It’s as plain as day that government of Sudan is responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens in Darfur and that it has every intention of continuing the slaughter. It ducks and weaves, concedes here and there, makes up the ground lost when no one is looking and continues on its genocidal way.
In spite of this Jonathan Steele thinks that the International Criminal Court should not bring charges against Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan. The reasons he offers for this opinion are as follows,
…the existence of an ICC arrest warrant in itself would make it hard for Bashir to travel abroad.
Indeed it would. What’s so awful about that? People sought by the authorities on suspicion of having committed grave crimes quite often find their travel plans ruined by the prospect of having their collars fingered.
Perhaps more importantly, it would put huge pressure on officials of foreign governments to stop their contacts with Sudan’s president, and by extension, with the Sudanese government. Even though everyone is innocent until proved guilty, it would be odd for governments to deal with a man and a regime that have been put under such a conspicuous cloud of suspicion.
Again, I think Steele is right on the facts and wrong on the interpretation. Should an indictment be issued for al-Bashir this would make it difficult for foreign governments, particularly those with economic leverage over Sudan, to look the other way and pretend that everything is fine and the situation in Darfur is none of their business. Furthermore, it’s not like the current lack of barriers to international contacts has done much or anything to improve the situation.
The conflict in Darfur is too complex and the attempts to resolve it are too delicate for so one-sided and blunt an approach.
No one is suggesting that other actors in the conflict should be immune from facing the consequenecs of their actions.
The conflict in Darfur is essentially an internal issue with multiple facets, involving the government and various rebel groups, as well as criss-crossing tribal disputes.
So what if it’s an internal issue? That’s what tyrannical regimes always say when they are called to account for their behaviour. And to the extent that the conflict is indeed internal that only magnifies the responsibilities of the Sudanese government which has the full power of the state at its disposal and has responsibilities with regard to guaranteeing the welfare of the whole population that factional or tribal leaders do not have.
How could the mediators expect to persuade the rebels to be reasonable if the other side’s president has been charged with war crimes?
So the rebels can only be expected to cut a deal with the regime if its president is guaranteed immunity. Nice. Might not the sight of al-Bashir being indicted encourage them to moderate their own behaviour if they don’t want to end up facing charges themselves and might some sign that the international community is interested in justice as well as force incline them a bit more towards negotiating and away from fighting?
The peace deal between north and south, which ended a conflict that went on longer than Darfur’s, is still fragile. What would happen to the coalition government that currently runs Sudan in preparation for a referendum on the south’s potential secession? Could the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement remain in government with a party whose leader has been indicted? What of the road map for the disputed province of Abyei under which UN troops now patrol an area where there was high tension earlier this year? Would UNMIS have to freeze its contacts with Bashir?
Humans are really bad at predicting the future so no one can be sure that indicting al-Bashir would only have positive consequences. What we can say with certainty is that international policy towards the government of Sudan in recent years has had little or no effect on constraining its behaviour. Its time for a change.
