Why has the ICC picked on Bashir as their first target?
Norbert Mao
It is no secret that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been investigating and is still investigating several cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Great Lakes region of Africa.
As the peace talks between the Uganda Government and the LRA progressed, the ICC found its role to be a major topic of discussion. Now the ICC has announced its most daring action—issuing a warrant of arrest against a sitting head of state. This is within the ICC’s mandate because the Rome Statute, which sets up the ICC, does not recognise the domestic immunity from prosecution that constitutionally applies to a head of state like Omar Bashir.
As long as there is sufficient evidence that you have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity the fact that you are a head of state will not stop the ICC from indicting you and issuing a warrant for your arrest. The case against Bashir revolves around Darfur and the atrocities committed in the course of the war pitting the Darfur rebels against the Sudan Government and the militias allied to it.
In this clash the people of Darfur have suffered and continue to suffer gravely. Attempts have been made at peace talks to end the war in Darfur but so far no conclusive deal has been reached.
The humanitarian crisis in Darfur has attracted a lot of international attention and many world leaders have blamed Khartoum for complicity in the atrocities and also for not doing enough to protect civilians let alone end the war through a political solution.
Despite the peace deal concluded between Khartoum and the SPLA/M and Khartoum’s attempts to dissociate itself from terrorist groups, many in the Western world still treat Khartoum as a pariah state. Not only has Khartoum been linked to the LRA but also to the Osama bin Laden outfit. For this reason, Khartoum’s charm offensive mounted since September 11 has not paid huge dividends in the West. The reason for this is simple: the LRA and Darfur.
Like most wars, the war in Darfur has many actors with blood on their hands. So why has the ICC chosen to pin down Bashir and make him their first target? The ICC has many intelligent people and I am sure they took into account all things that would happen in case they decided to issue a warrant of arrest for the Sudanese president. They must have considered the repercussion of this step. So why did they go ahead regardless?
Let us consider the case of northern Uganda for comparison. Like Darfur, northern Uganda has seen unspeakable atrocities at the hands of rebels and also government forces. It is for this reason that in Juba there was a proposal for a Truth and Reconciliation commission to deal with the crimes committed in the course of the war. Yet when the Uganda government referred the case against the LRA to the ICC, it focused more on crimes by the LRA than those by the government forces. This created a controversy and put the ICC in a tight corner. To extricate itself, the ICC hosted delegations from Uganda in order to deal with concerns and also to explain itself. At that time the ICC was accused of having a blind spot for the crimes of the Uganda army and was thus lacking the impartiality to satisfy all victims of war crimes.
The ICC claimed that it was investigating all crimes but to date no action has been taken with regard to crimes by the Uganda government forces. While it is true that the scale of LRA atrocities were more dramatic and may threatening to crowd out the crimes of the Uganda army, there is something that the ICC has glossed over in the case of Uganda. That is the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in the war zones of northern Uganda.
While it is true that some civilians fled their villages voluntarily to seek safety elsewhere, the majority of those who ended up in camps were forced there. Military commanders gave villagers limited time (in some cases no more than 48 hours) to leave their villages or else they would be treated like rebels! The motive for concentrating people in the camps was said to be the safety of the civilians and also to isolate the rebels and deny them sanctuary in the scattered villages.
As we talk now, it is an established fact that the squalid conditions in the camps led to more deaths of children and civilian adults than direct rebel violence! The question the ICC was asked was how it was to assign responsibility for the concentration camps that may not have been created with genocidal intent but ended up having genocidal effect. What was most disturbing was that the LRA still managed to attack some of these camps and kill civilians under the watch of the Uganda army.
For generations, we shall still be dealing with the consequences of these so-called IDP camps and wondering whether it was a deliberate policy to subjugate a people or simply a well-intentioned policy gone wrong. That is why the ICC’s arrest warrant against Bashir is causing a lot of debate in northern Uganda.
Not only is this development likely to make the LRA cagier but also bring out their worst fears. During my journeys to the LRA hideout in Garamba they always asked whether the Uganda government would not be forced to give in to the ICC demands given that even the Nigerian strongman Olusegun Obasanjo was forced to hand over Charles Taylor.
But the more important debate is about the possibility of the ICC revisiting their files on northern Uganda and responding to calls for action against Uganda government officials who may be responsible for the anguish of northern Uganda alongside the LRA. Kampala is not Khartoum and Museveni is not Bashir but if the ICC is still the ICC then we are in for very interesting times.
Source: NewVision.co.ug
