Because Iraq is dominating international headlines, there wasn’t much response to an African story that Zimbabwan President Robert Mugabe arrested 20,000 miners as a prelude to taking over the nation’s gold mines.

Mugabe has already nationalized agriculture and almost every other industry in the nation. The results have been what always follows state collectivization — starvation and despair.

Millions have died due to the government’s policies and untold numbers of others have been brutalized or killed by Mugabe’s secret police.

According to Australian reporter R. W. Johnson, "A vast human cull is under way in Zimbabwe, and the majority of deaths are the result of government policies. Ignored by the U.N., it is a genocide 10 times greater than Darfur and more than twice as large as Rwanda’s."

Simply put, the population of Zimbabwe should be about 18 million, but social scientists estimate only 8 to 11 million people remain in the country. Millions have fled. Others have died of malnutrition or have been executed.

A few items in Mr. Johnson’s story are chilling:

n More than 42,000 women died in childbirth last year. A decade ago, the number was less than 1,000.

n So many babies have been dumped in the bush that hyenas have acquired a taste for human flesh.

However, Mugabe has a friend in South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has deftly kept the topic of the Zimbabwan atrocities off the U.N. table.

According to Mr. Johnson, the two heads of state, "have been responsible for more deaths than Rwanda suffered and the number is fast heading into realms previously explored only by Stalin, Mao and Adolf Eichmann."

Not to worry though. Amnesty International and other human rights groups plan to protest and demonstrate this month demanding that … the prison at Guantanamo Bay be closed.