Get thee to the Hague

Way back when I was in high school in the early 90s, I had an "underground" magazine called The Esoteric Address (I cannot claim the title - I had to look up esoteric when one of the co-founders suggested it). Anyway, one of my first front-page articles was about the Sudan and the atrocities there. Heaven knows why I was interested in the Sudan. The problems there were not as grievous as those in other African nations (they were, I believe, in the midst of low-level civil-war-like aggression). I don't think I even bothered looking it up on a map. Regardless, I was inflamed with teenage moral certitude and wanted to rail against what I deemed to be injustice and hypocrisy.

Now, well over a decade after my sophomoric rant, I am happy to announce that Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, President of Sudan, accused perpetrator of war crimes and crimes against humanity, is on the International Criminal Court hit list. They had early wanted to include charges of genocide but removed these charges due to lack of sufficient evidence and because they wanted to have a sure-fire case against al-Bashir.

al-Bashir, for his part, has basically told the ICC to shove it, claiming that he doesn't recognize the court's authority and dismissing the charges as yet another neo-colonialist, racist, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim tactic of the West. Were it not for the fact that an over 300,000 people were displaced, murdered, raped, tortured, or otherwise abused, I might give him the benefit of the doubt. But all roads from the hell that is Darfur lead back to Sudan, and all roads of power in Darfur lead back to al-Bashir.

So what did al-Bashir do to mark the injustice of these colonial bigots' accusations? Exactly what you'd expect a despotic, masochistic, megalomaniac ruler to do: screw the people. The Sudanese government revoked the licenses of Oxfam and other aid agencies, who were [not surprisingly] the last, best hope of the people to, oh I don't know, eat.

((sigh))

It makes me wonder about Africa. What happened? Why is it so amazingly F***ed up? Why does it seem as though all leaders there basically hate - if not despise - their own people? I'm sure I'm missing something here.

Still, I'm happy that the ICC has made it clear what anyone with eyes can see, al-Bashir is not a man to be trusted with the welfare of a used wad of toilet paper, let alone human beings. Now for the second, hard step - getting him to the Hague.