Whose Crimes? Against Whose Humanity?

WASHINGTON, DC -- We stand before a decisive moment today, with the demand July 14, by a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for a warrant to arrest Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on ten charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, for his policies in Darfur. This is a moment of historical reckoning for the leaders and people of the Arab world. How the Arab world responds to this challenge may well determine whether our region collectively shows its desire to affirm the rule of law as its guiding principle, or instead moves deeper into the realm of dysfunctional, brittle and violent statehood as its defining collective identity.

It is a classic example of how the Arab world is politically tortured and ethically convoluted by its twin status as both victim and perpetrator of various crimes and atrocities. President Bashir is being accused and may be tried -- at one level. But at another level, many in the Middle East and elsewhere will ask if this is a new form of racism and colonialism that applies different standards of accountability for different countries.

The critics of the ICC should not be dismissed as hopeless despots, nor should the court's potential indictment of President Bashir be dismissed as neo-colonialism administered through the UN Security Council that asked for the investigation in the first place.

The ICC's ten-page summary of Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's request to arrest Bashir is well worth reading as a starting point for considering whether this move is appropriate or inappropriate. (http://www.icc-cpi.int/library/organs/otp/ICC-OTP-Summary-20081704-ENG.pdf)

The chilling details in the prosecutor's summary of the case revolve around charges that include acts of murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture, rape, attacks on civilians, and pillaging towns and villages. They state that Bashir "masterminded and implemented" a plan to destroy three of the largest ethnic groups in Darfur (the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa) by using the armed forces, the Janjaweed militias, and the entire government apparatus, to specifically and purposefully target civilians.

The charges state that over 35,000 were killed and 2.7 million displaced, and refugee and displaced persons camps were also attacked and harassed, in a policy aimed at destroying these people as distinct groups or tribes. Rape has been a common tactic, they allege, with one third of rape victims being children.

Some of the charges and the overall analysis of Bashir's aims have been questioned by respected independent international experts who know Darfur intimately. Others ask if pursuing justice is worth the instability and further violence that will surely follow any ICC indictment of Bashir. 

The genocide charge is the most serious in the ICC arsenal. It sends a powerful and needed message about the international community's determination to act forcefully when despotism, brutality, mass killings and other large scale crimes take place anywhere in the world. It affirms that there can be no complacency in the face of criminality, and that impunity for killers and brutal dictators in the Third World will not be tolerated.

But these criminal charges against Arabs in Sudan have to be weighed against three other realities: massive crimes committed against Arabs by their own leaders in other Arab countries; crimes committed by Israel; and, the mass suffering, death, destitution, refugee flows, and other consequences of invading foreign forces -- especially the American-led troops in Iraq.

Will any of the crimes by Arab, Israeli or American leaders be equally investigated in due course? The linear gradations of their brutality, criminality and crimes against humanity demand a nuanced assessment on a case-by-case basis. I suggest, though, that two principles should guide an Arab response to the likely Sudan indictment by the ICC: Criminal acts must be investigated and punished wherever they occur; and, the same standard of culpability and morality should be applied to all situations around the world.

The moral force and political validity of the rule of law emanate from its universality above all other attributes. Investigating and indicting Sudanese leaders while ignoring the crimes of Arab, Israeli, American and other officials are seen as a sickening example of double standards that reek of colonialism and tinged with racism. Yet we cannot ignore crimes by Sudanese in Sudan by arguing that other criminals and killers in the region are not prosecuted.

The Lebanese-international court established by the Security Council to try those who will be accused of killing the late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was a historic step forward towards ending impunity for political criminality in the Arab world. We should make sure the judicial accountability of the killers, rapists and genocidal ethnic cleansers in Sudan is a second step in this direction.

We should persist on this road to bring to justice all others who use violence as a routine tool of political expression, including any Israelis, Americans, British, Turks, Iranians and Arabs who have made the Middle East the world's sinkhole of political morality and statesmanship. If the evidence of criminal deeds is available, prosecution in a fair trial should always follow.