Museveni’s Bashir arrest dilemma and the ICC

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir decision not to come to Kampala to attend the Smart Partnership Conference on July 26 gave Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni a way out of a situation that can only be described as the Devil’s Alternative.

He would have been damned if he arrested Bashir, and damned if he didn’t.

Despite the African Union’s position on his indictment by the International Criminal Court, sensing that not all of its leaders will stand by him all the way, Bashir has limited his travels to countries not party to the Rome State under which the ICC was created.

In all honesty, one has to have the eccentricity of Libya’s Muamar Gaddafi or the “international acceptance” of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak to dine with Bashir now.

When Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, came to Kampala and insisted at a news conference at the Uganda Media Centre that Uganda had a legal obligation to arrest President Bashir if he came to Kampala, he might as well have added that it had a moral and historical obligation as well.

Uganda has a special relationship with the ICC because it was the first country to refer a case to the court.

The indictment against Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and the four top leaders of the rebel LRA was the ICC’s first case, although Congo rebel leader Thomas Lubanga was the first to be arraigned before the court.

Uganda is the current chair of the UN Security Council and diplomatic etiquette enjoins it to act in a manner consonant with international public opinion — where “international” means the Western powers. And the West wants Bashir put away.

On the other hand, Libya for example has a sizeable investment portfolio in Uganda and recently Museveni asked Iran to develop an oil refinery in the country.

These are the countries with which Uganda shares membership in the Organisation of Islamic Conference.

Arresting Bashir would have earned Museveni the wrath of the African Union and Muslim World.

Yet even if Museveni only considered his country’s interests alone, he would have been reluctant to arrest Bashir.

Sudan is in the midst of implementing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed between Khartoum and the Government of Southern Sudan.

There are fears that a new leader could be reluctant to implement the CPA, leading to the resumption of war in Sudan.

Museveni knows only too well what it would mean for Uganda: Trouble.