Aid and comfort: David Rieff's eloquent--but dated--meditations on the failure of humanitarian action.

• Author: Heilbrunn, Jacob
• Position: A BED FOR THE NIGHT: Humanitarianism in Crisis - Book Review

A BED FOR THE NIGHT: Humanitarianism in Crisis by David Rieff Simon & Schuster, $26.00

WHILE THE WEST IS CURRENTLY fixated on whether and how to confront Saddam Hussein, several thousand miles away another military strongman is on the verge of committing genocide. Zimbabwe's president-for-life, Robert Mugabe, has set out to create a famine in the mold of Stalin in the Ukraine and Mac in China. To buttress his sagging support in the country, Mugabe has uprooted thousands of white farmers, turning their estates over to militants and supporters--none of whom, it turns out, know how to farm them. The hundreds of thousands of blacks who do know how aren't being included in the reform; rather they, too, are targets of Mugabe's thugs and goons. And though the United Nations estimates that six to eight million Zimbabweans are at risk of starving to death, the only realistic way to avert disaster is to confront Mugabe directly, through stiff international sanctions and the threat of military intervention. But South Africa, which controls Zimbabwe's electric grid, banking system, and weapons supply, refuses to take action. And aside from voicing its concern and sending in diplomats to talk to Mugabe, the international community is doing nothing.

You can pretty much guess where this is heading. Millions of Zimbabweans will either die or wind up in refugee camps, where they will be cared for by an array of well-meaning humanitarian aid agencies, such as the Red Cross and CARE, none of them capable of preventing violence. The international community will feel ashamed at having allowed genocide to fall upon Africa yet again--having sworn "never again" after the Rwandan massacres of 1994--and will attempt to salve its conscience by generously funding the inevitable humanitarian efforts. And Mugabe, his political opponents conveniently stuck in refugee camps, will have achieved what he set out to do in the first place.

David Rieff is no stranger to such perversities. In the past decade, he has traveled to the most troubled regions of the globe, from the Balkans to Afghanistan. But the emotional pole-vaulting--landing in one zone of crisis only to leap off to the next--has left him with a nagging sense of guilt. And he is just as troubled about the ambiguous role that humanitarian institutions play in the world. Whether it's the work of Oxfam in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s, which helped to prop up the murderous Mengistu government; or Medecins Sans...