YESTERDAY'S INDICTMENT of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur places the requirements of justice and peace in undoubted tension.
This is the first time a sitting head of state has been indicted, and a decision to go ahead with prosecution must be made by the court itself within three months. Having been utterly frustrated by Sudan's failure to do anything about earlier indictments over Darfur the ICC prosecutor has now gone to the top. But in doing so he risks undermining the larger peace process between the north and south of the country, which would destabilise the entire region.
Sudan is a huge country, straddling political, cultural, religious and strategic divisions within its own boundaries and in the wider African setting between predominantly Arab and African states. For most of its post-independence history it has been at war with itself. The last round of fighting began in 1983 and only finished in 2005 after two million deaths with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the north and south. The Darfur conflict in west Sudan is essentially a part of this conflict, sparked off by demands for autonomy and growing competition for land, water and resources between agricultural and pastoral peoples. It has been a vicious and highly destructive war, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing several millions more, including in neighbouring Chad, where Irish troops serve with other EU forces to protect refugee camps.
The question posed acutely by this indictment is whether its substance and timing will affect the larger agreement between north and south on which Sudan's peaceful future depends, or whether that should take second place to the urgent need for justice to be done on Darfur. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo insists in strong and vivid language that President Bashir must answer for the crimes committed in Darfur. The United Nations Security Council gave him a mandate to investigate Darfur in 2005, but it has been scandalously unsupportive of his efforts to pursue the consequential indictments of two responsible officials, which Sudan has simply ignored. Mr Ocampo obviously hopes to change this by shaming the UN into action.
Yesterday's reactions to his decision illustrate the conflicting interests at play. African Union representatives warned it could derail the north-south peace agreement, which provides for an independent international boundary commission, national elections next year and a referendum on possible secession or deep federalisation of the south in 2011. The Khartoum regime is in two minds about whether it could survive this process; but most regional states want to give the agreement a chance to succeed and anyway reject such a direct threat to national sovereignty.
Systematic delays and disgraceful indecision have characterised international approaches to Sudan's political future and deployment of humanitarian forces in Darfur. This legal jolt should bring its future to greater international attention and prospective action.