Behind the defiance, a whirr of diplomacy

摘要

Two months after the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, for alleged war crimes in his country's battered western region of Darfur, he seems to be sitting pretty. He has remained entirely unapolo-getic for the deaths of some 300,000 of his compatriots. On the day the indictment was announced he expelled 13 Western aid agencies which had been trying to keep Darfur's 2.7m displaced people alive. He continues to denounce the court as a tool of Western neo-imperialism. He has gone on very public trips to friendly neighbouring countries, such as Egypt and Ethiopia. And he was hailed as a hero at a summit of the 22-country Arab League in Qatar, an ally of the West. In sum, he has demonstrated that the arm of the ICC's law is embarrassingly short.