And the Others?

“You will never see the heads of NATO before a UN court. NATO is the accuser, the prosecutor, the judge and the executor because it is NATO who pays the bills. NATO does not comply with international law. It is international law.” Lester Munson, U.S. Congress (1999).

On Wednesday March 4th, the International Criminal Court put out an arrest warrant for the Sudanese president for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. The country, which is a big as France, became known to the world when its mineral riches became a reality. “For me, wrote Marc Lavergne, everyone is black in this story. The notion of racism doesn’t have its place. The militant tribes of the Janjaweed are mercenaries who are all acting for Arabs. They are not the real problem. Exaggerating, one could say that they are the poor who are fighting the poor. They started fifteen years ago, but they did not interest the international community. Because the oppressed people were not revolting. Massacres were going on even back then. But the victims only had their eyes to cry. I was in Darfur during the famine of 1985. It was something completely frightening.” However the land in Darfur is poor and a desert on part of its territory. Under ground, there is another story. The discovery of oil adds an additional difficulty with the attraction of deposits for big powers. It is not the massacres of populations that are interesting them; it is the soil and especially the subsoil on which these damned of the earth live. Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea have already been invited to kill each other to guarantee Western countries the control of these riches, and through this, the economy of emerging countries. (1)

The Untouchable Americans

In theory, the International Criminal Court is an independent international organization. What is its real degree of freedom? We know that the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, signed the Statute of Rome for the International Criminal Court on December 31st 2000, which President George W. Bush canceled on May 6th 2002. Bush’s government tried to make bilateral immunity agreements with other states, supposedly founded on Article 98 of the Statue of Rome, with the object of removing American citizens and military personal from the jurisdiction of the court. Another facet of the American crusade against the court is the adoption of two laws called the “American Service-Members’ Protection Act” and “Nethercutt Amendment.” The former was adopted by Congress in August of 2002, contains provisions restraining the cooperation of the United States with the ICC. On July 15th, 2004, the amendment proposed by representative George Nethercutt withdrew economic support to all countries who ratified the ICC treaty but had not signed the bilateral immunity agreement with the United States. It was put into effect by President Bush on December 8th, 2004.

In the same sense, Momar Dieng of the the “Quotidien” made a parallel with other African powers. “It is evident,” he writes, “that Sudan has a big part of the responsibility of what is happening in its territory. It goes without saying that if there are authorities tied to the central power in Khartoum justly convinced of crimes and atrocities against the Darfur population, they will have to pay the price.” The problem is that the International Criminal Court never attacks heads of state who are protected by political or financial powers. For several years, the Congolese Denis Sassou-Nguesso has been the object of dozens of complaints by his compatriots for mass crimes. But because he is a big friend of France, a protégé of the French multinational TotalFinaELf that exploits Congolese oil, no one among the leaders in the International Criminal Court dared to launch a procedure against him. Is there genocide in Darfur? But then, in what register should one class the thousand men, women and children massacred in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut under the leadership of Israeli Ariel Sharon in September 1982? Sharon’s expedition went unpunished. It is the concrete will of Belgium to restrict the interpretation of universal jurisdiction after strong Israeli-American pressure prevented the appearance of Sharon before a criminal court. Sadly, the Belgian judges again capitulated when faced with America charges, when different and detailed complaints claimed the charging of Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet, former head of the CIA, for torture practices on the prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, but equally for the inhumane methods of interrogation exercised on the prisoners in Guantanamo. The ex-secretary of American defense did nothing less than threatened Belgium to withdraw the headquarters of the NATO from Brussels. More than five years after the invasion of Iraq by the Anglo-American coalition, what foolhardy judge would dare to touch the tranquility of president George Walker Bush, after he had said and established that the reasons for the bombings which had scrupulously destroyed an entire country is other than the discovery of weapons of destruction in Iraq? Sudan, ally of China and Russia has for a long time been in the Euro-American collimator. There is a lot of oil and Chinese are well served by it. (2)

The International Criminal Court of the Hague, writes Allian Jules with courage and the audacity that we have come to know, delivered an international arrest warrant against Sudanese president Omar al –Bashir. The stage is set. The duty of truth being a just and morally legitimate process, when will there be a trial for the war in Iraq? And when will there be a trial for the war in Chechyna? And when will there be a trial for the crime against humanity, against France in an independence war in Cameroon, with notably the assassination of Ruben Um Nyombe and the bloody repression in the Bamileke countries between 1960 and 1970, with 156 villages destroyed and more than 40,000 people massacred? And what to say about Madagascar, when 100,000 people were massacred for the peace of the island on March 29th, 1947? And the massacre of Setif and Guelma in Algeria on May 8th, 1945 with more than 20,000 deaths? Damn, no repentance! Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International, is thrilled. She declared: “The law is clear. President Omar al-Bashir should present himself before the ICC to assure his defense. If he refuses, the Sudanese authorities should take responsibility for arresting him and sending him immediately to the ICC.” How cute. We didn’t hear this in the Israeli offensive in Gaza. We didn’t here this either after the end of the reign of George Walker Bush or of Tony Blair, the active actors in the lying invasion of Iraq, a true crime against humanity. If the international community really wants to protect the Sudanese, it is not by taking such a serious decision that could in the end affect these suffering people. Defending human rights is good. Abusing them is bad. Finally, the little corporation of African dictators is going to understand, say the Westerners, who evade well the fact that the latter are also the biggest investors in Western societies. (3)

“According to whether you will be powerful or miserable, the judgments of the court will make you black or white,” for the Gabonese Jean Ping, president of the Commission of the African Union, who is very direct in saying that “the arrest warrant of the ICC threatens peace in Sudan. We observe that international justice doesn’t seem to apply the rules of the fight against impunity in Africa as if nothing was happening elsewhere, in Iraq, Gaza, Colombia or in the Caucasus.” What is this law that only applies to the weak? Is this a swing-wing law? (3)

Coup d’état in Sight?

Sudan, with all of the geopolitical assets that it possesses, cannot stay outside of the strategy accounts that are being drawn up to share the world. It is a country possessing the vastest territory in Africa and in the Arab world with inexhaustible water resources and an underground that is very rich in oil and precious metals, both qualities that in these times of crisis of energy and primary materials, do not leave us indifferent. The African Union, the Arab League, China, and Russia have all denounced the interventionist approach of the Court of the Hague and deplored the scorn attached by the jurisdiction towards sovereignty, stability, security and territorial integrity of the states. (4)

“This issued arrest warrant against the Sudanese president hides a strong smell of petrol. Is this wrong? It seems he has conceded concessions ad vitam aeternam to China. Rather, this West that seems to go to bed while poor Africans are dying of hunger, arming Chad and the rebellions of south Sudan with weapons. John Garang tried to oppose the Chinese influence in the region and gain a hand on the mining and oil products of Darfur. Yes, Sudan is at the origin of the displacement of thousands of people in the oil zones, but it provides China with more than 7 percent of its oil imports. Today, there are no less than 14 major Chinese companies in Sudan. Among them, the China National Petroleum Corporation, that invested billions of dollars in an oil field in Muglad that produces more than 500,000 barrels per day, a refinery of a capacity of 2.45 million tons per year. Furthermore, China set up an oil duct of 1500 kilometers for the exportation of oil from a terminal on the Red Sea,” Allain Jules observes.

For the former president of the criminal court for ex-Yugoslavia, Antonio Cassese, “The arrest warrant by the International Criminal court against the Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir is morally justified, but beyond this, whatever could be the impact in the practice. This mandate could not be executed except in Sudan and only if the Sudanese president himself authorizes his forces to stop it. But if it concerns a head of state who has not ratified the Statute like Sudan, this immunity could be invoked. However, as in the case for Darfur, it is the Security Council of the UN who asked the ICC to judge the crimes committed by the organs of the state who did not ratify the statute, the Council could decide that all the other state members of the UN should lift the immunity which benefits those responsible, like Omar al-Bashir, of the incriminated state. In the case of Darfur however, the Council was well guarded from taking this step, and it has limited itself to imposing Sudan to “cooperate with the Court.” We return to square one: the arrest warrant can only be executed if these are the Sudanese forces of order which are stopping el Bechir and giving him back to La Haye. This mandate is therefore useless .” (5)

For Mr. Saâdoune, the situation is unprecedented. How could a government, if it had the intention, stop the head of state in office and bring him to the International Court? Mr. Moreno pretends not to say that the law, but the Sudanese government’s implementation of this mandate, signifies technically and politically a takeover or a coup d’état. This is apparently the hypothesis on which the Westerners are working. The organization Crisis Group, a Western think tank, pre-dominantly Anglo-Saxon, openly calls it this. (…) We can expect the negotiations to make use of Article 16 of statute of the ICC that foresees that the Security Council could vote for a resolution that permits the deferral by twelve renewable months of any investigation or prosecution initiated by the ICC. (…) “Even the presidents no longer have free hands to commit horrible crimes” affirmed Human Rights Watch. Apparently, the NGO doesn’t think about what’s happened at the hands of Bush or of Olmert. The crimes against humanity committed in Gaza and in Iraq are not liable to prosecution. The Security Council would not permit it. (6) “What is the lesson that one can draw from this?” Antonio Cassese concludes. “Firstly, that when one doesn’t have the power to put ones orders into effect, it is better to act with prudence. In place of an arrest warrant, the prosecutor should have asked for an order of appearance. Secondly, one does not administer justice with fanfares. International justice should not be an obstacle to political solutions of complex international crises in the frame of which very serious crimes are committed.” (5)

For history it is necessary for us to keep in mind that the immense majority of developing countries that have become independent have kept umbilical ties with the former colonial power, called according to the empire, the Commonwealth or Françafrique. They are even more vulnerable if the soil and subsoil of their country is filled with riches. What is currently happening shows us to which point justice is variable according to whether you are on the good or the bad side of the powers. Saddam Hussein whose country is third in oil riches didn’t understand, we know how that ended. al-Qadhafi, who has been in power for forty years, understood this. That was an inglorious surrender allowing American companies to have more facilities than before the nationalizations of 1970-1971. Omar al-Bashir thought that he had backed the right horse, China, but one must believe that it is not a good horse at the moment. But who knows? Let’s imagine that Sudan opened its subsoil to American companies, one can bet that nothing will happen. Omar al-Bashir will continue to pacify-a term that we know well- under the benevolent glance of the big powers of this world.

1.C.E. Chitour: Que se passe t-il au Darfour? www.tchadactuel.com/documents.php?2006/09/07

2.M.Dieng: Une justice internationale à géométrie variable. Le Quotidien de Dakar 24/ 7/2008.

3.Allain Jules Ah, la CPI condamne Omar Al-Bachir et oublie Bush! Agoravox 6 mars 2009.

4.Bachir sous le coup de l’injustice internationale! http://french.irib.ir 06 Mars 2009


5.Antonio Cassese: Un mandat d’arrêt aussi spectaculaire qu’inutile La Repubblica 5 mars 2009.

6.M.Saâdoune: Mandat d’arrêt contre le président soudanais Omar Al Bachir.