Bashir to World: Say "Uncle"

Break out your Stratego boards, friends.

As my Humanitarian Relief co-blogger Michael Kleinman reported a few hours ago, Khartoum is making real on its threats to crackdown on international humanitarian aid operations in Darfur following this morning's action at the ICC.

There's a bit of confusion (or at least, I'm confused) on the news wires as to exactly what is happening. I've heard a variety of different cases: Some agencies have been shut down outright, others have had their international staff expelled, and still others have had their licenses revoked and are trying to figure out exactly what that means, and if they can appeal.

Any way you shake it, it's awful --- especially, as Michael writes, for the million in Darfur who depend on their services.

It's awful, but it's not surprising --- and I think that Khartoum is playing a dangerous game of chicken with the international community. Bashir and his cohorts made their post-ICC intentions known sometime ago, and now they're testing the waters to see how the world responds

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Which is, frankly, what the rest of us are waiting on as well. Martha expresses her frustration over the various watered down official responses to the ICC's move at her blog, Inside the Beltway & Outside the Ordinary, noting that it's not as if we didn't know this was coming. Granted, we can't know what is going on behind the scenes in the upper echelons of the world's diplomatic circuits, but it would be nice to see Obama's supposed "unstinting resolve" a bit more publicly.

We cannot let Bashir own the board --- to put it quite simply, he's gotten away with murder for far too long now, and he's pushing the envelope again, taking his chances that the world's warnings of consequences and accountability will once again prove empty.

Blogger Transition Land made a spot-on comment on Michael's post:

"Bashir: ‘How dare you accuse me of such heinous things?! I'm so innocent I'm going to kill a shitload of people to prove it.'"

The concept of justice here is not intangible or elusive --- it's about reversing the course of history and putting an end to the impunity that has emboldened Bashir for far too long. Only hindsight will show if the ICC's move was "worth it," but given that the conflict has been festering in a holding pattern, something is needed to change the nature of the game.

Short term sacrifices may be required for long term gains --- only time (and hopefully a little elbow grease, Mr. Obama) will tell.

[Photo: Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir delivers a speech during the inauguration of the Merowe Dam in northern Sudan, about 350 km north of the capital Khartoum, March 3, 2009. (REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra]