The indictment of Sudan's president may yet help resolve the crisis in Darfur, argues Ayman El-Amir* A crisis situation has developed over the request of Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor-general of the International Criminal Court (ICC), to indict the president of Sudan, Omar Al-Bashir, on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the war-torn western Sudan region of Darfur. Predictable reactions came from both the African Union and Arab countries. They both protested that the ICC has no jurisdiction over Sudan which is not a signatory to the 1998 Rome Statute that established the ICC. Legal arguments and political manoeuvring have a long way to go before a final decision is reached over the indictment. However, the process may be a blessing in disguise for the multi-ethnic population who have endured untold suffering for almost six years now. A resolution of the problem of Darfur is long overdue. Arab foreign ministers came to the rescue by declaring in an emergency meeting in Cairo that Moreno-Ocampo's request was unacceptable and could undermine the peace efforts now underway in Sudan. The same view was echoed by other parties, including Sudanese Vice-President Silva Kiir as well as China, which warned international powers to take African and Arab concerns over the peace process in Sudan into consideration. Conflicting arguments were postulated by different parties: many Arab countries, ruled by autocracies and among the most blatant violators of human rights, backed the Sudanese government's position that the ICC has no jurisdiction over countries that are party to the Rome Statute. They did not, after all, refuse to sign the Rome treaty simply to run into the same situation President Al-Bashir finds himself in. Others argue that no indictment can be initiated unless a party member of the Rome Statute requests the investigation of a situation that comes under the jurisdiction of the court. Yet other jurists argue the prosecutor-general can initiate action based on sufficient evidence gathered on war crimes or the gross violation of human rights. The Bush administration, having withdrawn the Clinton administration's signature on the Rome treaty, was tight-lipped. In order to avoid implicating its nationals for the atrocities they have committed around the world, including ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration excluded itself from the Rome Statute. In addition, it signed agreements with more than 80 countries banning the prosecution of US nationals in local courts for crimes they may have been committed in these countries. The US has thus given itself immunity from any prosecution for crimes its nationals may commit almost everywhere in the world. Additionally, the UN Security Council has decided that the situation in Darfur poses a threat to international peace and security, the fundamental mandate of the council, and has therefore referred the case to the ICC. So there is already a pending case involving Sudan in the Security Council. When it comes to international criminal justice the lady with the sword is not always blindfolded. Her definition of justice has been selective, which means she has been trained in political decorum. Of all the candidates for indictment on charges of crimes that come within the purview of the ICC few have been brought to justice. Former president of Liberia, Charles Taylor, and former president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Miloöevi� were deservedly hauled up before the ICC. The murderer-dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, who tortured and murdered thousands of opposition activists during his 17-year rule evaded prosecution until he died in 2006 at the age of 91. He was released from a 16-month long house arrest in Britain in 2000 and allowed to return home although four European countries, Spain, Belgium, France and Switzerland, had requested his extradition on 300 charges of torture, murder, involuntary disappearance and human rights violation. Among those pleading for his release was former US president George H W Bush who appealed to the British government to set him free. It was the CIA that brought Pinochet to power in a bloody coup in 1973 that deposed and murdered the democratically elected president Salvadore Allende. War crimes and massive human rights violations have been committed in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of the US invasion. The casualty and refugee figures dwarf those of Darfur. Will US President George W Bush, his Vice-President Dick Cheney, his former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a host of other political and military architects of both wars be brought before the ICC for war crimes if any country, say Iran, for instance, should bring charges against them? Could former president Vladimir Putin be charged with war crimes in Chechnya? What about the decades' worth of Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians? Could Jordan or Djibouti which, along with the Comoros Islands are the only Arab parties to the Rome Statute, bring criminal charges before the ICC against Israeli leaders past and present? These seemingly rhetorical questions poke holes into the international criminal justice system represented by the ICC. The world in the 21st century still adheres to the laws of force and not the force of the law. President Al-Bashir stands no better or worse a chance of being brought before The Hague than other Arab or African leaders who can be charged with mass human rights violations and atrocities against their peoples. It will be months before a panel of judges accepts or rejects the findings and evidence collected by Moreno-Ocampo. In the meantime the pending case is a politically expedient pressure on the Sudanese government and other parties to the Darfur conflict to work out a peaceful settlement. The six-year long ethnic conflict, which former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan described as "a humanitarian disaster" has netted 200,000 casualties and created 2.5 million refugees. Arab and African leaders have a responsibility to bring effective pressure on Al-Bashir and his government to work out an expeditious settlement of the Darfur crisis. In this regard Egypt has a major role to play and influence to exercise. For more than 10 years, since the failed attempt on the life of President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in June 1995, Egypt has turned its back on Africa except for token participation in some sub-regional activities and programmes. This is not the Egypt of 50 years, a paragon of national liberation and the beacon for all African freedom fighters. Cairo's political focus has shifted from Africa to the Middle East/Arab region at the expense of Egypt's interests in Africa. The 1983 second rebellion in southern Sudan could have been avoided if Egypt had shown a strong hand towards the maverick former dictator-president Jaafar Numeiri. Darfur need not have happened had Egypt made a strong intervention and rallied the international community to address the root causes of this humanitarian disaster. Egypt should now create a coalition of Arab states and humanitarian organisations to help resolve the Darfur disaster and to build democratic institutions in Sudan. It would work better than meetings of Arab foreign ministers or the African Council on Peace and Security which do little more than issue statements before they walk away from the problem. * The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.
