Foreign Policy Blogs

A Tightening Noose for al-Bashir?

Depending on what source one chooses to believe, the judges on the International Criminal Court (ICC) either have or have not issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir. Whatever the reality of the situation, two things appear clear:

1) Whether the warrant has been issued or not, the noose is circling around al-Bashir, and presumably others in his inner circle. He may be able to buy time. But if he does, he had better have some concrete gains to show for that time.

2) Things are likely to get more complicated before they get less so, whether in Darfur or anyplace else where al-Bashir and his cronies have wrought destabilization. An indictment is hardly likely to make Khartoum more conciliatory, after all.

 

Author

Derek Catsam

Derek Catsam is a Professor of history and Kathlyn Cosper Dunagan Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. He is also Senior Research Associate at Rhodes University. Derek writes about race and politics in the United States and Africa, sports, and terrorism. He is currently working on books on bus boycotts in the United States and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s and on the 1981 South African Springbok rugby team's tour to the US. He is the author of three books, dozens of scholarly articles and reviews, and has published widely on current affairs in African, American, and European publications. He has lived, worked, and travelled extensively throughout southern Africa. He writes about politics, sports, travel, pop culture, and just about anything else that comes to mind.

Areas of Focus:
Africa; Zimbabwe; South Africa; Apartheid

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