Global justice challenged in Darfur
By Eric Reeves, The Boston Globe
August 29, 2008 — As news coverage of Darfur’s horrors again ebbs, as regional rains
reach their heaviest in a deadly season known as the “hunger gap,” the
regime in Khartoum appears to have outwaited the international
community. The men who have orchestrated ethnic destruction in Darfur
now believe that by threatening the massive UN humanitarian and
peacekeeping presence in the region, they can have their way with the
fate of international justice and determine fully the fate of Darfur’s
millions of conflict-affected civilians.
This threat emerges in response to a July announcement by International
Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo seeking an arrest warrant
against President Omar al-Bashir, charging him with genocide and crimes
against humanity. Khartoum has so far responded mainly with declarations
defying and denouncing the ICC, but recent language suggests an ominous
shift.
At the same time, an extraordinary coalition of expediency and
callousness has joined with Khartoum, coming primarily from African,
Arab, and Islamic countries expressing greater concern for a possible
arrest warrant for Bashir than for the overwhelming evidence of crimes
committed by him and his regime. And these crimes continue: this past
week more than 100 civilians, the majority women and children, were
killed or wounded by the regime’s security forces in a brutal armed
assault on Kalma displaced persons camp.
Increasingly confident that it will not be held accountable by its
neighbors in the Arab and African worlds, Khartoum has now declared in
effect, “don’t allow an ICC arrest warrant to be issued or we will
undermine security for the UN in Darfur.”
So far there has been no rebuke of the regime’s threats. The longer
international silence continues in the face of such outrageous threats
against the UN, the more dangerous the moment in which the ICC
three-judge panel announces its decision in the coming weeks. For if
Khartoum does move to create additional insecurity for humanitarians,
who already face intolerable risks and harassment, entire organizations
will withdraw, even in this season of fierce malnutrition.
Humanitarian reach is already severely attenuated, both by violence and
the current rains. UN/African Union peacekeepers – who have been
repeatedly attacked by Khartoum and its Arab militia allies – will
become dramatically more defensive, and civilian populations
commensurately more vulnerable. Human destruction will rapidly escalate
to some of the worst in the conflict.
The clarity of the imminent crisis has been unfortunately obscured.
Some criticize the actions of Moreno Ocampo, suggesting that his
language and charges of genocide are too inflammatory. The notion that
more politic or carefully calibrated charges would be less threatening
to Khartoum, given its crimes in Darfur, is unpersuasive.
What we really see here is an argument for accommodation or
acquiescence in the name of a Darfur “peace process” that simply does
not exist. Indeed, as Sudan’s history under the current regime reveals
all too clearly, it is precisely the absence of accountability that has
made these brutal men so destructive for so many years. It is the
“climate of impunity” repeatedly declared by UN and human rights
officials that has made of Darfur the longest ongoing episode of
genocide in the past century, set to enter its seventh year in a matter
of months.
Certainly Darfuris, with the most at stake, overwhelmingly support the
ICC and its pursuit of justice, refusing to countenance a contrived
choice between peace and justice. But without robust action soon to
support the UN on the ground in Darfur, a grim choice between tenuous
“security” and justice may become inevitable.
If the world backs down on the matter of justice and accountability,
international efforts to end impunity in Darfur will have been crushed –
and by the vicious demands of the very men who have so relentlessly
orchestrated ethnically targeted human destruction throughout Darfur and
eastern Chad. It will be the final emboldening of this regime, which
will know that there is no line that can’t be crossed, no threat that
can’t be wielded to preserve its tyrannical hold on power.
Absent timely, concerted, forceful international action at the Security
Council – with clearly articulated consequences for any move against UN
efforts in Darfur – Khartoum may well dare to take the actions that will
cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
Eric Reeves is author of “A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the
Darfur Genocide.”