Look before you leap says Guildford, Surrey.(Letters):-
"Having been brought up in South Africa I have followed with bemusement the calls for military action against Robert Mugabe. These calls ignore the basic question: how would Western troops and their equipment get there?
Given that Zimbabwe is land-locked, it would be necessary to pass through one or more neighbouring states. The obvious choice is South Africa, but if President Mbeki is not even prepared to condemn Mugabe verbally, he is hardly likely to allow his ports and transport infrastructure to be used for an invasion.
The alternatives are Namibia, Mozambique and Tanzania. Mugabe and Namibia's President Nujoma have been friends and comrades-in-arms for half a century, and anyway Namibia's only port, Walvis Bay, is too small for the job.
Mozambique has two reasonable ports, Beira and Maputo, but is riven with tribal animosities and also has strong ties with Mugabe. The routes from Beira and Maputo to Zimbabwe are also excellent guerrilla terrain.
In Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania has a port which might be up to the job, but the roads to Zimbabwe are appalling and the only alternative is a metre- guage railway, and getting from Dar Es Salaam involves passing through Zambia, which also has strong ties with Mugabe.
Of course it would be militarily feasible to force any or all of these states to co-operate, but I doubt it would be diplomatically sustainable.
Some wonder whether Mugabe's troops would 'put up much of a fight'. If a pitched battle were envisaged it would be a walkover - but Mugabe does not do pitched battles. If he had fought a pitched battle against Ian Smith, his forces would have been annihilated and we should never have heard of him.
Mugabe's forte is querrilla warfare, and we should reflect that Ian Smith, with 100,000 troops as well trained as the British Army and with better motivation - they were fighting to defend their homes - were unable to achieve better than a stalemate.
So - even if the access problem can somehow be solved, and even admitting that Soviet weapons suppplies are history, we would be looking at committing 100,000 troops for several years."
-Guildford, Surrey.