e Bush administration to the situation in Darfur:
Ten years ago, I asked Bosnian civilians under siege in Sarajevo where they would go if they could escape. Most chose one of the sand or pebble beaches along the Adriatic. Last summer, when I traveled through the Sudanese province of Darfur, I asked the same question of Sudanese who’d seen their homes torched, their cattle stolen and their children butchered. The surprisingly common answer, whether from refugees wandering the Sahara, or from farmers who had never had electricity or running water, was this: “The Hague.” They had heard there was an international court there, and they wanted to go testify.
I didn’t have the heart to tell them that their attackers couldn’t be tried at the International Criminal Court because Sudan was not a party to it and because the United States, even though it was Khartoum’s fiercest critic, was likely to block an investigation by the court.
In late January, a United Nations commission issued its findings on Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed. Much has been made about the commission’s refusal to describe the atrocities by government-backed militias as genocide. But more striking was the commission’s authoritative documentation of some of the worst horrors of the last half-century: violations “without any military justification” that “no doubt constitute large-scale war crimes.” In addition, the team delivered a sealed list with the names of 51 Sudanese suspected of war crimes and recommended just what the Darfurians had been urging all along: investigation and prosecution in The Hague.
The Bush administration has been more forthright than any of the United Nations’ 191 member states in denouncing the atrocities in Sudan – a fact that should shame European nations that pride themselves on their human rights pedigrees. The United States was the first to characterize the violence as genocide and the first, way back in June, to name potential perpetrators and call for punishment. It has also dismissed offers by the Sudanese government to conduct the trials at home, rightly recognizing that Khartoum is unlikely to prosecute crimes that it has ordered and committed.
But the Bush administration can’t decide what it dislikes more: genocide or the International Criminal Court, which aims to punish it. Administration officials have missed no opportunity to undermine the court. During President Bush’s first term, the United States suspended military aid to more than 20 countries that refused to shield Americans from potential prosecution, including Mali (a fledging democracy), Ecuador (a partner in drug interdiction efforts), and Croatia (a fragile government trying to stem a nationalist tide).
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