MONTREAL — While Canada has a significant role to play in any international effort to enforce the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant against Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, it’s U.S. President Barack Obama who might actually “take the lead,” Mount Royal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler believes.
The warrant, issued this month, charges al-Bashir with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Speaking to reporters earlier this month, Cotler, who also serves as his party’s special counsel on human rights and international justice, elaborated on the potential U.S. role in enforcing the warrant after he had issued an earlier statement hailing its historic nature.
“Will Canada take the lead in this? I don’t believe we can,” Cotler said. “But I think President Obama might.”
Cotler, who also chairs the Save Darfur Parliamentary Commission and is a former justice minister, cited as an encouraging sign the appointment of Susan Rice, assistant secretary of state for African affairs under former U.S. president Bill Clinton, as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
“She has said she is still haunted by [the 1994 genocide in] Rwanda and won’t let it happen again, even if military intervention is required,” Cotler cited her as saying.
Cotler also pointed to other signs he saw as encouraging, including that Obama had expressed the “most commitment” to Darfur while serving in the U.S. Senate and running for president.
Cotler remembered meeting with senior Obama adviser Samantha Power of Harvard University’s Carr Centre for Human Rights, who expressed a commitment to Darfur that was “unequivocal and unwavering.”
Obama was the only presidential candidate to mention Darfur during the campaign and said the United States will “have to act,” Cotler said, noting that Obama also received a report on genocide prevention from former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright.
In terms of concrete action, the United States, under the aegis of the United Nations, could quarantine Sudanese ports to block the exportation of oil to China, Sudan’s largest importer. “China is an enabler here,” Cotler said.
Other strategies that Cotler said the United States could implement include jamming Sudan’s entire communication system; staging a bombing mission against Sudanese aircraft on the ground to prevent them from “indiscriminate aerial bombardment” of the civilian population, and “targeted” economic sanctions.
Given al-Bashir’s already-stated defiance of the warrant, Cotler held no illusions of the challenges in enforcing it, since the ICC wields no actual power to do so.
But it might be possible through the “joint action” of the UN Security Council “with the co-operation of the African Union and member states of the international community,”he said.
“I would also hope that the members of the ruling [Sudanese] National Congress party will finally distance themselves from al-Bashir, undertake to surrender him to the court, and undertake a peace process both with respect to Darfur and the North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
“There are now two peace agreements with respect to Darfur, and both are in a coma.”
Cotler also called for the creation of a “Darfur summit” that would bring together the international community – including the African Union, Arab League, UN nation states, and the like – in an effort to enforce the arrest warrant and protect humanitarian agencies working in Darfur, some of which have been expelled from the country by al-Bashir.
With the United States exercising the “moral, diplomatic, economic and juridical leadership” necessary in concert with the international community, Cotler said, it would serve to hold al-Bashir to account, curtail the human suffering in Darfur, and bring the nation closer to the “peace and justice” it deserves.