Security Council must make use of the potent ICC indictment

By Eric Reeves, the Guardian

July 17, 2008 — The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, following a
three-year investigation, has charged the president of the Sudanese
regime, Omar al-Bashir, with genocide and crimes against humanity.
Whatever the implications of this unprecedented action for the future of
Khartoum’s National Islamic Front, there are good reasons for
believing that the ICC has struck a broader blow against the complacent
conviction, prevailing in too many countries, of sovereign immunity from
atrocity crimes.

But the issue of the day seems not to be these extraordinary criminal
charges themselves, but how Khartoum’s génocidaire-in-chief will
respond to the ICC announcement. Yet the issue has been badly framed
with its focus so exclusively on Bashir. He heads a security cabal that
has remained largely unchanged since it came to power by military coup
in June 1989, deposing an elected government and never itself holding
meaningful elections.

This ruthless hold on power has come from the unified effort of a
ruling clique that also includes security chief Saleh Gosh,
vice-president Ali Osman Taha (who held the Darfur portfolio from
2003-2005), and senior presidential adviser Nafi Ali Nafi (who currently
oversees operations in Darfur). Although not named in Monday’s
announcement by the ICC prosecutor, they all know their indictment is
only a matter of time. They are collectively calculating how to sustain
their grip on power under the magnified scrutiny by the international
community that will come as a result of the ICC announcement.

It is of course impossible to know what retaliatory measures Khartoum
may contemplate or put in place. Their options are all too plentiful.
Some have argued that the camps for displaced persons have become
suddenly more vulnerable with the ICC announcement. These grim camps,
holding more than 2.5 million people, have for many months been
cauldrons of rage and despair, and awash with guns. There have long been
warnings from humanitarians on the ground that they could explode at any
moment. Khartoum doesn’t need to wait for provocative pro-ICC
demonstrations to crack down with savagery – and indeed has done so on a
number of occasions. Moreover, food rations in the camps have been cut
by nearly half for the past two and a half months, and the reductions
are set to continue for the foreseeable future. Conditions have long
been ripe for explosion.

Many humanitarians also fear for their own safety following the ICC
announcement. Yet for four years aid workers have been the target of a
relentless war of attrition by Khartoum, subject to harassment,
obstruction, intimidation and abuse (including beatings and arrests).
[They depend upon UN peacekeepers for what meagre security is provided.]
But just last week, on July 8, Janjaweed militiamen carried out an
extraordinarily brutal attack on a convoy of UN peacekeepers in North
Darfur, all from African nations. Twenty-two people were wounded. Seven
died.

As the retiring head of UN peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, made
abundantly clear in a closed-session briefing of the Security Council
last Friday, the attack was extremely well-planned, carried out in an
area controlled by the regime and included men wearing army khaki and
traveling on horseback (signature features of the Janjaweed). Guéhenno
also insisted that the attack was designed not to seize weapons but to
kill personnel.

This attack was not a response to the ICC announcement – which
hadn’t yet been made – but part of a continuing effort to
intimidate the hybrid UN-African Union mission (Unamid), as Khartoum had
intimidated the African Union force that preceded it. The same was true
of the premeditated attack on a Unamid convoy by Khartoum’s regular
military forces last January. The attacks are linked to one another, not
to ICC actions.

Khartoum can make life more miserable for humanitarians, but the change
will likely be incremental, not full-scale – again, if only because of
the heightened scrutiny the ICC actions have brought. The real question
is whether the UN security council will make effective use of this
potent ICC announcement. Under Article 16 of the Rome Statute, the
council has the power to suspend ICC investigations or prosecutions for
a year, with the possibility of renewed suspension. The impending ICC
arrest warrant for Bashir, with clear implications for other senior
members of the regime, should be the key point of leverage for the
security council in making forceful demands: that the regime cease to
attack and impede deployment of Unamid; that it verifiably rein in the
Janjaweed; that it end its war of attrition against humanitarians; and
that it undertake good faith peace negotiations with the rebels, who
must themselves be coaxed to participate in what will be an arduous
process of compromise. Pressure is all Khartoum understands, and only if
the regime clearly meets these benchmarks should the security council
intervene in the workings of the ICC.

With its relentless and principled pursuit of those responsible for
atrocity crimes, the ICC has created opportunities for political
pressure that offer the people of Darfur their best chance for improved
humanitarian conditions, security and a glimmering hope of peace. It is
hardly surprising that the ICC announcement is overwhelmingly supported
by victimized Darfuris themselves.

* Eric Reeves is author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide. He can be reached at [email protected]. www.sudanreeves.org