War crimes charges rattle Sudan

The World Court could soon issue an arrest warrant for President Bashir on charges of genocide.

By Heba Aly | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the January 16, 2009 edition

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Khartoum, Sudan - The arrest late Wednesday night of veteran Sudanese opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi, days after he called on Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir to turn himself in to face war crimes charges, is an indication of what may lie ahead in the capital, Khartoum.

The mood here has been growing increasingly tense since July, when the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) sought an arrest warrant for Mr. Bashir on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity for his role in the Darfur conflict, which has killed up to 300,000 people and displaced close to 3 million others, according to United Nations estimates.

People here have been bracing themselves for a number of possible outcomes if the court decides to grant the warrant, as expected, in late January or February. "Anything is possible," as one Western diplomat put it.

Among the most pressing concerns is that an indictment of the notoriously volatile country's sitting president could worsen the war in the troubled Darfur region and jeopardize the tenuous peace between Sudan's Arab-dominated north and its Christian and animist south.

A possible coup?

A coup by members of Bashir's inner circle or Mr. Turabi himself – formerly a close Bashir ally until a split between him and the president in 1999 – is also among the possible scenarios.

Turabi says a coup is unlikely, but doesn't rule out the possibility. "Of course, there are all those suspicions," he told the Monitor in a recent interview before his arrest. "All these stories are being circulated."

As one senior government official explained, there are three groups of important players in Sudanese power politics: Turabi and his connections within security organs; Vice President Ali Osman Taha and Presidential Adviser Nafie Ali Nafie, also Islamists who are often credited as the real power behind the throne; and the less religious Bashir and some senior officers in the Army.

For Mr. Nafie and Mr. Taha, "Bashir has become a liability on the party. He must go," said the government source, who added that in any case, "all of them are conspiring against each other."

Such splits have always existed within the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), but according to Suliman Baldo, Africa program director at the New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice, the ICC has sharpened those internal tensions.

"It is accelerating the internal contradictions within the regime, to really spill out between those who are of a pragmatic nature, who want to be part of the world order and not face an environment of constant crisis and sanctions; and those in the regime who are very defiant and want to have that type of confrontation because they believe it reinforces their hold on power," says Mr. Baldo.

"It's too strong to say the National Congress Party is plotting against Bashir. But people are pondering ways out," said another Western diplomat, who requested anonymity. According to this diplomat, influential members of the ruling party – namely Taha and Nafie – are debating whether they should, in the case of an indictment, offer Bashir up to the ICC. For his part, Bashir is debating whether he could simply place them under house arrest and rule with the support of the military.

Could an arrest warrant trigger war?

A larger concern is the effect the indictment would have on the 2005 peace deal that put an end to more than two decades of civil war between north and south Sudan. That war killed close to 10 times the number of people who are estimated to have died in Darfur and threatens to restart at any time.

The deal calls for elections in 2009 and a referendum for southern secession in 2011, but those timelines – ambitious to begin with – will be even more difficult to meet in the case of an ICC indictment.

"The problem we have here in South Sudan is what would happen to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement if Bashir is charged by the court?" Salva Kiir, Sudan's vice president and president of the now semiautonomous region of Southern Sudan, was quoted as saying in the local press. "What about the outstanding items in the peace agreement? Will they be implemented afterwards?"

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