The NY Times on the ICC and Darfur

The cover story of today’s NY Times Magazine by Elizabeth Rubin is entitled “If Not Peace, then Justice.” The text on the cover reads:

The U.N is not going to stop the genocide in Darfur.
The African Union is not going to stop the genocide in Darfur.
The U.S. is not going to stop the genocide in Darfur.
NATO is not going to stop the genocide in Darfur.
The European Union is not going to stop the genocide in Darfur.

But someday, Luis Moreno-Ocampo is going to bring those who committed the genocide to justice.

Detailing the ICC’s investigation into Darfur, Rubin considers the problems faced by the prosecutor in the wilds of Darfur… and of Washington. The high tide of U.S. criticism of the ICC seems to be decreasing, though:

The Bush administration is reluctantly coming to terms with the usefulness, if not the necessity, of the I.C.C. According to Roger Winter, the State Department’s special representative for the Sudan conflict, who has been involved in America’s Sudan policy for 25 years, “If you want to liquidate an Islamo-fascist regime that committed genocide, the way to do it that is accepted by the international community is through the C.P.A.” — the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the North-South war — “and prosecutions by the I.C.C.”

Rubin also deals with the question of whether ICC prosecutions may deter a peace process. She writes, in part:

…Sudan’s efforts do point to deeper issues: should peace be allowed to trump justice? (The I.C.C. statute itself advises that the prosecutor suspend indictments if they are not in the interests of the victims.) Are reconciliation and compensation better justice than prosecution and punishment? In northern Uganda, many tribal groups were against the intervention of the I.C.C. at first. But some of Moreno-Ocampo’s initial enemies, like the northern mayors he was meeting with when I went to visit him in The Hague, subsequently brainstormed with him on how to arrest Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Sudanese intellectuals close to the government are very good at painting pictures of Armageddon to foreigners, insisting that if the international community demands justice it will only hasten war. As Ghazi Salah al-Addin, a moderate Islamist and presidential adviser, told me in Khartoum: “Those who feel threatened by the I.C.C., at a certain point, it will be a matter of life and death to them. They could block the C.P.A. The situation is so fragile. We shouldn’t be complacent. Sudan is a very dangerous place. Your Somalia would be a picnic if Sudan degenerates into chaos. It would draw in the elements you fear most. It would require an influx of U.S. troops just like Afghanistan.”

But that is why the I.C.C.’s work is so crucial, including to the United States: it has the potential to increase the pressure for peace as well as to deliver some justice. Darfurians and activists across Sudan see it as the only way of getting rid of one of the most murderous governments in the world. As the omda of Marla, Abdul Karim, told me, “After the intervention of the commission of inquiry and the U.N. and all of them confessed that there are crimes of war and crimes against humanity in this state, the best chance for the citizens of Darfur is that the perpetrators of these crimes should be taken to account at fair trials. Our hope is with the I.C.C.”

Particularly in light of Justice Kennedy’s speech at the ASIL, this article is all the more poignant. The full article is available here.