Pambazuka News
26 March 2009
cc Andrew Heavens
In response to the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, Mahmood Mamdani argues that those enforcing rights also need to be held accountable when justice is sought. Skilfully tracing the Darfur conflict’s broader history, Mamdani argues that basing its understanding on spurious assumptions – seeing the duration of the conflict as mirroring that of the Sudanese president’s time in office, and assuming a single set of perpetrators of violent deaths and rape – has enabled the ICC to lay the blame squarely at al-Bashir’s door. Given the mass deaths experienced in Darfur over the 2003–04 period, this is not to ignore the central issue of accountability however, but merely to recognise that these deaths represent mass murder orchestrated by a variety of players, rather than outright genocide at the hands of the Khartoum government. Ultimately of greater concern for the African continent, Mamdani contends, will be the relationship between law and politics and the politicisation of the ICC. If a fundamentalist search for justice regardless of political context is not to come to represent mere vengeance, Mamdani concludes, then criminal accountability will need to be effectively subordinated to political reform.
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