Opinion: No justice, no peace in Darfur

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One of the many tragedies of Darfur is that some of the international community’s best-intentioned efforts to stop the slaughter of innocents end up doing more harm than good. A case in point was Tuesday’s move by the International Criminal Court to target two suspected ringleaders in Sudan’s campaign of ethnic cleansing for prosecution.

The ICC is simply doing its job, and it’s an important one. But in the end, its attempts to bring interior minister Ahmed Haroun and militia leader Ali Kushayb to justice might just strengthen the resolve of Sudan’s ruling regime to dig in and reject all attempts to resolve the ongoing crisis in Darfur.

The genocidal campaign that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions won’t end until United Nations peacekeepers enter the country and start protecting innocent civilians from the soldiers and government-backed militias who are destroying their villages. But the U.N. can’t move without permission from the Sudanese government, which isn’t forthcoming. This isn’t all that surprising: If you were a mass murderer, would you invite the police into your house? There isn’t much doubt that many of Sudan’s leaders, from President Omar al-Bashir down, should at least be investigated for their involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bashir and his fellow goons have reason to fear that if they open the door to international troops, they’re opening the door to international lawyers, too. The ICC has just stoked those fears.

Though the U.N. is wrangling over the appropriate sanctions against the Sudanese government, it’s hard to imagine it could come up with a stick big enough to prompt Bashir to risk sharing the fate of Saddam Hussein. Which means unless we want to consider some kind of immunity deal for Sudan’s leaders -- which would set a horrible precedent -- the diplomatic options for solving this crisis are fast shrinking to the vanishing point.