Challenging International Justice

The International Criminal Court, intent on bringing to justice some of the world's worst human rights offenders doesn't appear to be making too much headway when it indicts leaders of Muslim countries who have committed unspeakable acts of terror against their own populations. Although Sudan's president was found guilty in 2009 of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his actions in Darfur against black Sudanese, Omar al-Bashir enjoys the high regard and protection of Arab countries, none of which take the charges levelled against him seriously.

President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan

He remains free to travel abroad to meetings of the Arab Conference, all of whose members champion him as one of theirs, a leader in high repute. China refused to take seriously its responsibility to the United Nations as a member of the Security Council in overlooking the inconvenience of the charges brought against al-Bashir, welcoming him to China, on a state visit. China is a patron of Sudan, an oil-rich country that provides China with oil for production.

Moammar Gadhafi has also been indicted for war crimes committed more latterly against his own citizens, ordering his troops to fire directly on civilians, using mortars, helicopter gunships, and tracked vehicles and snipers on rooftops. Like the Arab League and its disinterest and disdain for the International Criminal Court's determinations, the 52-member African League too has dismissed the findings of the ICC.

The international indictment of one of their own, who just happened to use some of his oil wealth to support other African nations and thereby gain their support as an admirable leader of North Africa, "seriously complicates" efforts by the AU to broker a peace settlement, according to its spokesperson. They have decided to disregard the arrest warrant. Entirely predictable. Moreover the AU levelled a charge that the ICC acts "discriminatorily", only pursuing purported crimes in Africa, ignoring Western powers' actions in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Thus far, although Syria's Bashar al Assad has reacted to the civil insurrection plaguing his regime by ordering troops to fire directly at protesters, at funeral processions, levelling towns, destroying buildings and homes, ripping up orchards and plowing down field crops, targeting farm animals in a scorched-earth policy of revenge, the condemnations issuing from the United Nations have been relatively weak. The ICC has yet to turn its attention to al Assad's vicious predations.

And then not to be overlooked, there is the long-expected indictment against four high-ranking members of Hezbollah in Lebanon, finding them guilty of planning and executing the assassination of Lebanon's former statesman, Rafik al-Hariri, along with 22 other Lebanese in a massive bomb attack. "They cannot find them or arrest them in 30 days or 60 days, or in a year, two years, 30 years or 300 years", railed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasralleh rather excessively.

And the rest of the Arab world appears to agree with this sentiment. Most of Lebanon shudders at the potential prospect of Hezbollah's irrational, murderous rage should it be put to another test. The country has been ravaged by internecine and sectarian violence raking it over the living coals of revenge and transforming it from the peaceful oasis it once was of tolerance and civility. It has no wish to return to those days of dreadful carnage.

Justice will most certainly not be seen to be done. What is justice in the Middle East?