Zimbabwe’s presidential election is three weeks away. The European Union has imposed travel restrictions on Zimbabwe’s president, Robert G. Mugabe, and frozen his European assets after he expelled the head European election monitor two weeks ago. The rest of the European monitors have since departed. However, forty election monitors from the British Commonwealth countries (except for the U.K. itself) remain in Zimbabwe, despite the departure of the Europeans.

While the remaining election monitors may appear to help the situation on the surface, they actually threaten to make the situation in Zimbabwe worse. The United States should consider the pitfalls of election monitors as it debates whether weapons inspectors should be sent back into Iraq. International observers, deployed under the wrong conditions, can give ruling strongmen the one thing that violence cannot: a veneer of legitimacy.

The mission of a peacekeeper is to prevent violence and the mission of an aid worker is to distribute food and medicine. But the mission of a monitor is different because the sole duty of a monitor is to make judgments. An election monitor decides whether or not the election is fair. A weapons inspector certifies that no illicit weapons exist. When a peacekeeper does a bad job, he still manages to prevent some violence. But when an election monitor does his job poorly or a weapons inspector fails to find the weapons, the situation can become worse. We now risk such a problem in Zimbabwe and Iraq, if Saddam Hussein ever allows the monitors back in.

In Zimbabwe, the 77-year-old incumbent Mugabe, is facing his first serious electoral challenge since coming to power in 1980. Not dealing well with dissent, he has created laws making it a crime to criticize him, and effectively eliminated the right to assemble in public. To make things worse, Mugabe is winding up a two-year campaign of violence and intimidation that resulted in 16 political murders last month, according to the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum. He has assembled militias, allegedly composed of war veterans, and used them to expropriate farmland from white Zimbabweans. In the past week, Mugabe’s government has even accused the leading opposition candidate of treason.

Like Zimbabwe, Iraq is ruled by a nominally-elected leader who cannot be trusted. Saddam Hussein is still in power a decade after losing the Persian Gulf War. He chose to subject his people to years of harsh sanctions rather than allowing the United Nations weapons inspections to proceed—inspections to which he agreed in his surrender. But now, three years after expelling these inspectors, Hussein is willing to discuss their re-entry into Iraq.

So why is Mugabe letting the Commonwealth countries monitor the election, and why is Hussein discussing the re-entry of inspectors? It is possible that Mugabe and Hussein have finally decided to take the straight path, but that seems unlikely. These demagogues have only changed their tactics. Mugabe knows that a month is not enough time for a fair election to develop. He has spent years tampering with the political system, whether through amending laws, or scaring away his opposition. Similarly, since the U.N. inspectors were expelled in 1998, Iraq has had ample time to relocate and conceal any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons program it is developing. It was difficult enough to locate these hidden weapons programs before the expulsion, but if the inspectors return it will be even more difficult because they will start all over under tighter time constraints than before.

Even the most effective international observers cannot undo all the damage that Mugabe has caused to the democratic process. But the danger is that these observers can give the elections an air of legitimacy. If they call Zimbabwe’s election fair in light of the corruption and tampering of the past months, they will only be helping to perpetuate Mugabe’s undemocratic reign. Saddam Hussein also knows that world pressure is mounting to remove sanctions from his country, and that if the inspectors do not find anything quickly, they will be under intense international pressure to declare that Iraq has no such programs. Sanctions will then be lifted, bolstering Hussein’s regime.

Weapons inspectors and election monitors should not be sent in if they cannot operate freely. As long as the weapons inspectors are given enough time and access, and election monitors are given freedom to uncover abuses, their presence can be helpful. Otherwise, they will do more harm than good.

Jonathan P. Abel ’05 lives in Stoughton Hall.