Attempts to charge Sudan's leaders with war crimes in Darfur have dramatically changed the country's political scene, says a new report by the British think tank Chatham House.
The report, which primarily focuses on the implementation of the North-South peace accord of 2005, says the application by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for an indictment against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has introduced "new volatility" into a "confused and deadlocked" situation in the country.
On the one hand, says Edward Thomas, the report's author, "most Western diplomats cannot see anything positive in this volatility – the application has made normal incentives and threats irrelevant and thereby made their lives impossible."
Also, adds Thomas, efforts to prosecute have "emboldened [Darfur] rebels not to return to the negotiating table." The ICC, he said, gave the rebels hope "that the international community would change the Sudanese regime for them, when [that]… community was mainly committing rhetorical weapons to that objective."
However, Thomas also says the indictments have forced Khartoum's ruling National Congress Party to make concessions: it has taken "important symbolic steps," including a presidential acknowledgement of Darfur's suffering, it has sought new allies from other parties and it has conceded some rebel demands.
"Although Sudan's political and economic fortunes have always been highly exposed internationally, change in Sudan comes from within, and the [attempt to prosecute]… has forced the NCP to reassess the domestic front."
Thomas says that some NCP hardliners may prefer "isolation and defiance," which would lead to more conflicts across the country. Yet he suggests that Bashir now had no alternative but to contest elections, since a democratic mandate would give him "a measure of immunity," and to win the election, the NCP would have to seek favours from other political forces.
In another section of the report, Thomas says the United States administration's 2004 finding that genocide had been committed in Darfur, and the NCP's "intransigent response," had led to "an implied, and non-credible, set of regime change threats from U.S. officials, supported by U.S. domestic constituencies.
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"At the same time, U.S. experiments in regime change in other countries have led many of its officials to reject the policy – there is a drift towards accommodating rather than destroying 'Arab' elites. [And] the security men at the top of the NCP have cooperated closely with the U.S. and its allies on counter-terrorism."
