Although the list of African countries that are at any given point in time either at the brink of, or in the middle of disaster, is long, Sudan tops the list. Since its independence from Britain, Sudan has lurched from one crisis into another. For decades, the government of Sudan was involved in war with the southern part of the country. As soon as a peace agreement was reached to bring the war in the south to an end, new conflicts emerged, the most lethal being in Darfur, where pro-government militias (the Janjaweed) aided and abetted by Sudan’s government, have killed and displaced thousands of people.
No doubt Sudan’s ruling group, an alliance between the military and radical Islamists, is responsible for much of what happened in Darfur and should be held accountable. Issuing an arrest warrant for a sitting head of state is a gutsy move on the part of the International Court of Justice and should be applauded. It sends a signal to all dictators that one day they might have to pay for their crimes. The down side is of course, that the ruling junta might lash out and take even more ruthless measures against the people of Darfur, which is exactly what happened when the government accused 13 international aid agencies of giving false testimony against the government and expelled them from the country. The international community is therefore morally obligated to finding ways to help the people of Darfur and to constrain the government of Sudan from taking revenge on Darfur’s civilian population.
The government of Sudan will try to spin the arrest warrant as an attack on its sovereignty and Islam, but neither of these claims hold water because, (a) the Sudanese government has failed in the most elementary duties of a sovereign government, namely, to guarantee the physical security of its population; and (b) the people of Darfur are Muslims.
The Sudanese government knows that it can count on the automatic support of the Arab League and the African Union, two organizations packed with tyrants who are afraid what happens to al-Bashir could happen to them (al-Qaddafi openly admitted to this when he warned a gathering of the Arab League heads of state after Saddam’s hanging that what happened to Saddam could happen to any of them). Sudan’s oil also puts China in its corner. But none of the factors that favor al-Bashir’s regime can prevent the serious moral, psychological and legal damage that the arrest warrant has done to his regime.
For us in Somaliland, a country struggling to deepen the roots of democracy and human rights, al-Bashir’s arrest warrant is just one more reminder that we live in a region where lawlessness, radicalism and tyranny is the norm. If anyone doubts this all they have to do is consider the fact that the President of Djibouti is wanted by a French Court for the murder of Judge Bernard Borrel; Ethiopia’s former President Mengistu Haile Mariam has a death sentence hanging over his head; and now Sudan’s President was issued an arrest warrant. There is also another lesson in all of this: the best way for the people of the region to live in peace and security and for their leaders to avoid al-Bashir’s fate is to follow Somaliland’s example and choose a system of government based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

 

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