ICC Issues Arrest Warrant Sudan President Omar Al Bashir

Today the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Bashir on five counts of crimes against humanity and two counts of war crimes, but not genocide:

Today, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for the arrest of Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, President of Sudan, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is suspected of being criminally responsible, as an indirect (co-)perpetrator, for intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians, and pillaging their property. This is the first warrant of arrest ever issued for a sitting Head of State by the ICC.

Omar Al Bashir’s official capacity as a sitting Head of State does not exclude his criminal responsibility, nor does it grant him immunity against prosecution before the ICC, according to Pre-Trial Chamber I.

According to the Judges, the above-mentioned crimes were allegedly committed during a five year counter-insurgency campaign by the Government of Sudan against the Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and other armed groups opposing the Government of Sudan in Darfur. It is alleged that this campaign started soon after the April 2003 attack on El Fasher airport as a result of a common plan agreed upon at the highest level of the Government of Sudan by Omar Al Bashir and other high-ranking Sudanese political and military leaders. It lasted at least until 14 July 2008, the date of the filing of the Prosecution’s Application for the warrant of arrest for Omar Al Bashir.

A core component of that campaign was the unlawful attack on that part of the civilian population of Darfur – belonging largely to the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups – perceived to be close to the organised armed groups opposing the Government of Sudan in Darfur. The said civilian population was to be unlawfully attacked by Government of Sudan forces, including the Sudanese Armed Forces and their allied Janjaweed Militia, the Sudanese Police Force, the National Intelligence and Security Service and the Humanitarian Aid Commission.

The Chamber found that Omar al Bashir, as the de jure and de facto President of Sudan and Commander-in-Chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces, is suspected of having coordinated the design and implementation of the counter-insurgency campaign. In the alternative, it also found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that he was in control of all branches of the “apparatus” of the State of Sudan and used such control to secure the implementation of the counter-insurgency campaign.

The counts

The warrant of arrest for Omar Al Bashir lists 7 counts on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility (article 25(3)(a)) including:

* five counts of crimes against humanity: murder – article 7(1)(a); extermination – article 7(1)(b); forcible transfer – article 7(1)(d);
torture – article 7(1)(f); and rape – article 7(1)(g);

* two counts of war crimes: intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities – article 8(2)(e)(i); and pillaging – article 8(2)(e)(v).

Findings concerning genocide

The majority of the Chamber, Judge Anita Ušacka dissenting, found that the material provided by the Prosecution in support of its application for a warrant of arrest failed to provide reasonable grounds to believe that the Government of Sudan acted with specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups. Consequently, the crime of genocide is not included in the warrant issued for the arrest of Omar Al Bashir. Nevertheless, the Judges stressed that if additional evidence is gathered by the Prosecution, the decision would not prevent the Prosecution from requesting an amendment to the warrant of arrest in order to include the crime of genocide.

Cooperation of States

The Judges directed the Registrar to prepare and transmit, as soon as practicable, a request for cooperation for the arrest and surrender of Omar Al Bashir to Sudan, and to all States Parties to the Rome Statute and all United Nations Security Council (UNSC) members that are not party to the Statute, as well as to any other State as may be necessary.

The Judges found that, according to UNSC resolution 1593 and articles 25 and 103 of the UN Charter, the obligation of the Government of Sudan to fully cooperate with the Court prevails over any other international obligation that the Government of Sudan may have undertaken pursuant to any other international agreement.

Pre-Trial Chamber I also found that the Government of Sudan has systematically refused to cooperate with the Court since the issuance of warrants for the arrest of the Sudanese Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Ahmad Harun, and a regional Janjaweed militia leader, Ali Kushayb, on 2 May 2007. As a result, the Judges emphasised that, according to article 87(7) of the Statute, if the Government of Sudan continues to fail to comply with its cooperation obligations to the Court, the competent Chamber “may make a finding to that effect” and decide to “refer the matter […] to the Security Council.”

Furthermore, the Judges noted that the dispositive part of UNSC resolution 1593 expressly urges all States, whether party or not to the Rome Statute, as well as international and regional organisations to “cooperate fully” with the Court.

You can read the actual warrant here [PDF].

The Truth Will Not Set You Free

I am returning simply to post this excerpt from Richard Just's truly excellent article in The New Republic: "The Truth Will Not Set You Free" and urge you to read the entire thing:

Genocide really is different from other foreign policy crises, in that it will not wait. Either you stop genocide immediately or you fail to stop it. And when it came to the question of troops, the Darfur activists were split. Many were uncomfortable with the use of force. Cheadle and Prendergast are candid about this: "Many of us peace and human rights advocates are rightly reluctant about the use of force. We need to get over it. There is such a thing as evil in this world, and sometimes the only way to confront evil is through the judicious use of military force." Amen, as long as "judicious" also means effective.

Eventually the movement coalesced around the idea that U.N. troops were the answer. In the wake of the Iraq debacle, the idea of sending U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur represented for many activists a sort of safe compromise--troops would be put on the ground, but American power would not be wielded. It was military action that they could endorse without opening a dissonance in their worldview. Even Prendergast, one of the most hawkish Darfur activists (and one of the smartest), endorses the U.N. option in his book as the solution that makes the most sense. To be fair, he has also suggested elsewhere that the United States should keep other military options on the table; but this latter position certainly places him outside the mainstream of the Darfur activist community.

At least one shortcoming of the Save Darfur movement cannot really be blamed on the movement's members. While its existence has undoubtedly helped to focus the attention of politicians on Darfur, it may also, in a bizarre way, have provided an excuse for these same politicians to avoid the fundamental responsibility that leadership entails. There is no better example than the introduction to Cheadle and Prendergast's book, which was written by Senators Barack Obama and Sam Brownback. "So what does it take to stop genocide?" they write. "What does it take to make the world listen and respond? It takes a number of important tools, including diplomacy, financial resources, and effective security forces. And in a world where these resources are finite, it often takes pressure--pressure from ordinary individuals standing together for an extraordinary cause--to mobilize these resources. In short, it takes you." Get it? Obama and Brownback are urging us to urge them to stop the genocide. And Obama repeats this weird formula in the movie version of The Devil Came on Horseback, remarking that "we need greater pressure from the American public to tell their senators this is something we are paying attention to, and we want you to prioritize it."

The circular nature of this logic is maddening, especially coming from Obama, who may soon be the most powerful man in the world. Such logic misunderstands the way a representative democracy works. The line that connects people to politicians is not a one-way street. In a democracy, leaders must be responsive to people's views--but people's views are also shaped by their leaders. The failure of leaders to act cannot be explained by the failure of the public to demand, or to demand more loudly, that they act, unless of course the leaders wish to be regarded merely as followers. Politicians have an obligation to do more than urge us to urge them to formulate solutions to problems, particularly when the problem is an emergency that requires swift action. Genocide will not be stopped by an ideas festival, in or out of government.

Break

Having posted here on an almost daily basis for nearly three years, I have to admit that the entire crisis is wearing me down and I am finding it harder and harder to keep reading and posting articles about the daily ins-and-outs of what is happening.

On top of that, I am getting increasingly busy with work and other things - so I am going to put this blog on hiatus for the time being.

But for those of you still seeking daily updates on what is happening in the region, please visit Passion of the Present, which has consistently posted a vast array of coverage, and the ENOUGH Project.

Best,
KM

Darfur: Peacekeepers Without a Peace to Keep

From the New York Times

IF anyone needed proof that Darfur has degenerated into a peacekeeper’s nightmare, 30 truckloads of armed men forcefully delivered it two weekends ago.

They stormed a small African Union garrison in a dusty village, Haskanita, and massacred 10 African peacekeepers, looted their equipment and torched their base. The attack came as the African Union was preparing for a critical peace conference on Darfur and the United Nations was rushing to assemble a beefed-up force that will total 26,000 soldiers under joint U.N.-African Union command — the largest peacekeeping mission in the world.

Is the intervention too late? Or maybe, as some experts argue, too early?

The problem with Darfur is that it is not a Kosovo, an East Timor, or a Cyprus, all places where United Nations blue helmets have stepped between well-defined warring parties and stopped the bloodshed. Darfur is experiencing a different, messier kind of war.

Though often simplified, the situation in Darfur has become a chaotic free-for-all with many warring pieces, Arab versus Arab, rebel versus rebel, bandit versus bandit, all fighting one another in a desiccated, burned-out wasteland overrun with weapons and increasingly lethal for aid workers and peacekeepers.

If anything, Darfur resembles Somalia in the 1990s, when the failure of American-backed United Nations peacekeepers to subdue teenage gunmen in flip-flops ushered in 16 years of chaos that rages on today.

“Unless Unamid,” the abbreviation for the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur, “develops a strategy, wises up very fast to the complexity of the conflict in 2007 and gets out of its fortresses, which is more unlikely than ever post-Haskanita, it will very soon become a major part of the problem,” said Julie Flint, a London-based journalist and co-author of “Darfur: A Short History of a Long War.” She cited the amount of water peacekeepers would consume — up to 40 times per person what a typical Darfurian uses, the burden on already broken roads and communications, and the huge expectations the force’s arrival will create.

“Darfurians are expecting to be saved by Unamid, to have roads opened, the janjaweed disarmed and banditry ended,” she said. This, she added, is “mission impossible,” however well the troops perform.

Impossible or not, some experts emphasized that if the force is to have any chance of success, it must be willing to fight robustly and take casualties.

Roméo Dallaire, the former United Nations commander in Rwanda who was ordered to essentially watch the 1994 genocide there explode before his eyes, said the troops must “go inside the camps, do night patrols and snap inspections, essentially go wherever they need to, without the Sudanese Army or police blocking them.” He said they also need to go after “every one of those splinter groups” and they’ll need the proper gear to do so.

Though the United Nations has gotten pledges for the foot soldiers it needs from countries like Egypt, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and Thailand, it is still waiting on developed countries to cough up 24 helicopters, as well as heavy trucks and other equipment.

“Unless the commander screams to the high heavens for the force multipliers his troops need, he will fail,” said Mr. Dallaire, now a senator in Canada.

John Prendergast, co-chairman of the Enough project, an initiative to raise awareness of crimes against humanity, said the new peacekeepers needed to “make a statement early on that this force is different from the last one,” referring to the current African force.

“Let’s say a village has been attacked and the attackers are retreating,” he said. “If there’s good intelligence about who did this, then it’s very important for the peacekeepers to engage them, whoever they are — rebels, militias, the government — so they and other groups know there is a cost to their actions.”

The peacekeepers, he said, can’t forget their core mission — protecting people. “For example, they need to go on firewood patrols and protect the women collecting wood from getting raped,” he said. “No, this isn’t going to end the conflict. But it could at least end one of the most horrific subplots of this saga.”

Jane Holl Lute, an assistant secretary general at the United Nations, said the fragmentation of Darfur’s armed groups could be “a sign of weakness,” and restoring law and order would offer the peacekeepers an opportunity to win over the local population. She cited Haiti and Liberia as precedents.

Congo, which is home to the largest current United Nations peacekeeping force — more than 17,000 troops — is also an example. There, peacekeepers have made a dent in attacks on civilians, though by no means have they stopped them all.

When to act in Darfur has been a question since the conflict began in 2003, primarily as a rebellion by some non-Arab tribes. That fueled a brutal counterinsurgency by government-backed Arab militias, the feared janjaweed, who burned villages, raped women and slaughtered civilians. At least 200,000 people are thought to have died.

Leslie Lefkow, an Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch, said, “There was definitely a lost opportunity for a robust intervention in 2004, when the situation was clearer in terms of the number and nature of the armed groups.”

On the other hand, there are dangers in jumping in too early.

“A peacekeeping force can end up prolonging the conflict by preventing either side from winning,” said Michael Clough, a former director of the Africa program at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Unfortunately, conflicts seldom end until one side loses — or realizes that it is likely to lose unless it agrees to a negotiated settlement.”

The ideal situation for using peacekeepers, of course, is when a deal has already been struck and they can simply monitor it. In Bosnia that made all the difference. Before the Dayton accords, peacekeepers were powerless to stop massacres, like the 8,000 people killed in Srebrenica, in 1995, in front of Dutch soldiers. After Dayton, there was a peace to keep, and it held.

And so the timing of the expanded force for Darfur may be backward. Because of the enormous international pressure, the decision to send the peacekeepers came first, and now there is a scramble to force a political settlement before they arrive.

Sam Ibok, a negotiator for the Africa Union, said one complication is that Darfur’s rebel leaders have “prematurely ripened.” That is, Western activists lifted them from obscurity and saw them as heroes in a very complicated conflict, before they had much chance to learn organizational skills. As a result, he said, “it’s very difficult for them to make peace.”

Ditto for the Sudanese government, which does not have a stellar record of living up to its word. On Thursday, former rebels in south Sudan abruptly quit the national unity government to protest what they said was a policy by Sudan’s leaders of undercutting the peace deal they signed two years ago.

The reforms they are demanding — power sharing, wealth sharing and democratizing Sudan’s militarized regime — are the same ones that the rebels are fighting for in Darfur.

Darfur: From Bad to Worse

An op-ed by Alex de Waal in The Los Angeles Times

Helping bring peace to southern Sudan in 2005 was the Bush administration's finest foreign policy achievement. It is now unraveling, risking a new north-south civil war that would surpass Darfur as a political and humanitarian disaster.

The Darfur advocacy campaigns have familiarized the American public with the suffering and abuse visited on civilians in that region of western Sudan. The people of southern Sudan suffered no less during the years of civil war beginning in 1983. The successive governments in Khartoum had two weapons of choice: freelance militias licensed to raid, burn and plunder; and deliberate famine that starved southern Sudanese to the point where vast tracts of their fertile land are now depopulated. The stakes were undeniably high. Khartoum didn't want to lose control of the south, which has oil. But most of those who live in southern Sudan -- Christians and followers of traditional theistic faiths -- believe that their homeland should separate from northern Sudan and end generations of exploitation by Khartoum's Arab-Islamic elites. Over 20 years, up to 2 million southerners perished.

A concerted diplomatic effort by neighboring African countries, backed by the U.S., Britain and Norway, brought Africa's longest civil war to an end. The Bush administration's commitment to peace was pivotal. In his first months in office, President Bush reversed the previous Clinton policy of backing Sudan's armed opposition -- especially the southern-based Sudan People's Liberation Movement led by John Garang -- in favor of a negotiated accord. U.S. pressure helped make that peace a reality. More important still was a shared vision of a democratically transformed Sudan with a government of national unity that had a place for all, including President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir and the Islamists.

The peace deal was signed in Kenya in January 2005. But, as diplomats noted at the time, the deal was just a beginning; implementing the agreement would be 10 times harder. It includes complex provisions for power sharing, dividing the national wealth, demarcating the internal north-south boundary, integrating government troops and former rebels into joint military units, holding democratic elections in 2009 and holding a referendum in the south on self-determination in 2011. But then Garang died in a helicopter crash, and Vice President Ali Osman Taha, the leading moderate voice in Khartoum, found himself politically marginalized. With Darfur engulfed in war, progress became harder still.

Recent weeks have brought an accelerating drumbeat of warnings that the peace accord is breaking down. Garang's successor as leader of southern Sudan has spoken of a return to war. Southern leaders complain repeatedly that their counterparts from the north, in the National Congress Party, renege on agreements and make key decisions behind their backs. On Thursday, Pagan Amum, secretary-general of the SPLM, announced that his party was pulling out of the unity government until key elements of the peace agreement were fully implemented. Meanwhile, both sides are expanding their armies, aiming -- for now -- to deter the other from initiating a war.

Few Sudanese doubt that a new war would be even more hideous than its predecessor. The south would try to secede; for President Bashir it would be a fight to the death. Millions of southern civilians now live in the north, including in and around the capital, Khartoum. The SPLM has supporters and troops in other parts of the north as well, including the highly combustible Kordofan region. That area, next to Darfur, already is suffering a spillover of that war, and just last week the United Nations warned that violent conflict could erupt there. Potentially compounding disaster, a secessionist war probably would draw in Egypt on Khartoum's side and other neighbors, such as Uganda, in support of the south, and ignite a conflagration throughout the Nile Valley.

The deepening political crisis also poisons the chances for any peaceful resolution of Darfur's conflict. Why should Darfur's rebels make a deal with a government that seems to be collapsing? If it does collapse, the war in Darfur will enter a new and more deadly phase.

The dream of democratic transformation in Sudan is ailing, but it is far from dead. So far, the north-south cease-fire is holding. But the 2005 peace accord urgently needs the full diplomatic strength of the Bush administration behind it -- especially if peace in Sudan is to be any part of the Bush legacy.

Darfur: Prosecutor Calls For Arrest of War Crimes Suspects

From The Canadian Press

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is urging Canadians and people around the world to tell their governments to help nab suspected Darfur war criminals.

"One important thing the world did to prevent (genocide) was establish this court," Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Saturday in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"Now, the challenge is to implement the law decisions."

Moreno-Ocampo, who spoke at a global conference Saturday on the prevention of genocide in Montreal, said land and cattle have been taken away from more than two million Sudanese, many of whom were forced into "squalid" camps.

More than 200,000 people have been killed during the conflict, which began in 2003.

Those behind these "massive atrocities" must be apprehended for the clash to end, he said.

In the spring, the international court issued warrants for Sudanese government minister Ahmed Harun and janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb, both suspected of committing war crimes in Darfur.

However, Sudan's government has refused to arrest the suspects.

Harun, meanwhile, was appointed as the country's humanitarian affairs minister, which puts him in charge of the people he displaced, Moreno-Ocampo added.

"There is no solution to Darfur if Harun is not arrested," he said.

"I have a strong case against the minister, now the Sudan has to arrest him."

But he said Darfur presents a challenge for the global community because the United Nations cannot deploy peacekeepers in the area unless it has an agreement with Sudan.

Moreno-Ocampo called on Canadians and people around the world to speak up about Darfur.

"It is time to break the silence," he said.

Canada's position that security should focus more on the individual rather than the state has given it a leading role in bringing war criminals to justice, he added.

"I hope Canada still leads, it's very important," Moreno-Ocampo said.

Rebecca Hamilton, a Harvard University law student and co-founder of a cross-campus organization condemning the Sudanese genocide, said although it's only five years old, the International Criminal Court can deal with war crimes on a permanent basis.

However, without its own police force to execute arrest warrants, The Hague-based court needs co-operation.

"Like anything, it requires the support of citizens," said Hamilton, who worked in the Sudan in 2004.

Hamilton attended the McGill University conference to launch a declaration from student leaders of 54 universities in 23 countries condemning the Darfur conflict.

She said prevention is key.

"It's not enough to just, when the crisis hits the headlines, to suddenly go 'Oh, we've got to do something,' and scramble," she said.

"You're always going to be too late."

Darfur: Canada Betraying Reputation, Says Dallaire

From The Montreal Gazette

Canada should take a leading role in bringing the ongoing slaughter of millions of civilians in the Darfur region of Sudan to an end, Senator Roméo Dallaire said yesterday.

Mr. Dallaire, a retired Canadian Forces general who commanded the United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda during the Tutsi genocide in 1994, said the government has shown no willingness to uphold the "responsibility to protect," the doctrine it came up with and convinced the United Nations to accept in 2005.

"Canada loves its reputation but is not willing to pay the price," he said in an interview at a conference on the prevention of genocide.

The doctrine -- the brainchild of former Liberal foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy -- obliges the United Nations to shield people all over the world from genocide and ethnic cleansing at the hands of their own governments, even if it means military intervention.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, echoed Mr. Dallaire's sentiments, saying that Canada also took a leading role in establishing the ICC.

"What message does silence bring to the victims in Darfur? What message does the silence bring to the perpetrators?" he said. "People need our help and attention now."

About 2.5 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes since February 2003 as a result of a government-supported campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan's western region bordering Chad.

They've been executed, raped, tortured and had their property pillaged, observers say.

The Sudanese government has rejected the full deployment of a proposed African Union-United Nations protection force to Darfur and it impedes efforts to protect civilians.

"I'm still in awe in the most pejorative way of how we're being fiddled with by an astute, foxy and genocidal regime in Sudan," Mr. Dallaire said.

"What you have is the Sudanese applying all kinds of problems that ultimately will render a force ineffective."