Are peace and justice incompatible pursuits in responding to the Darfur crisis? Do efforts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute atrocity crimes in Darfur deserve robust international support or exhortations of caution? Is justice fundamental to a resolution of the crisis? Or is it a luxury too costly, too threatening to the chances for peace? Would senior officials in the Khartoum regime be more or less likely to engage in meaningful peace talks if they faced forceful and compellingly researched indictments from the ICC? Would international support for the Court and for justice lead Khartoum to retaliate against civilians and humanitarians? Answers to these questions depend upon which of Darfur's historical realities are accepted, which are denied or ignored. ...
Let us first of all be clear what de Waal and Flint are urging: it doesn't matter whether Moreno Ocampo has overwhelming evidence of genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity committed by Minister of Defense Abdul Rahim Mohamed Hussein (also former Minister of the Interior during the most violent years of the genocide)---the senior NIF official most likely to be indicted. The ICC Prosecutor should simply sit on this evidence, no matter how compelling, and allow Khartoum to contend only with the April 2007 indictments of junior interior minister Ahmed Haroun and Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb (the "colonel of colonels"). ...
What we see here---and in the argument de Waal and Flint offer---is not a serious pressuring of Khartoum, but rather forms of accommodation. In the sixth year of unfathomable violence, destruction, and displacement, "urging" Khartoum to "cooperate" seems little more than a cruel sop thrown to the people of Darfur. In the case of de Waal and Flint, such accommodation of Khartoum extends to an expedient abandonment of justice in the interest of rendering Darfur somehow manageable, a situation requiring certain forms of acquiescence---at the very least not the site of ongoing genocidal destruction. ...
The status quo in Darfur is simply unacceptable; monstrous crimes against humanity are perpetuated amidst a climate of impunity that is acknowledged by all. The question is not whether indictment of a senior National Islamic Front official will provoke retaliation against humanitarians or further obstruction of UNAMID. The real question is what the international community---and in particular specific member states of the UN, and most particularly of the Security Council---will do to forestall not just immediate or short-term retaliatory responses by Khartoum, but to secure long-term security for all Darfuris. Eric Reeves, Pursuing Peace and Justice in Darfur: The Role of the ICC, 6-30-08
I encourage you to follow events in Darfur on Mia Farrow's site, it is the real-time journal of a humanitarian at work; the content is compelling, insightful and fiercely independent.
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For a Words of Power Archive of posts on the Crisis in Darfur, click here.
Here are other sites of importance:
Dream for Darfur
Enough: The Project to End Genocide and Mass Atrocities
Genocide Intervention Network
Divest for Darfur.
Save Darfur!
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