A USAToday Editorial: Accountability in Darfur
For five and a half years, government-backed forces in Sudan have committed unspeakable acts — murder, rape, torching villages — in the vast western province of Darfur. About a quarter of a million people have died, with millions displaced.
In 2004, the U.S. government condemned this for what it is: genocide. But efforts to stop it, even sending in thousands of international peacekeepers, haven’t ended the horror.
On Monday, the International Criminal Court, a tribunal set up in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2002 to prosecute individuals for crimes against humanity, took a bold action. Its prosecutor asked its judges to indict Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on war crimes and genocide charges — the court’s first indictment of a sitting head of state. (Two others, Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Liberia’s Charles Taylor, were indicted by special nited Nations courts.)
The value of the criminal court’s extraordinary decision is that it continues a movement over the past decade of putting leaders of countries on notice that they might not get away with terrible crimes against their people. That trend gained momentum after Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, in which the world stood by as 800,000 were slaughtered.
Each new effort can also put new pressure on countries that do business with tyrants. China has lucrative oil deals with Sudan and is its main arms supplier. The indictment gives China additional incentive to use its leverage to burnish its image as it prepares to host next month’s Olympic Games.
The potential downside is that the indictment could provoke a backlash by al-Bashir. He has played a game of promising to comply with efforts to end the genocide, including allowing in foreign peacekeepers.
In reality, he has aided the horror. Now, he could end all pretense. Already, worrisome new attacks on peacekeepers include one last week in which seven were killed and 22 injured. The U.N. said Monday it was withdrawing some non-essential staff.
Al-Bashir certainly won’t hand himself over. He is more likely to model himself on a fellow African tyrant, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who unleashed a murderous onslaught on anyone who opposes him after it became clear he would lose this year’s election.
Like Mugabe, al-Bashir might be counting on help from China and Russia. Both are frequently accused of human rights violations and fear international moves that infringe on national sovereignty. Appallingly, they used their U.N. Security Council vetoes last week to block new sanctions against Zimbabwe.
One organization might have more influence than the international court or U.N. on al-Bashir and Mugabe. That organization
is the African Union.
Its members, led by powerful South Africa, have behaved more like a cozy old boys’ network.
On Monday, they even asked the court to stop the indictment. They should be more concerned with getting the thugs in their club to stop the killing.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY:
by Michael Schmidt – ZACF, southern Africa Monday, May 14 2007, 9:42am
The Darfur War has been described as the worst conflict in the world today – and yet despite intensive media coverage, many aspects of the conflict are misunderstood because of the propaganda battle that runs in tandem with the war on the ground. The view from the ground offers different perspectives.
The USA alleges genocide against the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa tribes by Khartoum-backed Janjaweed militia — an interest spurred no doubt by Washington’s desire for access to Sudan’s oil reserves which are currently being exploited exclusively by China and to a lesser extent, Malaysia and India. On the other hand, Nafi Ali Nafi, deputy leader of the ruling National Congress Party admitted that Khartoum armed and trained a “popular defence force” from among civilians to be used to support the Sudanese Defence Force in its battle against rebels in Darfur, while denying any genocidal campaign.
Sudan remains, in World Bank terms, a highly indebted poor country. But oil is changing all that: by 2006, oil accounted for over 25% of Sudan’s GDP. However little of the wealth from that 120,000 barrels of crude a year finds its way into an economy propped up by Bangladeshi guest workers lured to Sudan on false promises, or into neglected extremities like Darfur… [MORE >>]
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