N.Y. Times (July 17, 2008)

July 17, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist
Prosecuting Genocide
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Many aid workers and diplomats suffered a panic attack when the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought an arrest warrant this week for the president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for committing genocide. They feared that Mr. Bashir would retaliate by attacking peacekeepers and humanitarian workers.

But instead of wringing our hands, we should be applauding. The prosecution for genocide is a historic step that also creates an opportunity in Sudan, particularly if China can now be induced and shamed into suspending the transfer of weapons used to slaughter civilians in Darfur.

If China continues — it is the main supplier of arms used in the genocide — then it may itself be in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Article III of the convention declares that one of the punishable crimes is “complicity in genocide”; that’s the crime that China may be committing if it goes on supplying arms used for genocide, even after the I.C.C. has begun criminal proceedings against the purchaser of those weapons.

Beijing seems unabashed. Incredibly, China and Russia are acting as Mr. Bashir’s lawyers, quietly urging the United Nations Security Council to intervene to delay criminal proceedings against him. Such a delay is a bad idea, unless Mr. Bashir agrees to go into exile.

Still, China does care about its image. Beijing supplied arms to Pol Pot’s genocidal regime in Cambodia but later distanced itself from the Khmer Rouge as international criticism grew. China also supported Slobodan Milosevic until he was indicted, but then almost immediately let him hang out to dry.

One test of China’s attitudes will be whether President Bashir is welcomed at the Olympic Games’ opening ceremony next month. (If President Bush is not careful, he may find himself seated at the ceremony between Mr. Bashir and Robert Mugabe.)

If Beijing reacts to Mr. Bashir the same way it did to its other war criminal pals and suspends arms transfers, then there is real hope for Sudan. If Mr. Bashir feared losing his weapons and spare parts, he would be willing to make significant concessions that would make a peace deal more likely — and ultimately an enforceable peace agreement is the only way that Darfur can recover.

According to United Nations data, 88 percent of Sudan’s imported small arms come from China — and those Chinese sales of small arms increased 137-fold between 2001 and 2006. China has also sold military aircraft to Sudan, and the BBC reported this week that two Chinese-made A-5 Fantan fighter aircraft were spotted on a Darfur runway last month. The BBC also said that China is training Sudanese military pilots in Sudan.

Likewise, Human Rights First, in a report on Chinese weapons sales to Sudan, suggests that Chinese engineers supervise arms production at the Giad industrial complex outside Khartoum. Chinese military companies have also helped set up arms factories outside Khartoum at Kalakla, Chojeri and Bageer.

Instead of lashing out in reaction to the prospect of an arrest warrant, Mr. Bashir may be forced to take the opposite tack: He may become more cooperative.

Mr. Bashir first used brutal methods — militias and a proxy invasion of a neighboring country — in his long war against South Sudan. He didn’t pay a steep price, so he adopted the same scorched-earth policy in the Nuba Mountains. When he again went unpunished, he quite rationally adopted the same measures to suppress insurgency in Darfur.

Now, finally, we have a stick that has Mr. Bashir alarmed, and that gives us leverage. So far, Mr. Bashir is responding by trying to win support from the African Union and the Arab League, and that may restrain him from killing and raping too many aid workers and peacekeepers in the coming months. It may even induce him to cooperate with the U.N. in permitting more peacekeepers.

Unfortunately, the Arab League’s secretary general, Amr Moussa, who quite properly denounces abuses when suffered by Palestinians, has chosen to side with Mr. Bashir rather than the hundreds of thousands of Muslims killed in Darfur. If Israel bombed some desert in Darfur, Arab leaders might muster some indignation about violence there.

A final thought: this prosecution for genocide offers a hint of historical progress.

Throughout most of history, genocide was simply what happened to losers in a conflict. In the Bible, if we are to take it literally, there are cases when God gives a nod to genocide (“Now go and completely destroy the entire Amalekite nation — men, women, children, babies”). Such divinely sanctioned ethnic cleansing reflected the norms of war for much of history, finally beginning to yield in the last couple of centuries.

Now this prosecutor’s pursuit of a head of state suggests that human standards truly are changing — and that is a prerequisite for ending genocide itself.