Bashir Bashing

The age of impunity is over

The ICC's indictment of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir should remind world leaders that they aren't above the law
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o guardian.co.uk,
o Tuesday July 15, 2008


There have been pre-emptive complaints that the indictment of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir and his governmental accomplices for crimes against humanity would make diplomacy more difficult. People said the same thing about Slobodan Milosevic and Liberia's amputator-in-chief Charles Taylor. In all three cases, the argument does not hold water. Diplomacy, without the big stick, without the hint of handcuffs, is having little or no success at all in stopping Bashir's murderous recidivism. In fact, the years of envoys queuing up for audiences with Milosevic simply persuaded him that he was so indispensable that he could carry on killing with no personal consequences.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) had already indicted Bashir's surrogates in Darfur. It would certainly be a travesty of justice not to follow up the chain of command and indict the man without whom none of these massacres would have been possible.

We still have judgement here, that we but teach
Bloody instructions which, being taught, return
To plague th'inventor.


Macbeth mused these words while contemplating ordering the death of Duncan. At least, in the end, he and the missus had the courage to do the deed themselves and paid for it.

But no one ever saw any of our latter-day genocidaires walking the balconies of their presidential homes wrestling with their consciences. At least in part, that was because they thought they had impunity. Killing a king may have consequences, but what are a few million peasants, trade unionists or scribblers to a sovereign statesman?

Ban Ki-moon's statement recognised the independence of the ICC prosecutor – a concept that may be a shock to many of the regimes he has had to deal with. And the secretary-general will persist in trying to talk to Bashir in an attempt to get him do the right thing, but the talking will be done by phone. Bashir's travels to many parts of the world will be circumscribed until a one way ticket to the Hague can be arranged by the next coup in Khartoum. Sadly, however, if he can get a non-stop flight to New York he will be fine, since, for increasingly obvious reasons, the Bush administration does not accept the ICC's jurisdiction.

While the White House's handpicked attorneys have provided legal opinions to authorise torture, rendition and similarly Cheneyesque deeds, most lawyers in the Pentagon and the US state department are well aware that those idiosyncratic opinions have little or no currency in the rest of the democratic world. US top brass have been warned to be careful where they travel.

Over indiscreet drinks at an international conference a few years ago, a US official explained Washington's resistance to the ICC by recounting that French police detained Henry Kissinger at the airport in Paris on a warrant issued over his responsibility for the Chilean coup and subsequent killings. It took top-level calls from Washington to get him out, he complained. One of the few positive auguries as the 20th century came to its sanguinary end was the ending of impunity, so that the Pinochets, Sharons, Kissingers and their ilk had to consult their lawyers as well as their travel agents before they set off on journeys.

In fact, Kissinger should have been arraigned for much more, from East Timor to Central America. The time has passed that so-called statesmen could wash their hands of the crimes they ordered. As that Scottish coup practitioner, Macbeth, recognised:

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

It may make sovereign torturers, kidnappers and murderers see red, but they deserve no more immunity or impunity than any other criminal conspirators.

Annapolis: full text "The Road Map's Dead-end"

The road map's dead-end

The Annapolis peace conference looming later this month will fail unless the Quartet powers finally screw up their map and get down to business
Ian Williams

November 12, 2007 6:30 PM | Printable version

Coming soon to a TV screen near you later this month is the latest global Origami challenge, also known as the Annapolis Middle East peace conference. There a piece of paper formerly known as the "road map", will be folded, torn and squeezed through yet more quantum-style dimensions in an attempt to prove it still has life.

In theoretical physics, superstring theorists posit up to eleven dimensions, most of them invisible. The road map, in contrast, has no less than fourteen strings that Ariel Sharon attached, all of which are invisible, or at least tacitly ignored by Britain and the "Quartet" of Russia, Europe, the UN and the US.

In reality, of course, it shows fewer vital signs than John Cleese's parrot or Ariel Sharon on life support.

Indeed, it is an easy feat to ignore Sharon's 14 "reservations" when almost the entire West ignores the separation wall that rather ostentatiously blocks off the road map, while defying a world court legal ruling against it. If these pillars of the international community actually noticed them in public, then they would be forced to admit that the Israeli government has been driving way off the direction indicated by the road map, and perhaps do something about it: like refusing the Israeli recalcitrants diplomatic, military and financial support.

Indeed, taken together, the Sharon reservations make it plain that Native American reservation status would almost be an advance for the Palestinians, compared with the Bantustans that the Israeli government has been preparing for.

Sharon, when he withdrew from Gaza, explained that the purpose was to consolidate Israel's hold on the West Bank settlements, and the government put water, electricity, roads, police and army guards into the expanding settlements even as he solemnly promised to observe the road map prohibitions against expanding them. But somehow it was considered rude to listen in on a not-so private conversation between the butcher of Sabra and Shatila and his electorate.

The EU, which is Israel's biggest trading partner, would be forced to slap on some tariffs until Israel fulfilled its promises and obligations under its agreements. The UN may notice that Israel is defiant of a string of UN resolutions, which were at the time supported by the US and UK as well as the other members.

The only viable two state solution is one that, firstly secures the consent of Hamas the large proportion, perhaps the majority of the Palestinians, that it represents. That really depends on how close the negotiations get to the Saudi plan, which is essentially for Israeli acceptance of the UN resolutions, particularly those on the withdrawal from occupied territories (which includes of course, as the Syrians point out, the Golan Heights.)

The problem with that is, of course, that three years ago George Bush abrogated international law and almost 40 years of American foreign policy by declaring that because of "new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it [was] unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." In other words, if a thief hangs on to the property long enough, he gains title. It is an interesting, but not persuasive, gloss on international law.

This is not like the squatter who asserts title by occupying property unchallenged for seven years. This occupation has been challenged consistently from the beginning.

The latest indication that the success of the conference depends on the Palestinians giving up all their legal rights under American and Israeli pressure is the report of Israeli dissatisfaction with the Palestinians' negotiations support unit, which was a result of Robin Cook's time in the Foreign Office. The team, paid for by Britain and others, is preparing the legal brief and senior Israeli officials say the unit is "increasingly becoming an obstacle with regard to progress after the Annapolis conference".

In other words, it will not do what it is told.

There are some signs that Condoleezza Rice at least recognizes that Israel's best interests are served by forgetting the dead-end road map and negotiating on the basis of the Saudi peace plan and the UN resolutions. One can hope that the US will provide the stick as well as the carrot to the Israeli donkey. But you would really need a faith-based belief in miracles.