Getting away with murder
Wherever he is skulking, Saddam Hussein cannot have missed the significance of former Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin dying in Saudi Arabia, as deposed Liberian leader Charles Taylor flew to Nigeria. Although the term 'regime change' was not used, the exile of these two dictators speaks volumes about the emerging world order.
Iraq's notorious fugitive must envy them both. The foreigners who forced them to quit did not hold them accountable for their crimes. Tanzania's invading troops withdrew from Uganda after deposing Amin, the sergeant who promoted himself to field marshal. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo promised Taylor - a Massachusetts economics graduate who was jailed in the US for embezzlement - political asylum.
Not that they are the only fallen dictators to escape justice by slipping into exile. Haiti's Jean-Claude Duvalier, Ethiopia's General Mengistu Haile Mariam and Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner, to name but a few, are quite comfortable in their French, Zimbabwean and Brazilian homes. It has been suggested that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe should join them. Chilean General Augusto Pinochet is not seriously inconvenienced by legal skirmishing.
As Reed Brody, special prosecutor for Human Rights Watch, has said: 'If you kill one person, you go to jail; if you kill 20, you go to an institution for the insane; if you kill 20,000 you get political asylum.'
The caveat is that peaceful regime change is only possible in countries that have no strategic value for the US.
Amin's eight-year reign of terror killed 300,000 people; thousands of Asians were robbed and driven out. He was accused of cannibalism. Yet, a United Nations Human Rights Commission attempt to prise him out of Saudi protection came to nothing.
Amnesty International said Liberia's civil war 'was characterised by some of the worst abuses known: widespread, deliberate and arbitrary killings of civilians, torture, including rape and deliberate amputation of limbs, and abduction and forced recruitment of large numbers of people, including children'. About 50,000 Liberians died and the population of 33 million was reduced to penury.
The UN clamped sanctions on Liberia, banned Taylor and his colleagues from travelling abroad, and indicted him for fomenting rebellion in neighbouring Sierra Leone. The war crimes tribunal there is entitled to seize him to stand trial. But he attended a conference in Ghana with impunity and played host to the leaders of South Africa, Mozambique and Ghana with customary sang-froid. Having anointed his deputy as president, he headed for exile with the chilling threat: 'God willing, I will be back.'
A Nigerian dignitary says a pact between Mr Obasanjo and US President George W. Bush made this possible. That is why 2,300 US marines anchored just off the coast did nothing to help the opposition Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, which controlled 66 per cent of the country and much of the capital, Monrovia.
In contrast, Panama's ousted strongman, Manuel Noriega, is languishing in a Florida prison. Serbia's former president, Slobodan Milosevic, is battling for liberty (and, perhaps, his life) in The Hague. And Mr Hussein is a hunted man, a price on his head, his sons and teenage grandson butchered, hundreds of his supporters killed or captured and his devastated country teetering on the brink of civil war.
Of course, the US cannot risk its resources in situations where it has no stake. Even if it could, it would be both more effective and morally more desirable if the world evolved its own justice system under UN auspices.
The fledgling International Criminal Court marks a healthy beginning but, unfortunately, the United States has set the precedent for about 100 countries to reject its jurisdiction.
So we are left with a situation where the Idi Amins and Charles Taylors go virtually scot-free because they have not transgressed against American interests, while the Manuel Noriegas and Saddam Husseins are punished for very similar crimes that happen to affect the US. And the Americans are now getting ready to rehabilitate yesterday's enemy, Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
This may be the new world order, but it is not an order that holds the promise of peace, justice or much comfort for victims of oppression.
Sunanda Kisor Datta-Ray is a former editor of the Statesman newspaper in India
