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Sudan: Darfur, Justice and Peace
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Jul 21, 2008 (080721)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"Part of the reason Darfur has remained locked in crisis for years
is that the international community has been slow to acknowledge
what has always been painfully obvious: The janjaweed militias that
have terrorized and decimated Darfur have been directed by the
Sudanese government. The militias were financed by the government,
and received direct battlefield support from the Sudanese military.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is doing no more than
acknowledging the plain, painful truth of Sudan's tragedy. The
prosecutor should be congratulated for recognizing that turning a
blind eye to war crimes is not helpful." - Enough Project
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains an analysis from the Enough
Project on the impact of the ICC decision to charge Sudanese
President Omar Al-Bashir, stressing the potential for the increased
international pressure to be a step forward towards peace. Another
AfricaFocus Bulletin sent out today contains an analysis by Alex de
Waal and others of an alternative perspective, namely that
insistence on justice will further reduce the chances of peace, by
provoking even more violent actions by the Sudanese government.
As these two contrasting analyses show, the impact of the ICC
decision is highly unpredictable and hotly disputed, both among
Sudanese and among international advocates for peace and justice in
Sudan.
Whichever view of the ICC decision is correct, however, the debate
does obscure one critical point: the failure of the international
community to provide adequate support for the African Union-UN
peacekeeping force in Darfur (UNAMID). This operation is understaffed,
under-equipped, under-funded, and vulnerable to attacks.
Established one year ago with an authorized strength of up to
19,555 military personnel, 6,432 police, and more than 5,000
civilian personnel, it currently has less than 8,000 troops, less
than 2,000 police, and a little over 1,000 civilian personnel.
Critical equipment is lacking, including helicopters, aerial
reconnaissance, transport and logistics units. And more than half
of the $1.3 billion budget assessed on UN member states for the
first year was unpaid as on the end of April. For more detailed
information on UNAMID, including monthly reports, see
http://www.un.org/depts/dpko/missions/unamid
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Sudan, and other related
links, visit http://www.africafocus.org/country/sudan.php
For a well-informed analysis of the background to the conflict in
Darfur, there is no better single source than the book by Alex de
Waal and Julie Flint, Darfur: A New History of A Long War. The most
recent edition was released by Zed Books in May 2008.
It is available at
Amazon.com
http://tinyurl.com/5odnb6
Amazon.co.uk
http://tinyurl.com/58p5bs
Powell's Books
http://tinyurl.com/5putgy
For an additional selection in the AfricaFocus Bookshop of recent
books on the crises in Sudan, see
http://www.africafocus.org/books/afbooks.php#sud1 (Amazon USA) or
http://www.africafocus.org/books/afbooks_uk.php#sud1 (Amazon UK).
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
Justice and Peace in Sudan
Enough Project (http://www.enoughproject.org)
July 14, 2008
In a welcome step, today the Prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court requested an arrest warrant for Sudanese President
Omar Al-Bashir on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and
war crimes in Darfur.
In a report released today, ENOUGH Executive Director John Norris,
Co-Chair John Prendergast, and Research Associate David Sullivan
argue that the call to arrest Bashir is not only based on sound
evidence, but that it can be a step forward in the path to secure
peace. "The status quo in Sudan is one of the deadliest in the
world. Until there is a consequence for the commission of
genocide, it will continue. This action introduces a cost, finally,
into the equation," says Prendergast. Using examples of past
indictments of war criminals Slobodan Milosevic during the 1999
Kosovo conflict, and of Charles Taylor in 2003 in Liberia, the
report argues that introducing accountability for crimes against
humanity can break the cycle of impunity and improve prospects for
peace in seemingly intractable conflicts. Norris notes "with more
than 300,000 dead and millions displaced in Darfur, it is shocking
that these charges are even remotely controversial. President
Bashir has orchestrated the Darfur tragedy from day one, and any
efforts to sweep his actions under the rug are both shameful and
counterproductive."
In a separate release, ENOUGH provides a rundown of some of
Bashir's past comments and behavior. From hosting Osama bin Laden
to engineering a famine in southern Sudan that killed hundreds of
thousands, Bashir's criminal track record extends well beyond
Darfur, and leaves little question as to why the prosecutor is
moving forward with charges.
Read "Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir: The Record Speaks for
Itself" http://www.enoughproject.org/node/975
The Merits of Justice
John Norris, David Sullivan, and John Prendergast
07/14/2008
Enough (http://www.enoughproject.org)
Would more people, or less people, rob banks if there was no
penalty for robbing banks?
This week the International Criminal Court, or ICC, took important
steps toward promoting peace and accountability in Sudan by urging
an arrest warrant for crimes against humanity against the Sudanese
President Omar al-Bashir. Sadly, but somewhat unsurprisingly, the
step has set off a chorus of hand-wringing among certain diplomats,
academics, and pundits who are now arguing that holding
perpetrators of crimes against humanity accountable for their
actions is unhelpful. In the Financial Times a columnist positively
quelled at the notion of bad people being held responsible for
their actions, bemoaning that "the threat of international justice
may in fact be working against peace.- A veteran academic expressed
his worry that almost all African senior officials could be made
vulnerable to similar charges by this precedent.
Let's be clear: Holding people accountable for war crimes is not
only the right thing to do from a moral perspective - it directly
promotes peace and makes future such abuses less likely. Part of
the reason Darfur has remained locked in crisis for years is that
the international community has been slow to acknowledge what has
always been painfully obvious: The janjaweed militias that have
terrorized and decimated Darfur have been directed by the Sudanese
government. The militias were financed by the government, and
received direct battlefield support from the Sudanese military. The
International Criminal Court is doing no more than acknowledging
the plain, painful truth of Sudan's tragedy. The prosecutor should
be congratulated for recognizing that turning a blind eye to war
crimes is not helpful.
Case One: Slobodan Milosevic
If the hand-wringing all feels a bit familiar, it is because we
have been through this more than once before. In 1999, during the
Kosovo conflict, Slobodan Milosevic was indicted in the middle of
not only a NATO bombing campaign to reverse the ethnic cleaning in
Kosovo, but of high-level peace talks between the United States,
Russia, and Finland to end the war.
Very few commentators took exception with the notion that Milosevic
had been intimately involved in directing ethnic cleansing,
genocide, and sundry other war crimes in Bosnia and Kosovo. But
Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin said the indictment "pulled out
the rug from under the negotiating process," as both Russia and
China decried what they called a "political" indictment that was
designed to scuttle peace talks Others suggested the indictment
would push Milosevic to stay in power permanently or lead his
forces to adopt an even more brutal approach on the ground in
Kosovo. Some insisted that Milosevic would never face justice
because the question of how he would be handed over to authorities
was not immediately apparent. Instead of appreciating that
Milosevic employed ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in large part because
he had used such tactics with impunity in the earlier Bosnia
conflict, commentators appeared deathly afraid that the
international community might somehow offend Mr. Milosevic's
delicate sensibilities.
Yet, in retrospect, the work of the Yugoslav tribunal and the
indictment of Milosevic led to none of the doomsday scenarios
envisioned by the skeptics. Yes, the Russians postponed a single
diplomatic trip to Belgrade for one week to express their
dissatisfaction with the indictment, but the peace talks resumed
quickly and Milosevic accepted the demands that were placed upon
him: Kosovar refugees were allowed to return home; Serb forces
withdrew from the province and a NATO-led force entered to provide
security.
Milosevic's hold on power did not last long after the 1999 war and
his indictment. When he tried to steal a September 2000
presidential election, Milosevic was ousted by massive street
protests, and turned over to the international tribunal a number of
months later. He died of a heart attack during his war crimes trial
proceedings.
So, what did we learn from the Milosevic example?
- Indictments don't necessarily derail peace talks and, indeed,
they seem to be most helpful in clarifying the minds of dictators
that their very existence is at stake.
- Indictments send a powerful message to the cronies, business
partners, and sycophants that orbit around such dictators that they
may well be lashed to a sinking ship and should get out while they
can. This allows more responsible political voices space to
challenge the authority and destructive policies of the ruling
government. The Kosovo conflict marked an important point when
Milosevic's corrupt business partners began to see him as much as
a liability as an asset.
- War crimes indictments have a chilling effect on commanders
on the ground. Few military commanders want to be vulnerable to
such prosecutions, and they are more likely to alter their behavior
if they know the international community is serious about justice.
- The fact that members of different ethnic communities were
indicted for their particular crimes furthered the sense that the
tribunal approached its work with an even hand.
- More broadly, the war crimes prosecutions in the Balkans have
been a remarkable cornerstone in allowing remarkably rapid progress
in reconstruction, stability, and democratization across the region
because they removed the most noxious nationalists who had
inflicted such terrible suffering on the civilian population.
Case Two: Charles Taylor and His Conditional Exile
In June 2003, Liberia was on the brink. Rebel forces had advanced
within 10 miles of the capital in the first of a series of
offensives that Liberians would dub "World Wars" for their
ferocity. President Charles Taylor, who had directed a brutal proxy
war in Sierra Leone using legions of child soldiers, was now facing
a taste of his own medicine.
On June 4, Taylor was in Accra, Ghana for the opening of peace
talks that aimed to negotiate an end to the Liberian conflict.
Shortly after Taylor promised to step down by the end of the year,
the special court for Sierra Leone unveiled an indictment against
Taylor for war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated
during that country's brutal war. The court hoped that Ghanaian
authorities would arrest Taylor, but instead he was allowed to
return to Liberia, albeit as an international fugitive. Some
diplomats engaged in the negotiations denounced the indictment as
an impediment to peace, and the presidents of South Africa,
Nigeria, and Ghana complained that they had been "sandbagged" by
the timing of the indictments as they tried to persuade Taylor to
resign. Pessimists were quick to critique the court's prosecutor
for interjecting the concept of justice into the rarefied
realpolitik of peace negotiations.
In fact, Taylor's indictment, combined with unprecedented levels of
international pressure (including a U.S. warship on the horizon)
helped to build the leverage necessary to actually move him out of
Monrovia into a negotiated exile in Nigeria. The terms of this deal
were clear: As long as he stayed out of Liberian politics, Nigeria
would keep him out of the hands of the court, despite an Interpol
warrant for his arrest.
Despite stern public warnings from his host, Taylor did not hold up
his end of the bargain.From exile in Calabar, Nigeria, Taylor used
his connections to international criminal networks to fund a range
of presidential candidates in Liberia's transitional presidential
elections, delivered support to armed groups in the region, and
even supported an assassination attempt against the President of
Guinea.
Taylor's post-exile behavior violated the terms of his asylum, but
it was also a significant change from the utterly brutal behavior
exhibited during his career as a warlord. Despite his regional
reach, Taylor never again attempted to reignite the regional
contagion of violence against civilians that he had previously
exported to Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Ivory Coast. International
pressure in the form of his indictment dramatically changed the
context of conflict in Liberia and helped to bring about genuine
civilian protection on the ground.
Nigeria continued to host the intransigent Taylor through Liberia's
tense elections. Following the inauguration of President Ellen
Johnson-Sirleaf, political pressure to deliver Taylor to justice
mounted. A dramatic and nearly successful escape attempt was foiled
at the last minute when Taylor tried to cross from Nigeria into
Cameroon. Taylor was turned over to the special court and is
currently facing trial on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes
against humanity. Meanwhile, Liberia benefited from the deployment
of a sizeable Chapter VII peacekeeping operation and substantial
international support during its transition. Under President
Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia is on the long road to recovery.
Today, self-professed realists argue that Taylor's handover to
justice sent the wrong message to dictators like Bashir and
Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, maintaining that it undermines the
credibility of amnesty offers to dictators who are all the more
likely to hold on to power at any cost. This facile misreading of
history misses the real lessons from Taylor:
- Conditional asylum remains a viable option. Taylor opted for
exile because the right combination of pressures was belatedly
applied by regional and international actors. It is the
responsibility of international mediators to make clear the terms
of such a deal and for the countries involved to ensure its
credibility. There was no one but Taylor to blame that he broke a
deal to which he agreed.
- International justice shines harsh light on human rights
violations in otherwise remote places, deterring would-be warlords
from emulating thugs like Taylor. The special court for Sierra
Leone has helped to end the cycle of impunity in the Mano River
region.
Case Three: Holding a Criminal Regime to Account in Sudan
Skeptics warn that the ICC's action against Bashir may cause Sudan
to implode. But hundreds of thousands in Darfur have been killed or
displaced by violence and its fallout. The UN-led peacekeeping
effort remains largely stillborn, with seven peacekeepers killed in
an ambush on July 8. Peace talks have been a dead-end, and tensions
between North-South in Sudan threaten to unravel an earlier peace
deal and could hasten Sudan's disintegration. This is not a status
quo that we should worry about upsetting with an arrest warrant.
On the contrary, the only way by which the fundamental dynamics of
conflict in Sudan will change is by introducing accountability.
President Bashir's behavior in Darfur was predictably consistent
with the way he presided over a war strategy in southern Sudan that
led to seven times as many deaths. In waging its conflicts, the
Sudanese government has repeatedly employed a strategy of
divide-and-destroy at multiple levels of society, arming
neighboring militias against each other to create a flimsy sense of
plausible deniability that they were not directing the violence. No
one on the ground had any illusion about the Sudanese government's
criminal behavior, and neither should the international community.
Human rights violations committed by rebels in Darfur and the South
should not distract attention from the culpability of the Sudanese
government in deliberately directing the great majority of these
atrocities.
Like Milosevic and Taylor, impunity has emboldened Bashir over the
years. It would be illogical for him to alter a brutal but
successful formula for retaining power. Janjaweed militias backed
by the Sudanese armed forces destroyed the homes and livelihoods of
Darfur's non-Arab peoples. Today in the camps this slow-moving
genocide continues, by attrition, through disease and malnutrition.
Remember, genocide is not only gas chambers or militias with
machetes. Genocide is the deliberate creation of conditions aimed
at bringing about the destruction of specific groups of people on
the basis of their identity, such as we have seen in Darfur. ICC
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's June 5 statement before the
Security Council clearly articulates the organized use of organized
insecurity, systematic rape, and deliberate destruction of
communities in these camps.
The case against Bashir introduces three new elements into the
Darfur equation: leverage, deterrence, and protection. How they are
utilized by the international community will help determine whether
or not a solution for Darfur is at hand. Until now, the UN Security
Council and powerful states have done little in the way of building
direct leverage that can be utilized in support of either peace
talks or protecting civilians on the ground. Although the ICC
remains independent of the Security Council, there are means by
which its investigations can be suspended or its targets given
security assurances in exchange for a binding exile deal. Bashir
now must understand that his fate is tied to a peaceful resolution
of the Darfur crisis, a sensible peace deal, and deployment of the
UN-led protection force. After Moreno-Ocampo presents his case, the
ICC judges will most likely take several months to make a decision
on issuing a warrant for arrest. During this time the Security
Council should vigorously build leverage in support of a peace deal
and deployment of peacekeepers. Equally, the Security Council needs
to understand that any effort to derail justice or interfere with
the chief Prosecutor's work would be a disaster.
Deterrence is also a positive new potential factor. Proper follow
up to Bashir's warrant could deter future perpetrators of crimes
against humanity in Sudan.
Least discussed but potentially most important are the implications
the arrest warrant will have for protecting civilians. The record
shows over the last two decades that General Bashir's regime has
backed off its most deadly war strategies when international
pressure has been well coordinated and at its high points. When the
spotlight was on the regime's use of food as a weapon, it relented.
When the pressure focused on ending bombing of civilians in the
South, it stopped. When the temperature went up over the regime's
facilitation of a resumption of slavery, it abandoned its strategy
and slave-raiding ended. Putting the spotlight on Bashir provides
a significant point of pressure that if backed by key governments
and the UN Security Council could lead to real protection for the
civilian population.
Darfurian Perspectives on Justice
Absent from all too many discussions about peace and justice in
Darfur is the voice of the Darfurians themselves. In our visits to
the region, from reports coming from inside Darfur as well as the
Darfurian diaspora, the people of Darfur stand united behind the
demand to end impunity. Despite the many divisions among Darfuri
groups that have slowed progress toward a viable peace in Sudan,
our research has found that Darfuris speak with one voice on
several issues. The demand for justice is one which has galvanized
Darfurians even amid dire circumstances.
The people of Darfur demand that the government of Sudan adheres to
the rule of international law by arresting and surrendering
suspects to the ICC. They are very clear on who they think was the
perpetrator in this case. In numerous videos and documentaries
filmed inside Darfur or in the refugee camps, displaced Darfuris
squarely place the blame on the government of Sudan. Some people
mention the name of President Bashir as the culprit, others mention
Director of National Intelligence Salah Gosh and other state
officials, but the message is clear: It is the regime that is
responsible for the genocide.
Many Darfurians realize that it is impossible for the ICC to
prosecute every alleged genocidaire in Darfur. They posit a
solution whereby the ICC prosecutes the worst offenders, while
serious reform to the Sudanese justice system enables it to handle
the cases of the lower ranks of implicated persons.
ICC charges against Bashir, or any high-level official from his
government, will be welcomed by Darfurians of all walks of life,
because to them it represents the first step in ending impunity,
and a hope for closure to a life of misery that seemed endless. It
would also be a recognition from the international community that
justice for Darfur will be served, even if it was delayed for a
while.
Conclusion
Several spurious arguments continually obstruct efforts to secure
both peace and justice in war-torn corners of the globe. World
weary "experts" are often far too quick to speak about Sudan the
same way they used to speak about the Balkans and West Africa as a
hopeless wellspring of endless ethnic tensions doomed to perpetual
violence. It is baffling why anyone would think that acceding to
the demands of war criminals is a sensible path to securing peace.
Conflict in Sudan may be complicated, but at its root is the
criminal behavior of a regime that has continually used murderous
and genocidal tactics to maintain power. Unless concerted
international action is taken to impose a cost on the perpetrators
of these crimes, they will not change their behavior. And although
international politics may preclude punishment for every regime
that may be guilty of atrocities, just because we cannot yet go
after every war criminal does not mean we should go after none.
Two and a half million Sudanese lives have been extinguished as a
result of the war tactics of President Bashir and his regime, and
the chief Prosecutor simply and elegantly makes clear that such
crimes can not be committed without cost. Yes, there will be many
perilous days ahead in Sudan full of high-stakes diplomacy,
confrontation, and difficult choices before Bashir and his
accomplishes face justice. Yes, the voices of the naysayers at
times will reach a crescendo. However, the International Criminal
Court should be applauded for taking the first brave step down this
important road. The world will ultimately be a better place for its
action.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at [email protected]. Please
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or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
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