The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court filed genocide charges Monday against Sudan’s president, fueling a debate over whether the move would help end the long-standing violence in the country’s Darfur region.
The prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, submitted evidence intended to show that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir intentionally tried to wipe out a “substantial part” of three tribes in Sudan’s western region based on their ethnicity.
Members of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups rebelled against the government in 2003. When Bashir’s army failed to defeat the rebels, he sent lawless militias known as janjaweed after the people, said Moreno-Ocampo,
who also filed charges that the Sudanese president committed crimes against humanity.
Bashir’s “motives were largely political,” the prosecutor said. “His alibi was a counterinsurgency. His intent was genocide.”
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It’s the first time the court has charged a sitting head of state.
Although Bashir has few supporters in the international community, the prosecutor’s move has divided human-rights groups and UN agencies on whether it will provide long-needed leverage against the government or spark chaos.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon expressed worry about possible retaliation against international peacekeepers and aid workers in the region, and called on the government of Sudan to protect their security.
But John Prendergast, a former U.S. State Department official who has helped elevate Darfur to the world’s attention, said that holding leaders accountable for war crimes ultimately promotes peace, and that it won’t disrupt talks in Sudan because there are none.
“The peace process is dead,” he said. “There is no process, and even more importantly, there is no leverage.”
He added that the Security Council can suspend a court investigation for a year, and that prospect is the best inducement for the government to change its behavior.
Sudan vows to fight
The Sudanese government swiftly rejected Moreno-Ocampo’s allegations and vowed to fight them “legally.”
“The government will fight according to the diplomatic way, and also with advocates and will stand against these accusations by Ocampo,” said Rabie Atti, a spokesman for the ruling National Congress Party. “All the statements of Ocampo depend on false information.”
On Monday, the Sudanese leader appeared at an elaborate law-signing ceremony in Khartoum, where dozens of cheering lawmakers, diplomats and military leaders paraded past him.
Moreno-Ocampo argued that Bashir, as head of the state, the army and the ruling party, holds ultimate responsibility for the systematic attacks and rapes of civilians.
While he said he found no smoking gun, such as a master plan authored by Bashir, Moreno-Ocampo portrayed victims’ testimony, government documents and other evidence as pieces of a puzzle that combined to form an image of criminality.
“He used the whole state apparatus, he used the army, he enrolled the militia janjaweed. They all report to him, they all obey him. His control is absolute,” said Moreno-Ocampo.
The prosecutor said Sudan’s forces and janjaweed militia proxies deliberately target civilians in villages and camps, sometimes even bypassing nearby rebel encampments.
They destroy villages, rape women and girls and leave the homeless to starve in the desert or suffer malnutrition in camps, he alleged.
“These 2.5 million people are in camps. They [Bashir’s forces] don’t need gas chambers because the desert will kill them,” Moreno-Ocampo told a news conference, drawing comparisons with the Jewish Holocaust.
More bloodshed feared
If the court’s three judges agree that the evidence supports a credible case — a decision expected to take two to three months — they will issue an arrest warrant for Bashir.
Sudan is unlikely to hand over the president, but the warrant would mean that Bashir could be arrested by international authorities if he left his country.
But achieving unanimous backing in the UN Security Council for action against Sudan will be fraught with problems since two of its permanent members, China and Russia, are Sudan’s allies.
In Sudan, UN agencies and peacekeepers have evacuated about 250 non-essential personnel over the past few days.
Andrew Natsios, the former U.S. envoy to Sudan, said an indictment of Bashir will make it much more difficult to negotiate a political settlement with his government.
“Who in the UN and European Community is going to talk with the Sudanese government now that the head of state has been indicted?” asked Natsios, now a professor at Georgetown University. “I don’t think the people in the advocacy groups or the [International Criminal Court] are thinking about the consequences of this. If they have a plan for saving the country from much more bloodshed, I haven’t heard it.”
One key question is whether the controversy will unify Sudan’s ruling elite behind Bashir or create new fissures that could ultimately drive him from power. Hassan al-Turabi, one of Sudan’s leading opposition figures, predicted the country’s ruling elite will voice strong public support for the president but will eventually splinter.
“This will create a lot of trouble inside the inner circle,” Turabi said. “In Sudan, leaders are supposed to rule through awe and terror and intimidation. This is destroying that image. Now people see him as vulnerable.”
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The Darfur crisis
HISTORY: The war in Sudan’s Darfur region erupted in 2003 after rebels took up arms alleging that their predominantly non-Arab region was neglected by the government in the mostly Arab north.
ALLEGED GENOCIDE: According to Monday’s indictment from the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir committed genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes by sending government forces and tribal militias known as janjaweed to destroy villages inhabited by Darfur’s three main ethnic groups, the Fur, the Masalit and the Zaghawa.
CASUALTIES: The United Nations estimates 300,000 people have died, directly from attacks or indirectly through starvation. More than 2.5 million have been displaced.
INDICTMENT:
* Genocide by killing civilians after targeting villages because of the ethnicity of the inhabitants. “The ground forces would … kill men, children, elderly, women; they subject women and girls to massive rapes.” Survivors “were pursued into deserts, killed or left to die.”
* Genocide by causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of each target group, “particularly in view of the social stigma associated with rape … these acts cause significant and irreversible harm, to individual women, but also their communities.”
* Genocide by deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction. Sudanese forces and janjaweed “destroy food, wells and water pumping machines, shelter, crops and livestock, as well as any physical structures capable of sustaining life or commerce.”