Arrest Warrant for Bashir

This morning, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued its first arrest warrant for a sitting head of state. At 8am EST, the court held a press conference announcing an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The warrant has been a long time coming. In 2005, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution ordering the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation in Darfur. As a result of that investigation, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo filed 10 charges - including multiple counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity - in July of last year. As a direct result of his action, I became a facebook fan of Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

While the court did not include charges of genocide, which Ocampo had asked for, overall, the ICC warrant is a good thing.

In the last few months, as the announcement of the warrant drew closer, Bashir stepped up his attacks on civilians - bombing Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, tossing out aid workers, and surrounding villages with troops. Bashir threatened even worse attacks if the court followed through in issuing the warrant. These threats led some people to argue that issuing the warrant would be dangerous - and reckless - in the face of the humanitarian need.

The prevailing view, however, was in favor of the warrant. As John Prendergast and Omer Ismail explain in their op-ed, due largely to the ICC warrant:

Bashir's troubles are mounting. His staunchest supporters are backing away, slowly. China is deeply concerned that its oil investments will be put at risk by Bashir's continued warmongering. Arab states have similar concerns about their huge investments in Sudan's oil-fueled economic boom. Egypt in particular sees Bashir as a liability. His regime supported the assassination attempt against President Hosni Mubarak in 1995, backed Saddam Hussein in the two Gulf wars, and now is fully behind Hamas in Gaza.

But what really strikes me about this arrest warrant is the precedent it sets. More and more, activists in the Darfur movement see themselves as as part of a larger movement - a permanent, anti-genocide constituency. Seen through that lens, the significance of the arrest warrant is quite astounding.

The ICC is a young organization - it only came into existence in 2002. But this is the first time it's issued a warrant against a sitting head of state. Furthermore, this warrant represents the most significant international action against a current genocide.

When you look through the history of genocide, one of the most shocking things that stands out is the resounding silences with which the world responded. So many times, as dictators oversaw the calculated brutalization, torture, and destruction of their own people, the world stood by, to apathetic and overwhelmed by the political inconvenience action.

The ICC warrant was politically inconvenient. Ocompo caught hell for bringing the charges, and I'm sure we'll hear more about what's bad about the warrant in the coming days. But for now, at least one internal figure has taken a stand against genocide.

That's right, dictators, you're on notice.