What's that, Lassie? Zimbabwe's in trouble?

780 dead is the latest count from most news sources concerning the amount of lives Zimbabwe's burgeoning cholera epidemic has taken. The World Health Organisation estimates that 16 000 people are infected with the disease, and up to 6 million people, half the country's population, may be at risk due to the almost ubiquitous raw sewage in the streets. This should be utterly unsurprising, coming from a country with a non-existent political system, a vicious, incompetent and insane autocrat, and an inflation rate of 8,000,000,000,000,000,000% (eight quintillion). 

So now is yet another good time for the world community to remember what an incredible shit-hole Zimbabwe is. There have been the usual shows of shock and horror for how such abject poverty can exist in the world, the clucking of historians who remind us that Zimbabwe used to be "Africa's breadbasket", and the wistful hope that the octogenarian Mugabe will die soon. But this is not how the story should end.

The UN has 17 000 troops attempting to secure the chaos in the Congo, and many are pressing for more. Foreign troops need to enter Zimbabwe as well. The assumption that Zimbabwe is somehow less of a completely dire crisis zone is untenable. A man in a suit shouting angrily from a podium draped in a flag does not a state make. Mugabe's Zimbabwe should be recognised for what it is: 12 million scared, starving sick people hemmed in by a madman's ailing military cadres. There is no state, there is no sovereignty or right to non-intervention, only an overwhelming obligation to act.