’s approach to Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi as a model.

The Foreign Office paper outlined the risks of military action in detail: “We know from Afghanistan, Iraq and Yugoslavia that changing a government and/or its bad policies is almost impossible from the outside. If we really want to change the situation on the ground in Zimbabwe we have to do to Mugabe what we have just done to Saddam.”

The paper concluded that such a policy was untenable: the UK would have to act alone, there would be no clear exit strategy, UK citizens could be endangered, and African countries and the wider international community would oppose it.

It also noted that any intervention would be illegal without a UN resolution.

Instead, the UK was advised to continue isolating the Mugabe government internationally while discreetly supporting the democratic opposition.

In a handwritten note forwarding the paper, Blair largely endorsed this approach, recommending criticism of Mugabe until the elections, with the possibility of re-engaging afterwards.

Mugabe remained in power until he was ousted by a coup in 2017 at the age of 93. He died in Singapore in 2019, aged 95.

His former vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was installed following the coup and continues to lead a Zanu-PF government.