Bashir’s Increasing International Isolation

Julian entitled a post last week “The ICC Begins to Fade in Importance in Sudan.”  Julian might want to have a talk with Bashir about that:

On the international summit circuit, no one can clear a room more quickly than Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Leaders have maneuvered to stay out of photographs with him, dashed away from an official lunch to avoid sitting next to him and gone as far as canceling an entire international meeting to keep Mr. Bashir at bay.

The evasions are all part of the diplomatic dance that began a year ago when the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued a global arrest warrant for Mr. Bashir, citing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, for his role in the bloodshed in the western Darfur region of Sudan. The warrant, scoffed at by the Sudanese president, has also set off private and not-so-private scoffing at the suspect in various capitals.

The latest snub has come from Paris, which has plainly told Mr. Bashir that he is not on the guest list for the African-French summit meeting in Nice, on the French Riviera, on May 31. “Sudan is invited,” a French Foreign Ministry official said, “but President al-Bashir was asked to designate a representative.”

This followed an earlier, even stronger French rebuff. The original plan was for the gathering to be held in Sharm el Sheik, an Egyptian resort, but when Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, refused to exclude Mr. Bashir, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said he could not come, thereby sinking the meeting.

[snip]

He has made a point of traveling to friendly countries, including Egypt, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but he has not been to any of the 111 countries that joined the International Criminal Court, 30 of which are in Africa.

Some of those countries have warded off visits by warning him that, as court members, they are legally bound to arrest him. South Africa dissuaded him from attending last year’s inauguration of President Jacob Zuma, and he stayed away from two high-level meetings in Uganda and an African Union conference on Darfur in Nigeria. In March, he did not go to a meeting in Kenya, even though it dealt with the peace agreement between north and south Sudan. He also skipped the climate conference in Copenhagen and last fall’s meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Other spaces have also appeared to shrink. Turkey, which is not a court member, invited Mr. Bashir to an Islamic bloc summit meeting last year, but after European Union pressure on the Turks, they quietly suggested that he stay away.

On some occasions when he has traveled, his movements have resulted in some quick dodging by his counterparts. At an international meeting in Qatar last year, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil abruptly left a lunch table when Mr. Bashir arrived late, taking his designated seat next to Mr. da Silva.

At the same meeting, Colombian and Chilean officials sent word that they would not appear in an official group photograph if it included the Sudanese president. Mr. Bashir did not show up for the photo session.

Julian’s argument is, unfortunately, little more than a straw man.  No one — not even, or perhaps especially, the Office of the Prosecutor — expects Bashir to be arrested and delivered to the ICC anytime in the near future.  What we do expect is that the arrest warrant will make it increasingly difficult for Bashir to conduct Sudan’s foreign affairs, making him an ever-greater political liability for his cronies in the Sudanese government and the National Congress Party. As Marlise Simons’ excellent article indicates, that is exactly what we are beginning to see — and Bashir’s isolation will only become worse if (when) the Pre-Trial Chamber adds genocide charges to the warrant.

If Julian thinks that the ICC is fading in importance in the Sudan, it’s only because he’s not looking.