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July 23, 2008
The Indictment of Bashir in Sudan and the Failure to Act
A tired mantra is being trotted out by those who oppose the indictment by the International Criminal Court of Omar al Bashir, and that is that the peace process will be put in danger.
As if there were a viable peace process, and as if the government of Sudan (a radical Islamist state, claiming to act in the name of Islam responsible for genocide, without the slightest recrimination from other Muslim nations) were remotely interested in peace.
It should be noted that Bashir and his sometimes ally and sometimes nemesis Hasan al Turabi, have jointly and separately presided over state-sponsored meetings of radical Islamist terrorist organizations from around the world, as well as sheltering and nurturing al Qaeda and protecting Osama bin Laden. Not a pretty picture.
Then there is the matter of Sudan’s state-sponsored genocide. Someone should be held accountable, as a head of state, Bashir is one of those.
ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo said a three-year investigation has shown that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that… [al-Bashir] bears criminal responsibility in relation to 10 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”
But there is a real danger associated with the indictment, as that is that it will once again lay bare the powerlessness of the international community to implement the steps it claims it will take.
Scattering a few poorly armed and ill-trained peacekeepers, in conditions that guarantee their failure and that many will be killed, is not an action that strikes terror - or even mild concern - in the hearts of Bashir and regimes like his.
Bashir will not be arrested. We are way past the point where an indictment has any name and shame value-after the mass murder of more than 300,000 people with no significant international response, a piece of paper means little.
The indictment, justified as it is, will ultimately only show, once again, how unwilling the international community is to stop the genocide. Bashir faces no credible threat of arrest. The ICC and the international bodies that supposedly have teeth to deal with criminal behavior do face a credible threat: the threat of being shown (again) to be impotent.
It is better not to make a threat you cannot reasonably expect to fulfill than to make a threat in the hopes of scaring someone who is far past scaring.
Remember when then Secretary of State Colin Powell dared to utter the word genocide? And the false hope that engendered that something might finally be done to stop the murder? The indictment of the ICC is similar. It will give false hope that meaningful action is planned, when, in reality, it is a hollow act that will guarantee, rather than limit, impunity.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Douglas Farah is an award-winning investigative journalist and Senior Fellow in Financial Investigations and Transparency at the International Assessment and Strategy Center. E-mail him at doug@douglasfarah.com.
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