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Sudan: The 'Problem' With Bashir is That He's a Better Suspect Than Taylor
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The East African (Nairobi)
COLUMN
22 July 2008
Posted to the web 22 July 2008
Charles Onyango - Obbo
There were two very different and significant developments in Eastern Africa in the last few days.
The International Criminal Court prosecutor Morenzo-Ocampo announced that he was moving to seek a warrant of arrest against Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir for genocide and war crimes.
At about the same time in Rwanda, the country which faced one of the worst genocides of the 20th century in 1994 (nearly one million were killed), a law was passed to amend the constitution to provide that a former president cannot be prosecuted on charges for which he was not put on trial while in office.
The amendment means that serving heads of state can be prosecuted. That is quite unusual not just in Africa, but also in the world.
The ICC prosecutor's move has been met with mostly opposition in Africa, with critics arguing it threatens the fragile peace in southern Sudan, and prospects for a negotiated settlement in Darfur, where nearly 200,000 people have been killed and other 2.5 million displaced by government troops and the Khartoum-backed militia, the Janjaweed.
But perhaps the Rwanda example demonstrates that things that are considered "impossible', or deemed to be "unAfrican" can actually be achieved more easily than most people realise.
THE "PROBLEM" WITH THE THREATENED indictment of Bashir is not that it will scuttle peace in southern Sudan and progress in Darfur, but rather that he is considered a "better" war crimes suspect than former Liberian president Charles Taylor. Taylor became the first incumbent African president to be charged by the ICC with war crimes.
In 2003, he was forced to step down from power and eventually carted off to the Hague where his trial is currently taking place.
The same leaders who all descended upon Monrovia to ensure that Taylor left, are now mealy-mouthed about Bashir. Yet, while Taylor's atrocities were informed by an element of common criminality and petty greed, Bashir's in Darfur are partly a cold cynical calculation to ethnically cleanse parts of western Sudan to make possible oil exploration unfettered by local political and cultural claims over the fields.
True, in the Sudan context, Bashir is a moderate of sorts, and if he is weakened by the threat of ICC indictment, it might make it easier for hardliners to outmanouvre him.
Even if that happens, it might not all be a disaster. It's probably better to have a regular leadership change that allows hardliners too to come to power, than have incompetent moderates rule until they are senile.
Secondly, Bashir has probably reached the limits of his ability to deliver on commitments made to the south, or to make progress on Darfur. A hardliner might be able to move matters forward because he would have more credibility with the forces now opposed to compromise.
YET AGAIN, THE AFRICAN UNION ALSO has positioned itself foolishly. An organisation that has been pressing the international community to invest more in the Darfur peacekeeping effort, and to send a UN mission to Somalia does not help its cause when it rallies to shield Bashir from Morenzo-Ocampo's onslaught.
China, perhaps the leading global defender of Bashir - and rogue Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's - government's against international censure, is also putting its future relations in Africa at risk because of a narrow focus on the oil concessions it has won in Sudan.
China is worried about losing access to oil and other resources in Africa to feed its booming economy, it's unwilling to risk that by seeming critical of brutal regimes in countries from which it buys raw materials. So it has rushed to try and seek a UN vote halting charges on Bashir.
China doesn't need lessons in the folly of such an approach. It should just take a look at the damage a similar approach has brought upon the USA, and how much of its prestige - and influence - it has squandered in the process.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group's managing editor for convergence and new products.
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