the grenade rolls by

So, the ICC indictment against the President of Sudan, Omer al-Bashir, is out.

It seems the grenade either has a delayed fuse or is a dud. It has rolled by relatively harmlessly for now.

So far today we have not seen attacks against international staff or facilities. The only reaction so far seems to be some large orchestrated protests in downtown Khartoum, another one in El Geneina (West Darfur), a small, half-hearted one in El Fasher (North Darfur), and none at all in Nyala (South Darfur). In fact, as you may imagine, large numbers of the Darfurian population are not too sympathetic towards the government. Therefore, we expect problems principally where there are large concentrations of Arab tribes and/or their militias.

The scarcity of negative consequences so far should not be taken to indicte that there will not be other effects in the long-term. We wait. The next 24 hours are probably the most important.

In the mean time, the UN mission in Darfur has raised its security level. This means that all but the most “critical” UN staff are being relocated. This has important effects for NGOs as well since they rely on the UN system for emergency evacuation capabilities. In the long term, however, if the UN does not return with full capacity soon, the independent humanitarians may just have to find another way to operate – ways that are less dependent on their unwieldy and super-cautious big brother.

The major news sources are linking these two events, the ICC indictment and the increase of the UN security level. According to briefings the humanitarian community has received, this is mostly erroneous. It has more to do with UN discomfort at their overall posture and the deterioration of security over the past several months – particularly, the number of carjackings and targeted attacks against UN personnel and facilities. The ambush against UNAMID forces on Tuesday, killing 7 soldiers and police officers, seems to have been the rain drop that broke the dam.

I write about these things not as abstract newsworthy items but, rather, as events which directly impact my life and work. I have done little else in the past four very busy days except deal with their consequences.