Can the ICC save Darfur?

In my humble opinion, the answer to this question is simply, no.

On Wednesday, the ICC issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese president al-Bashir. The warrant included charges of war crimes and acts against humanity, but did not specifically charge Bashir with genocide. This is the first warrant for a head of state issued by the ICC since it's creation in 2002.

al-Bashir dances after the announcement of the warrant for his arrest

I'm slightly surprised to see the enthusiasm over the indictment. George Clooney was very supportive of this action as were most of my friends who are interested in Sudan. It only makes sense to support such an action. Clearly al-Bashir is directly responsible for supporting the Janjaweed tribes responsible for all the death and rape in Darfur over the last 5 years. Over 300,000 people have died and the Western world is struggling to find any notion of a solution. Concerned citizens write letters to Congress, and Clooney even made it to the White House just last week, all with the message of "Please do something to save Darfur." Finally, after years of deliberation, a case was brought before the ICC and warrant was handed down for the arrest of Sudan's president. Justice.

Well, it's only been a few days and we are already seeing several predictable problems emerging. The most obvious being that it will be impossible to capture Bashir. The UN peacekeeping force already said they would not do the job, and I'm not sure who else the ICC could send. To go into Khartoum and arrest the guy would require a large scale military operation resulting in thousands of casualties, with a limited possibility of success. It'll never happen. But just for the sake of argument, let's say they were actually able to capture Bashir. Would that help Sudan? The citizens of Khartoum are now becoming more anti-West as each day passes. The removal of their president would cause such a stir that the next president would likely be much more radical than Bashir. Bashir is very popular amongst the Arab majority of Sudan, and you can't just rob a country of their president without a significant backlash from his supporters. This might in fact be the worse scenario for Darfur.

There are so many similarities here to our intervention in Iraq. How popular was the Iraq war on the eve of the invasion? How many people did we have to kill in order to capture Sadam? Now that Sadam is gone, how has that improved Iraq? After years in Iraq, if we were to leave today, there would likely be a Sunni genocide. This is certainly not progress, and removing Sadam, oddly enough, might have been the worst thing we ever did in Iraq. Let's not forget that the product of "The Great War" was WWII, a much larger catastrophe. Our hard nosed solutions more often escalate conflicts than resolve them.

The simple truth is that the ICC will not be able to capture Bashir. In retaliation to the warrant, al-Bashir has already removed 13 aid organizations from Darfur; Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders being the two most notable groups. My guess is that Bashir is attempting to remove as much of the Western World from Darfur as possible in order to achieve what he has already been charged with. If things were bad before, I'm deathly afraid that it could get much worse.

So without justice, how do we find peace? I firmly believe that the answer lies in the freedom of the press. The overwhelming majority of people who suffer from human rights violations live in countries who deny freedom of speech. Only when lines of communication are opened can equality be attained. Oddly enough, I thought al-Bashir was slowly (albeit, very slowly) sliding in this direction. News and aid organizations were allowed into Darfur, the South was finally getting a voice in government, and Bashir was open to meeting with just about anybody (he met with Franklin Graham just the other day). I'm not implying that Sudan was freeing itself from censorship, but it was opening up to the outside world more and more. The power of the open media is a powerful deterrent to those who burn down villages and rape women. People only commit these atrocities when they know they are not being watched. Instead of demanding justice, what the West needs to demand is openness. That is the pathway to lasting peace.

Unfortunately, what is left of Darfur is a group of people without modern weaponry, without media, and without the aid of doctors, waiting to defend themselves against radical militias who wish to destroy them completely. My prayers go out to them, and I truly hope that the ICC is right and that I am the one who is wrong.

Other opinions: Franklin Graham, Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur, Desmond Tutu

Will the ICC save Darfur?

"Judges at the International Criminal Court have decided to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, brushing aside diplomatic requests to allow more time for peace negotiations in the conflict-riddled Darfur region of his country, according to court lawyers and diplomats."

I've been loosely following the conflict in Darfur and I just feel like, once again, the ICC is behind the times. If the ICC was somehow capable of preventing atrocities like that in Darfur, I wouldn't be such a cynic, but I just don't see them having a positive effect on the situation this late in the conflict. Al-Bashir has been in office since 1993 and is popular amongst the Arabs who run the Sudanese government. The problems in Sudan are much larger than this one man. If he actually gets arrested, and I doubt that he will, he will likely be replaced by someone even more radical. Sudan doesn't need a new president, what it really needs is a free press. I hate to say it, but my prediction is that this warrant will only increase the genocide in Darfur while also mustering more dislike towards the west in Khartoum. What's sad is that this was not the direction in which things appeared to be headed, and it does not bid well for a peaceful future in Sudan.

Someone please explain to me why I am wrong.

An American in Africa

I have a friend in Sudan and I recently sent him a fantastic book called The Unheard, along with a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition (you have to read the book to understand this one). The book is about a young, deaf American's two years of Peace Corps service in Zambia. Upon finishing the book here are my friend's thoughts. Comments please.



i finished The Unheard on Tuesday. i liked it a lot! the people of Mununga in Zambia are SO much like the Sudanese in a lot of ways. probably it’s because of the level of poverty in the two places. Sudan is a bit more impoverished than what Mununga sounds like but a lot of the same things happen. a lack of a reliable justice system leads to Mob Justice. women are still considered assets, second class citizens and are still sold off for marriage. People are VERY tribally biased...the Sudanese are just terrible with that. the infant mortality and maternal mortality rates are astronomical.


reading the book i felt a noticeable level of despair creep in. i mean, it affirmed a lot of the frustrations i have with Africa. it seems like no matter what you try to do on this continent there are evil and corrupt men who simply won’t accept good things. we work with a lot of subcontractors and individuals in church leadership and i can’t implicitly trust a single one of them. not because of gut feelings or anything, but because we’re constantly burned whenever we try to trust people. i was talking to a guy who grew up in East Africa and works with us. we agreed that it seems like nobody has any hope that a better Africa can be built, so every opportunity they have to cheat the system, to cheat other people they take. they are interested only in making sure that at least their family is taken care of. it’s tough to consider that many people in the international community believe Africa will never be any better than it is right now.


take Mauritania for instance, a West African country north of Senegal. i read on BBC yesterday that after one year in office, the first popularly elected President in a free and fair election since the country’s independence from France in 1960 was ousted in a military coup this week. i mean, as soon as Justice plays out and things look like they’ll be OK some power hungry, greedy, irresponsible sons of bitches decide they want it for themselves. but hey, it’s job security for us in International Relief. i know, not cool. i’d much rather live in Africa promoting a booming tourist economy than propping up the innocent citizens of failed states who are spat on by their governments and ignored by most of the rest of the world. what’s their hope? only the love of Christ. i guess that’s ultimately why i’m here.


anyway, such a good read! i now see how the swimsuit magazine fits in. funny stuff. it’s so true though about the amount of sexual energy there is out here. it seems like sex and poverty are the two unifying themes that run throughout Africa.