A Sceptical Islamist

On Darfur and the persecution of Sudanese president Omar Bashir

"The conflict in Darfur has been so extensively misrepresented by groups with political agendas that an utterly false version of events has become accepted as the reality.  The indictment of Bashir -- no saint but no worse either than countless other rulers in Africa, the Muslim world and the world as a whole -- is a result of this subversion of reality, comparable perhaps to the demonization of Saddam Hussein and the case for war in Iraq put together by the US before the invasion in 2003..."

"Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that self-interested international involvement has changed a low-level local conflict into an intractable international issue, creating far more suffering than would otherwise have been the case, and making a solution much harder to achieve...  No-one is ever likely to be held accountable for that."

Ahmadinejad to face ICC trial?

The BBC today reports that an Israeli minister has suggested that Israel could kidnap Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and deliver him for trial at the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

The idea is ludicrous of course; among many other things, the ICC would never want the precedent of one state using it as a pretext for unilateral and illegal action against another one.  The suggestion and the coverage it is receiving is simply another part of the campaign of the demonization of Iran generally, and Ahmedinejad in particular, being led by the US and Israel.

A couple of interesting points arise, however. 

Radovan Karadzic, Omar Bashir and the realities of international law

(Editorial, Crescent International, August 2008.)

The arrest in Serbia of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on July 22 has understandably been greeted with celebrations around the world.  During the Serbo-Croatian attempt to exterminate the Bosnian Muslims between 1992 and 1995, Karadzic was political leader of the Serbs living in Bosnia, whose forces (led militarily by Ratko Mladic, who remains a fugitive) were responsible for the most appalling atrocities of the war, including (but not only) the establishment of concentration camps such as those of Omarska and Trnopolje early in the war, the siege of Sarajevo, and the massacre of Srebenica in 1995.  Thirteen years after being indicted for his responsibility for the deaths of nearly 8,000 men and boys at Srebenica, Karadzic had been living in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, and working as an alternative medical practitioner under the pseudonym Dragan David Drabic.  It is widely suspected that some in the Belgrade government had been aware of his identity and whereabouts but had protected him from arrest; and that the timing of his arrest at this time has much to do with the political interests of the new Serbian government elected in May.  Meanwhile, the search for Mladic, his former partner in genocide, continues.

Darfur: a by-word for tragedy and hypocrisy

(Perspectives, Crescent International, May 2007.)

At the end of April, western human rights and charitable bodies organized a series of events to mark the fourth anniversary of the outbreak of fighting in the Darfur region of western Sudan.  During this period, Darfur has become a by-word for human tragedy, with the Sudanese government of Omar Bashir being blamed for perpetrating a "genocide" against "African" tribespeople in the region, with the help of the notorious Janjaweed, described as militants belonging to "Arab" tribes, supported and equipped by the Sudanese government. 

The opportunism and hypocrisy of the West's response to tragedy in Darfur

"In fact, the SLA, whose support is based largely on the Zaghawa tribe that straddles the Sudan-Chad border, has clear links with outside powers, who are arming and equipping it to undermine Khartoum. Although much has been made of the Sudanese government's alleged links with the Janjaweed, UN observers have noted that the SLA have better weapons than the Sudanese army, and have been receiving supplies by air, indicating the sort of backing that can only come from states. SLA gunmen are reported to be operating in groups of up to 1,000 men in four-wheel-drive vehicles: very different from the horses and camels reportedly used by the Janjaweed."