NEW YORK - The International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague moved last week to deliver an arrest warrant on Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir charging him with war crimes in the strife-torn region of Darfur, one of the world's volatile political hotspots.
For the ICC, it was a cause for mild celebration, because the much-heralded criminal court has so far put only one culprit on trial, Thomas Lubanga, a warlord from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and convicted none.
And this has been the ICC's dismal track record six years after it was created to bring war criminals to justice -- particularly if they are beyond the reach of national laws in their home countries.
The arrest warrant on al-Bashir was unprecedented because it was issued for the first time on a sitting head of state. But all hell broke loose at the UN last week with charges and counter charges flying in all directions.
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| Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. REUTER |
The Sudanese unleashed their fury both against the West and against international human rights organisations which hailed the ICC decision.
According to published figures, an estimated 300,000 people have died in Darfur, either due to the ongoing conflict or disease and malnutrition. The deaths have occurred over the past five years. A group of rebels has been fighting government forces and their proxies, the Janjaweed Arab militia men, since 2003.
While not condoning what has transpired in Sudan, a legitimate question that is being asked defies answer: why are the ICC and other similar war crimes tribunals (covering Liberia, Rwanda and former Yugoslavia) focusing mostly on African and East European leaders and African warlords? Aren't there any perceived war criminals in the US and Western Europe?
In Iraq, over one million people, mostly civilians have been killed since the US invasion about six years ago. In Afghanistan, hundreds and thousands of civilians have been killed by American and NATO military forces. The killings have been euphemistically described as "collateral damage." And more recently in Gaza, over 1,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians were killed by the Israelis.
Why aren't military and political leaders responsible for such carnage brought before war crimes tribunals or the ICC? The US undoubtedly is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the ICC. So is Sudan.
The ICC did take action against Sudan only because the Security Council asked the court to do so. But the same Security Council will not make a similar request against Western Europe or the US because France, Britain and the US wield veto powers.
Rightly, an indignant Sudanese Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad described the international justice system as "Euro-American." It's the same justice system, he said, that callously witnessed the destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza, but never did anything about it.
The US also negotiated immunity from war crimes prosecution for its soldiers -- if and when they serve in UN peacekeeping missions. "America is an opportunist country," he said. "They want to use the ICC without being a party to it." In effect, he said, American soldiers can have immunity, but not the President of Sudan.
At a UN press conference last week, he also challenged reporters to show him any photographs or television footage from Darfur that would equal the destruction of human lives and homes in Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan. "Show me a single footage," he demanded of journalists, none of whom responded.
"It's a big lie. And lies have become a weapon of mass destruction in our situation," he added. He also rightly pointed out that the US once destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan based on false intelligence that it was a Sudanese chemicals weapons factory.
At the recent conference in Sharm al-Sheik, the US and Western donors pledged about $5 billion to reconstruct Gaza which was bombed by Israel during its 22-day conflict with Hamas. "Did anybody ask who was accountable for this damage and destruction?"
Asked why Sudan was being singled out, the Sudanese envoy said Western nations were eyeing Sudan's newly-discovered oil riches in one of the largest countries in Africa. The Western nations have been marginalized both in oil exploration and arms supplies by China, which is one of Sudan's close political, economic and military allies. "The UK and France harbour a desire to revive their colonial dreams in Sudan," he said.
Sudan has clearly said it rejects the warrant on its President and will refuse to cooperate with the ICC. The Sudanese government seems to have the full political support of two powerful regional organisations: the African Union and the League of Arab States.
As a result, no Arab or African country will follow up the ICC warrant by arresting al-Bashir if he lands in any of their airports. The Sudanese president is expected to defy the ICC warrant by attending an upcoming summit meeting in Qatar (which incidentally is not a state party to the ICC).
There is also speculation that more than 30 African nations, which are signatories to the ICC, may withdraw as a collective protest against the ICC warrant. If this protest takes place, the ICC, which has 108 state parties, will face a crisis of its own, with only 78 member states supporting it.
When Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch was asked about the double standards in the international justice system, he admitted there was no denying the fledgling system was "flawed" and the playing field was uneven -- between Westerners and the rest of the world."But to those who said such tribunals would never indict an American or European leader, today's decision nevertheless showed that not even the president of a country was above the law. The work was how to correct the imperfections in the system." | 
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