Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur (2)

Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur:
A critical analysis (Part II)

By Eric Reeves

Feb 6, 2005 — The report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur,
delivered to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on January 25, 2005 (the
date of record for the document), has apparently served as catalyst for
several important public pronouncements by UN officials and other
international actors, including a potentially highly significant
statement by NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer:

“NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Thursday suggested the
alliance could play a supporting role in the Sudanese region of Darfur,
but stressed that neither the African Union nor the United Nations had
asked it to do so.” (AP, February 4, 2005)

While such potential commitment must be welcomed, and may conceivably
represent a turning point in international response to ongoing genocide
in Darfur, it has the overwhelming quality of belatedness. So, too, the
Report of the Commission of Inquiry Report on Darfur: despite the
authority and fullness with which it establishes a clear pattern of
massive, state-sponsored criminal violations of international law in
Darfur on the part of the Khartoum regime and its Janjaweed allies, we
are finally told very little that we did not already know from other
human rights reporting going back almost two years. For all the
usefulness of the Commission’s ability to render unambiguously the lines
of military, security, and political authority leading from the vast
human destruction in Darfur directly into the highest levels of the
National Islamic Front, this is not so much new as consolidated
information.

This belatedness is all the more dismaying in light of the tendentious
and badly argued conclusion offered by the Commission authors in their
brief section (Paragraphs 489-522) concerning a genocide determination
for Darfur (see Part I of this analysis [February 2, 2005] at:
http://www.sudanreeves.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=34&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0).
Indeed, despite the overwhelming evidence of genocide already clearly
in hand, the Commission authors engage in a perverse exercise of
specious legal reasoning that puts political considerations over the
importance of describing in accurate international legal terms the
ghastly realities of Darfur.

Attempting to finesse the controversial issue of genocide by arguing
that there is insufficient evidence of “genocidal intent” on the part of
the Khartoum regime (though some “may entertain a genocidal intent”
[Para. 520]), the Commission authors find themselves caught in various
forms of egregious logical self-contradiction. They are also guilty of
evidently deliberate omissions of relevant evidence and reports, and do
not pursue important lines of forensic investigation—particularly of
widely reported mass executions of targeted African populations.

Of particular note is the Report’s corrosively self-destructive
confusion over the difference between “motive” and “intent” with respect
to the crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Here the Commission
authors have, in conspicuous fashion, confused the essential distinction
with which they have themselves appropriately begun their discussion of
genocide:

“From the viewpoint of criminal law, what matters is not the motive,
but rather whether or not there exists the requisite special intent to
destroy a group [as defined by the terms of the 1948 Genocide
Convention].” (Para. 493)

Thus it must be re-emphasized that it matters not whether we decide
that the Commission authors are correct in arguing that Khartoum’s
primary “motive” in orchestrating ethnically-targeted civilian
destruction is “counter-insurgency warfare”—or is rather, as many
would argue, an effort to reshape the demographic and political
realities of Darfur, favoring specific Arab tribal populations as a
means of consolidating central political power. The issue is not, as the
authors themselves explicitly state, Khartoum’s “motive,” but whether
there is “intent to destroy a group”— whatever the motive.

POLITICAL DETERMINANTS OF GENOCIDE DETERMINATION

Whence such tendentious and illogical thinking?

As suggested in Part I of the present analysis, there is very
considerable evidence that this relatively brief section (only 9 of 176
pages, and inefficiently developed) was deeply constrained by political
considerations irrelevant to a determination of genocide or “genocidal
intent.” Indeed, the political context for this determination was so
extensive, and in the event so clearly defining, that it bears some
detailed rehearsal. Here we encounter terribly familiar echoes of
international failure to speak honestly about the nature of the Rwandan
genocide of 1994.

Perhaps the largest political consideration within the Commission was a
crude anti-Americanism, based on the (erroneous) perception that the
many voices that have argued for a finding of genocide in Darfur are
somehow peculiarly American in origin or inflection. This is simply not
true. The Parliament of the European Union declared in September 2004,
by a vote of 566 to 6, that the realities in Darfur were “tantamount to
genocide.” The Defense Minister of the Government of Germany declared,
speaking as an official of the government, that the realities in Darfur
are “genocide.” Yad Vashem in Jerusalem has declared that the vast,
ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur is genocide. So, too,
have Justice Africa (UK) and Africa Confidential (UK), General Romeo
Dallaire of Canada (UN peacekeeping force commander in Rwanda), and a
great many international genocide scholars.

To be sure, many of the most prominent voices declaring Darfur’s
realities to be genocide are indeed American: the Committee on
Conscience of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum; Physicians for Human
Rights; Africa Action; the US Committee for Refugees; the US Congress
(in a unanimous, bipartisan, bicameral resolution of July 2004); the
Bush administration (both President Bush and former Secretary of State
Colin Powell). Other powerful American voices declaring genocide in
Darfur include William Schultz, Executive Director of Amnesty
International/USA (John F. Kennedy Library [Boston], December 9, 2005)
and Sudan expert John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group.

But this is not an “American” determination, despite the politics at
the UN and in other quarters that have made it out to be such. Here
some humanitarian and international organizations are especially
culpable in working to create this impression, and none more so than
Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres-France, which despite
heroic work in Darfur’s humanitarian theater has been guilty of a series
of scandalously ill-informed and intellectually shoddy comments,
including from the head of MSF-France, Jean-Hevre Bradol.

But comments by people such as Bradol are finally much less
consequential than the political reluctance of the African Union to
declare what all evidence suggests is the case: genocide is again
occurring in Africa, and African nations are unwilling to stop it, at
least in part out of deference to an assertion (in this case by
Khartoum) of national sovereignty. This excessive deference to claims
of national sovereignty reflects some of the most discouraging features
of Africa’s inability to function effectively as a continental
organization of countries.

Tragically, this inability is also reflected in the painfully slow and
uninspired deployment of African Union monitors/protection forces to
Darfur. The most recent deployment (this past week) still leaves the
contingent on the ground at approximately 1,400—far short of the
planned 3,500 to 4,000 personnel, a deployment that has now taken
several months despite the overwhelming urgency of Darfur’s crisis.
Western countries bear some financial responsibility for this shameful
belatedness, but with every passing day the burden shifts more fully to
the AU. There is simply no evident will to deploy rapidly and
forcefully.

Other political determinants governing the genocide determination in
the Report include the vehement refusal of the Arab League to accept
even the possibility that genocide is being committed by an Arab
government. Egypt has been particularly effective behind the scenes in
working to forestall such a judgment, but has had significant help from
both Algeria and Libya. Indeed, Libya orchestrated a summit in
mid-October 2004 that brought together the heads of Chad, Nigeria,
Libya, Egypt and Khartoum’s National Islamic Front. At the conclusion of
this diplomatically expedient summit, President IDeby of Chad, Libyan
President Ghaddafi, Egyptian President Mubarak, and Nigerian president
(and AU Chairman) Obasanjo closed ranks on Darfur:

“In a joint statement issued after the overnight meeting the regional
leaders stressed their ‘rejection of all foreign intervention in this
purely African question.'” (Agence France-Presse, October 18, 2004)

If we wish to understand the belatedness of AU deployment to Darfur, we
can do no better than to consider the terrifying implications of this
joint statement—“rejecting all foreign intervention in this purely
African question”—issued almost a third of a year ago.

Particularly disappointing has been Obasanjo’s bowing to intense
pressure from various quarters within the Arab League, issuing
ultimately in his judgment that what has occurred in Darfur is not
distinct from other “African problems” (Nigeria of course has a very
large and increasingly radical Islamic population). Obasanjo’s expedient
comments on the meaning of the term “genocide” in international law and
its relevance for the realities of Darfur have been consistently crude,
even thuggish.

South Africa has also failed badly in demonstrating leadership in
speaking honestly to the Khartoum regime: President Thabo Mbeki, during
a recent address to the NIF parliament, spent his time excoriating the
actions of Winston Churchill a century ago, and none holding accountable
the genocidaires before him.

There are other significant features of the political context for the
UN-appointed Commission’s manifest failure to address in perspicuous or
even coherent fashion the issue of genocide. We should certainly recall
that Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared very publicly on June 17,
2004 (“based on reports that I have received”): “I am not ready to
describe [Darfur] as genocide or ethnic cleansing yet” (Voice of
America, June 17, 2004; The Globe and Mail [Canada], June 19, 2004).

Of course if was also Annan who had invoked Darfur explicitly on the
grim tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide (April 7, 2004), and who
had solemnly declared the need to be “serious about preventing genocide.”
Annan had gone so far as to warn of the need for military intervention
in Darfur, evidently as part of this professed “seriousness.” But two
months later, Annan would declare that he had seen nothing that allowed
for a determination of genocide or even the euphemistic “ethnic
cleansing.” This was so despite the dramatic public statements of
senior UN officials working directly on the Darfur crisis.

Jan Egeland, UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs, had
repeatedly and emphatically referred to the catastrophe in Darfur as
“ethnic cleansing.” Indeed, three weeks prior to Annan’s saying he
had seen nothing that would suggest genocide or “ethnic cleansing,”
Egeland referred to a “scorched-earth campaign” of “ethnic cleansing” in
Darfur (Reuters, May 27, 2004). Egeland had first referred to the
actions of Khartoum and its Janjaweed allies as “ethnic cleansing”
almost two months earlier (Reuters, April 4, 2004). We must wonder
whether Secretary-General Annan and Under-Secretary for Humanitarian
Affairs Egeland were reading the same “reports,” or were assessing the
same evidence—and we must certainly wonder to what extent the
Commission authors are protecting Annan from his own previous public
statements.

Also of significance here are the professional assessments of Darfur
offered in March 2004 by the UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan,
Mukesh Kapila. Again the Rwandan genocide emerges as an inevitable part
of the context for Kapila’s searing honesty. For we are obliged to bear
in mind Annan’s shameful performance as head of UN peacekeeping
operations during the Rwandan genocide, and his appalling failure to
respond to the many warnings of impending genocide that had come in a
steady stream since February 1994, warnings which became a cascade
beginning on April 6, 2004 with the downing of the plane carrying
Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana:

“[Kapila] said the violence, which he described as ‘ethnic cleansing’,
was mostly carried out by Arab militias known as Janjaweed who were
supported by government forces. ‘Under those circumstances one can only
conclude that [the ethnically-targeted violence] is state-sanctioned.'”
(Reuters [Khartoum], March 26, 2004)

Kapila, who was nearing the end of his tenure as humanitarian
coordinator for Sudan at the time, had felt free to issue a series of
remarkably unconstrained statements about the state-sanctioned,
ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur; his statement to
Reuters of March 26, 2004 was in part a response to the regime’s
characterizing his previous remarks concerning Darfur as “a heap of lies”
(BBC, March 23, 2004). In these remarks Kapila had likened the
deliberate human destruction in the region to the Rwandan genocide he
himself had witnessed:

“‘The only difference between Rwanda and Darfur now is the numbers
involved’ [said Kapila]. ‘[The slaughter in Darfur] is more than just a
conflict, it is an organised attempt to do away with a group of people.'”
(UN Integrated Regional Information Networks [IRIN], March 22, 2004)

And most tellingly, Kapila declared:

“The pattern of organised attacks on civilians and villages,
abductions, killings and organised rapes by militias is getting worse by
the day and could deteriorate even further. ‘One can see how the
situation might develop without prompt [action]…all the warning signs
are there.'” (UN IRIN, March 22, 2004)

Of course there was no “prompt action”; indeed, almost a year later,
there is still no international response that begins to correspond to
the vast human need and desperate insecurity in Darfur. This has all
been while Annan was either offering what is now transparently empty
rhetoric about “preventing genocide” (April 7, 2004) or effectively
denying the highly informed, public declarations by his Under-Secretary
for Humanitarian Affairs and the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Sudan
(June 17, 2004).

There is an instinct among many within the UN, and those to whom the UN
political organization most naturally reaches out, to protect Mr. Annan.
Some of this is institutional loyalty; some is a perceived need to
protect the UN head in time of crisis (the oil-for-food scandal, the
heavy-handed intervention by Annan in a UN proceeding involving sexual
harassment charges against a close and long-time aid, and increasing US
criticism over failure to lead the Security Council in effective fashion
on Darfur). This “instinct of protection” might very reasonably be
understood as constraining a determination with the potential to
complicate Annan’s political situation at the UN. For a finding of
genocide in the Report would have created extraordinary difficulties,
given obligations stipulated in the 1948 Genocide Convention (in
particular, Articles 8 and 9).

Finally, the political context for a genocide determination includes
the potent threat of a Chinese veto in the Security Council. Given the
explicit obligations of the UN under the terms of the 1948 Genocide
Convention, and China’s clearly expressed determination to protect the
Khartoum regime (its indispensable partner in strategically important
oil production and development in southern Sudan), the Commission
undoubtedly felt political pressure not to find genocide in Darfur. For
this would allow “any contracting party [to] call upon the competent
organs of the UN to take such action under the Charter of the UN as they
consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of
genocide” (Article 8 of the 1948 Genocide Convention).

In short, the Commission had a clear political motive to reach “only”
to the threshold of “crimes against humanity,” and to export the actual
prosecution of these crimes to the International Criminal Court by means
of Security Council referral. To be sure, such referral may be vetoed
by China (or the US or Russia). But this leaves the UN without the
ongoing task of responding to a genocide determination, and without any
need for prolonged consideration of “action appropriate for the
prevention and suppression of acts of genocide.”

WHAT THE COMMISSION DID NOT CONSIDER

Though not directly related to the question of what political context
defines the Commission’s Report, there are a number of serious omissions
and errors of fact that have been brought to the attention of this
writer in recent days by Darfuris, by human rights officials and
workers, and others troubled with the final language of the Report.
These are in addition to the significant omissions and errors of fact
discussed in Part I of this analysis (February 2, 2004 at
www.sudanreeves.org).

For example, the anthropological understanding informing the Report is
particularly weak and facile. A Darfuri with an extensive UN human
rights background offers this pointed critique of the Report, here
edited very slightly for clarity (it should be emphasized that we hear
far too little from such informed Darfuri voices in the 176 pages of the
Report).

“In Paragraph 508 the Report states:

‘The various tribes that have been the object of attacks and killings
(chiefly the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa tribes) do not appear to make up
ethnic groups distinct from the ethnic group to which persons or
militias that attack them belong.’ (Para. 508)

“I don’t think that any serious-minded person could issue such an
ignorant statement. First, according to the most basic anthropology
texts written by Sudanists and Sudanese, these tribes belong to ethnic
groups different from the so-called Arab tribes of Darfur. Second,
anyone who has spent a few days in Darfur would know that if you have a
person’s name and the area he or she comes from, you can tell which
tribe that person belongs to. Third, any Darfurian can tell whether
another Darfurian comes from an Arab tribe or not. The degree of
accuracy is almost 100%.”

“Fourth, it is not true that all the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa speak
Arabic. These three tribes have their own languages (volumes have been
written about these languages by Sudanese and non-Sudanese scholars).
The percentage of Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit who speak Arabic is the same
as that of Southern Sudanese. It is only the urbanized members of these
tribes who speak Arabic. Even among these, their accent tells which
tribe they come from. Finally, Islam as espoused by these African tribes
is highly Africanized and is very distinct from the Islam espoused by
Arabized Sudanese.” (received by this writer via email, February 3,
2005)

No doubt there are issues of controversy among anthropologists,
linguists, and other academic students of Darfur. But these views of a
highly-educated native Darfuri comport extremely well with numerous
others reports coming to this writer over the past fifteen months. And
it must be reiterated that Darfuri voices are deeply inadequately
represented in this Report.

A KEY AND DEEPLY REVEALING OMISSION

It is important that readers of the Report understand that despite
commentary on mass executions (Para. 274-75, 277, 293-95), there has
been a serious failure to investigate such executions on the part of the
Commission. This writer has received from numerous Darfuri sources
consistent intelligence that strongly suggests the Commission was able
to investigate sites of mass graves only after Khartoum had declared
these areas “secure.” And of course, “security” is simply a function of
Khartoum’s having fully sanitized the grave-sites.

The US government (the State Department, the Defense Department, and
the Agency for International Development), as well as other
international actors, have long possessed highly authoritative
intelligence making unambiguously clear Khartoum’s devotion of
substantial ground and aerial transport assets to body-removal and the
obliteration of evidence of atrocities. Some of this intelligence has
been gathered by means of satellite reconnaissance. None of this is
discussed by the Commission authors, though it is very well known within
diplomatic and international political circles.

Moreover, the Commission authors have little to provide in the way of
authoritative new forensic evidence, despite the nominal access claimed
in the Report. As an extremely knowledgeable Darfuri has reported to
this writer:

“The Commission’s investigators visited suspected mass grave sites only
after the government declared those areas secure. The government did not
give security clearances until it removed all the mass graves, took the
bodies to the desert, and destroyed them. Some of the security documents
obtained by local human rights groups indicate the names of security
officers who were involved in the removal of the mass graves and the
destruction of the bodies.”

“These documents are widely available even to exiles like myself. The
investigators never visited any location that the government did not
grant them the permission to visit. Certain areas such as Wadi Saleh,
where some of the most gruesome atrocities took place, have not been
visited by the commission or any of its investigators.” (email received
by this writer, February 4, 2005)

The reference to “security documents” is far from hyperbolic. Other
Darfuris in exile, including former governor of Darfur Eltigani Ateem
Seisi, have provided to this writer what gives all appearance of being
an extraordinary internal document confirming the efforts at
obliterating evidence of mass graves. A translation of the document
reads:

[“Intelligence Report Number 310, to the Director of Intelligence and
Security Department”]

“Based on your message that was coded ‘very secret’ [or ‘highly
confidential’] issued on August 6, 2004 concerning removal of nine mass
graves located in the states of Darfur, and killing everybody suspected
of releasing the information [about mass-grave removal] or becoming a
witness for the committees that are sent by the UN, European Union or
African Union to investigate the mass graves, I would like to inform you
that, with the exception of only one mass grave located in Wadi Saleh in
West Darfur, which could not be reached, the other eight mass graves
were completely removed, [the bodies] transported and burnt by the two
committees of the [government] security and Al-Tajjamu’ Al-‘Arabi [Arab
Alliance]. The secretary-general [of the Arab Alliance] is under the
strong guard of our forces, which do not know impossibilities under the
sun.”

“Finally, I would like you to contact the administration of the cabinet
of military operations to send a plane for transporting the
above-mentioned mass grave which contains 1,200 bodies from Wadi
[Saleh].” (Received by email from multiple Darfuri sources, January
2005; an electronically scanned version of the Arabic original is
available upon request in PDF format)

Absent more knowledge about the provenance of this document, caution
must be exercised in assessing its implications for the Report and what
it tells us about the failures of investigation on the part of the
Commission. But we nonetheless know a great deal about the Wadi Saleh
massacres (West Darfur, south of Zalingei), especially from the reports
of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. (See especially from
Human Rights Watch: “Darfur Destroyed: Ethnic Cleansing by Government
and Militia Forces in Western Sudan,” May 2004 Vol. 16, No. 6 [“Mass
Executions of captured Fur men in Wadi Salih,” page 21 ff.,
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/sudan0504/]).

Moreover, with the assistance of Darfuris in exile, this writer was
able to speak by telephone (April 25, 2004) with the key surviving
witness of the Wadi Saleh massacre reported by Human Rights Watch. This
telephone communication occurred while the witness in question was
physically present in Nyala (South Darfur), attempting to enter the
security ambit of the UN compound. Though this occurred at precisely
the time that a UN human rights investigating team had finally secured
access to Darfur (having encountered weeks of intransigent refusal from
Khartoum), and though the team was provided with contact information by
this writer (information conveyed from Washington, DC to the US embassy
in Khartoum to UN personnel in Nyala, which in turn secured the safe
entrance into the UN compound of the Wadi Saleh witness), the UN human
rights team did not investigate at Wadi Saleh, despite the witness’s
life-risking efforts.

That the more recent UN Commission of Inquiry also failed during its
time in Darfur to investigate Wadi Saleh, or was content to visit only
sanitized sites—despite abundant evidence of a specific,
geographically identifiable mass atrocity—suggests a deeply troubling
willingness to be guided by Khartoum’s security assessment in gathering
critical forensic evidence. Though the Commission authors assert that
“generally speaking the attitudes of the Government [of Sudan]
authorities towards the Commission has been cooperative” (Para. 29-36),
this claim is simply not credible given the failure to investigate Wadi
Saleh.

For while the Commission instances several specific examples of
Khartoum’s failure to cooperate, it makes no mention of denied access to
Wadi Saleh or other sites of reported mass executions and atrocities.
Given the overwhelming relevance of evidence that might be gathered from
unfettered forensic access to sites such as Wadi Saleh, we must be
deeply concerned about the integrity of the Commission’s methodology and
commitment to finding all evidence of genocide in the form of
state-sponsored, ethnically-targeted mass executions. Surely this has
the most consequential bearing on a determination of whether there is
indeed “genocidal intent” on the part of members of Khartoum’s National
Islamic Front regime.

COMMISSION DECISION NOT TO NAME KHARTOUM OFFICIALS RESPONSIBLE FOR
“CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY”

The Commission authors would have their readers believe that there are
only jurisprudential reasons for their decision not to name those senior
Khartoum officials who are clearly implicated in vast and numerous
“crimes against humanity” identified in the report (Para. 523-563).
This claim is belied by an excellent piece of investigative journalism
from the Los Angeles Times: their UN correspondent was able to report,
even prior to the public release of the Commission Report (and on the
basis of evidently authoritative diplomatic contacts within the UN):

“The commission, headed by Antonio Cassese, an Italian judge, had to
reconvene after the report was completed because of disagreements over
whether to identify implicated government officials who may be in charge
of implementing Sudan’s new peace plan with its southern rebels, said
diplomats familiar with the discussions.” (Los Angeles Times, January
29, 2005)

This writer identified in Part I of the present analysis two senior
officials who are clearly implicated by virtue of the Commission’s
account of chains-of-command within the NIF political, security, and
military structures: Major General Saleh Gosh, director of the National
Security and Intelligence Service, and Abdel Rahim Hussein, Minister of
the Interior and Special Representative to Darfur for President Omer
Beshir. The Los Angeles Times reporting strongly suggests that to this
list of senior NIF officials subject to indictment for (at “least”)
crimes against humanity we must add First Vice President Ali Oman Taha,
and Minister of Federal Affairs (and special advisor to President Omer
Beshir) Nafie Ali Nafie. Both men are extremely senior and powerful
within the NIF, and both are slated to play central roles in
“implementing Sudan’s new peace plan with its southern rebels” (Los
Angeles Times, January 29, 2005).

Moreover, all four of these NIF officials are named in an important US
Congressional report (October 22, 2004) addressing responsibility for
genocide in Darfur. And all four almost certainly appear on a list of
Khartoum genocidaires prepared by the US State Department. This list
has not been made public, despite the explicit demand in the
Comprehensive Sudan Peace Act (signed into law in October 2004) that the
US State Department should “identify the perpetrators of such violations
with a view to ensuring that those responsible [for genocide in Darfur]
are held accountable” (Section 12, subsection [a]). This list presently
exists, but has not been publicly released by the State Department for
fear of disrupting the north/south peace process.

Notably, if unsurprisingly, Vice President Taha yesterday declared that
Khartoum would not allow trials abroad for any Sudanese citizens,
including trials at the International Criminal Court urged by the
Commission of Inquiry:

“Sudan will not allow any citizen to be tried abroad in connection with
suspected crimes against humanity in the war-torn western region of
Darfur, First Vice-President Ali Osman Taha was quoted by the press as
saying. Taha, speaking at a meeting with officials in South Darfur
state on Friday, was referring to an international discussion over
whether Sudanese suspected of such crimes be tried by the International
Criminal Court (ICC) or by a special tribunal. ‘The government is
opposed to trying any Sudanese official or ordinary citizen involved in
the Darfur incidents outside the Sudan,’ Taha was quoted as saying.”
(Agence France-Presse, February 5, 2005)

Taha, who is slated to address the UN Security Council in New York this
Tuesday (February 8, 2005), is all too predictably preparing the ground
for resisting his own prosecution at the ICC. Given the brilliant and
brutal suvivalism that has marked the NIF since its seized power in
Sudan by military coup in June of 1989, no one should underestimate the
willingness of Taha and his fellow genocidaires to flout any UN referral
of Darfur atrocities to the ICC, as recommended by the Commission of
Inquiry.

What all this should suggest is that political calculations about the
behavior of the NIF are entirely inappropriate for a Commission of
Inquiry into matters of genocide, crimes against humanity, and other
egregious violations of international law. That this most obvious
matter of jurisprudential integrity was ignored, according to the Los
Angeles Times, is a matter deeply troubling in its own right and all too
revealing of the nature of this Commission.

CONCLUSION (PART II):

The Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur
(Geneva, January 25, 2005) is a document fatally compromised in its
moral and intellectual integrity. It addresses the essential question
of genocide in Darfur with neither logical rigor nor adequate commitment
to the evidence available. It emerges from a political context that has
evidently motivated several extremely unwise decisions about both a
genocide determination and the naming of Khartoum’s genocidaires.

The people of Darfur were owed much more—much, much more. The
international community has shamefully devised yet another means of
failing the victims of genocide.

– Eric Reeves
– Smith College
– Northampton, MA 01063

– Tel: 413-585-3326
– Email: [email protected]
– Website: www.sudanreeves.org