Kurt Bassuener March 11th, 2009

Ahmet Alibašic, DPC Senior Associate and lecturer at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo, wrote an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Europe on Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s efforts to rally support against the International Criminal Court’s issuance of a warrant for his arrest on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Ahmet writes from his perspective as a Bosnian Muslim:

Muslim victims of genocide in Bosnia finally gained some succor from the arrest last July of former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic. Yet Muslims in Darfur are still being victimized by the regime of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, whom the International Criminal Court indicted Wednesday.
 
As a Bosnian and a Muslim who suffered from international passivity in the face of genocide, I am appalled at Mr. Bashir’s transparent attempt at ethnoreligious manipulation. The international community — with Muslims at the forefront — should instead stand with Mr. Bashir’s victims and demand that he be brought to justice at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
 
Defending Mr. Bashir in the name of Islam is particularly odious. Muslim leaders already have failed their brother Bashir by missing opportunities over the years to help him by stopping him, as the Prophet Muhammad advised. Helping your brother whether he is right or wrong is not the Islamic way.
 
At a grassroots level, some Muslim voices have broken through the din of support for Mr. Bashir among Muslim leaders. After the ICC prosecutor announced the charges, the American Islamic Community correctly identified “our moral duty to seek justice for thousands of fellow Muslims murdered simply for having the wrong identity.”

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has condemned the expulsion of humanitarian aid groups by Bashir, but the American policy response remains unclear.

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Kurt Bassuener March 6th, 2009

Yesterday’s Washington Post published an op-ed by retired US Air Force Chief of Staff and former Obama campaign co-chair Gen. Merrill A. “Tony” McPeak and DPC Senior Associate Kurt Bassuener calling for the US to work together with its European allies to establish a no-fly zone over Darfur.  The article followed on the International Criminal Court’s issue of a warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity:

President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice have all advocated a more engaged and effective policy to end the suffering in Darfur. They have also agreed that creating a no-fly zone over the region would change the dynamic on the ground.

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By taking away the Sudanese government’s freedom to use air power to terrorize its population, the West would finally get enough leverage with Khartoum to negotiate the entry of a stronger U.N. ground force. Effective military action in the form of a no-fly zone would not preclude a political resolution, as some suggest, but in fact would make diplomacy more effective by reducing Bashir’s options.

Bashir has strung the international community along in a way that the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic would have envied. A no-fly zone is the best way to turn the conflict to his disadvantage. President Obama has vowed to act multilaterally, where possible, to build real, consensus solutions to international security problems. Decisive international action in Darfur may present the best opportunity to demonstrate this resolve.

The article’s argument was endorsed by New York Times columnist and persistent Darfur advocate Nicholas Kristof in his blog yesterday.

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