U.S. should support diplomatic efforts in Darfur

Last week, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Bashir of Sudan on seven charges, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. Before the warrant was issued, African and Arab nations expressed fears that such a warrant would destabilize the whole region, inflame the conflict in Darfur and threaten the fragile peace deal that ended decades of civil war between northern and southern Sudan.

The African Union vowed to send a delegation to lobby the UN Security Council to defer the warrant.   Some African countries have threatened to give up their ICC membership in protest against this decision, and the international community also voiced concerns that the move might jeopardize Sudan's peace process.

How could such a seemingly legal and reasonable ICC warrant be met with all these obstacles? The answer has many facets. The most obvious of them is that "the arrest warrant against Bashir could seriously impede the peace process in Sudan," according to AU Commission Chairperson Jean Ping.

Some positive progress has been made in solving the Darfur issue thanks to the joint efforts of Sudan, the AU and the UN. More joint AU-UN peacekeeping forces were being deployed to the region, and the parties concerned were working hard to push forward the political process there. However, the ICC arrest warrant was viewed by the Sudanese government as an encroachment on the sovereignty of Sudan, represented in its sitting head of state, Omar Al-Bashir and an intervention by Western-backed ICC in the internal affairs of Sudan. A 2006 Washington Post article exposed five crucial facts about the Darfur conflict that have been mostly ignored by the Western media: 1) Everyone in Darfur is Muslim, 2) Everyone is black, 3) It's all political, rather than racial or ethnic, 4) the conflict is international, with both Chad and China playing key roles, and 5) the US "genocide" label made it worse, as it emboldened the rebels who believed they could depend on US backing rather than engaging in serious negotiations with the Sudanese government.

In retaliation to the warrant, a Sudanese judge ordered the expulsion of 16 Western Non Governmental Organizations and the discontinuation of three Sudanese NGOs currently working in Darfur, citing violations of Sudanese law. Although Sudan promised to replace them with some 200 Sudanese relief organizations, this doesn't seem like an easy promise to keep. And with a lack of necessary services in Darfur, disastrous instability looms on the horizon, threatening the safety and health of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

It would be great to have an impartial, international legal process under which all suspects are served justice. However, bringing an end to the bloody conflict in Darfur is much more important than promoting narrow interests. It goes without saying that the infamous Iraq war left the U.S. image and credibility badly hurt especially in Muslim countries. The U.S. should take into account the suspicion and distrust among Sudanese people against any American-backed intervention in a Muslim country. The best way the U.S. can show it really cares about the prosperity of the Muslim Fur people, rather than score political points against the China-backed Sudanese government, is to support the peace efforts brokered by non-partisan forces such as the African Union, Arab League and the United Nations.