Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, offered an arresting description of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor during testy exchanges at the security council this week.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo had unfairly singled out the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, by accusing him of genocide, Abdalhaleem said, adding: ”He is a screwdriver in the workshop of double standards.”
Sudan’s politicians and diplomats have had a lot of other things to say, more or less angrily, since Moreno-Ocampo, using highly emotive language, asked the ICC earlier this month formally to indict Bashir for war crimes allegedly committed in Darfur.
Foremost among them is the assertion that the court, all of whose current cases concern African countries, is visiting two-faced ”white man’s justice” on Khartoum.
Yet to the surprise of many observers, neither a feared violent backlash against UN troops and Western aid workers in Sudan nor intensified fighting between government forces and Darfurian rebel factions has materialised.
Instead Bashir has launched an intense campaign of regional and international diplomacy to stop Moreno-Ocampo in his tracks.
Abdalhaleem’s screwdriver remark came as South Africa and Libya, with the tacit backing of Russia and China, threatened to delay renewal of the mandate for UN and African Union peacekeepers in Darfur unless the security council suspended the case against Bashir. At the same time, Sudanese attempts to forge resistance to the ICC’s action continue apace.
The AU and the Arab League, accepting the ”insult to Africa” argument, have called for an ICC delay after heavy lobbying by Khartoum. The organisations expressed concern that Bashir’s indictment, if confirmed in The Hague, might seriously destabilise Sudan. Bashir was a principal architect of the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement. If he is removed, it is suggested, the country’s north-south conflict could reignite, as it almost did in Abyei in May.
Some African leaders, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is one, harbour an additional worry: that the Bashir case could prove a precedent with implications for themselves.
Bashir has also been actively securing his home base since the ICC targeted him, building defensive alliances with former political foes and promising a new peace plan for Darfur, which he briefly visited at the weekend.
Khartoum has resumed diplomatic relations with neighbouring Chad, with which it threatened to go to war earlier this year.
Abdel Basit Sabderat, the justice minister, is talking about holding Darfur war crimes trials in Sudan’s own courts. Sabderat said he has invited legal experts from the UN and other bodies to evaluate the country’s legal system. He even seemed to suggest that the humanitarian affairs minister, Ahmed Haroun, and Ali Kushayb, a militia leader, both indicted by the ICC for war crimes last year, could face investigation and trial at home. Sudan has refused to surrender the pair to the international court.
Observers say these shifts are attributable to the pressure placed on Bashir by the ICC’s action and that he knows his diplomatic charm offensive cannot shield him indefinitely. The beckoning solution, therefore, is improved cooperation by Khartoum on ending the emergency in Darfur and on other issues in return for the security council freezing the case against Bashir.
Although the US reportedly opposes such a crude quid pro quo, it could provide a way out for all sides. If the West pushes too hard, the fragile prospect of free, fully democratic presidential elections scheduled for next year could be dashed. So could north-south cooperation. More than that, Bashir could in desperation resort to the violent tactics he has so far eschewed.
Letting Bashir off the hook would undoubtedly be seen as a blow to the cause of internationally administered justice.
But among the technicians in the workshop of double standards, it might just be thought preferable to yet another war in Africa.–