By Matthew Russell Lee
NAIROBI, October 5 -- As the UN Security Council and its five Permanent Members mill around the Nairobi airport before belateding being whisked to a VIP lounge to wait for their flight to Uganda then Juba, the historic role of each P-5 member in Sudan seems worth surveying.
The British, of course, colonized Sudan until its independence in 1956. In Darfur, for example, the British sought local leaders, even defining which tribes were large enough to name their own nazir and have a formal tribal homeland. Arabs in Darfur who didn't make the cut more recently spawned Janjawiid and much destruction.
While the US has been more interested in the North - South, Muslim - Christian conflict, it's worth noting that the CIA as well as France backed Chad in 1987 in driving Gaddafi's Arabist forces back into Darfur, which also played its role in the more recent conflict there.
Now, France is the host to Darfur rebel leader Abdel Wahid Nur, as Inner City Press asked French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner about last week.
China's business relations with Khartoum are well known; why China did not use its Security Council veto to block the referral of Darfur, and ultimately Omar al Bashir, to the International Criminal Court is still not known. Some say China wanted to have additional leverage over Bashir. But now the indictment seemingly cannot be put off.
On October 4 in New York before he and Inner City Press left for the airport, Ugandan Permanent Representative Ruhakana Rugunda said that his country favors suspending the indictment for a year, under Article 16 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, but that there is not Council unanimity for this. It wouldn't require a unanimous vote, but any of the P-5 could stop it.
Just as one of the Western P-5 Permanent Representatives told the Press last month that it is impossible to imagine any of the Western P-5s taking a photo with Bashir, it is similarly difficult to imagine them -- much less all three of them -- voting to suspend Bashir's indictment for genocide and war crimes.
Seemingly the least implicated P-5 member is Russia. Their Cold War involvements in Africa notwithstanding, Russia's involvement today seems limited to dominating air transport. But this has led to at least two recent incidents of Russian pilots and crews being kidnapped and beaten in Darfur. While when Inner City Press asked him about it, Russia's Permanent Representative Vitaly Churkin minimized these incidents, they may explain his personal participation on the trip.
Footnote: when the plane carrying the Security Council Ambassadors reached Nairobi, less planning than might have been expected had been done. The Ambassadors “sneaked” through a gate for another group's flight.
In future installments we hope to review the business interests of the P-5 members, and the wider interests of the Elected (or Temporary) Ten. Watch this site, and follow on Twitter @InnerCityPress
