When the International Criminal Court (ICC) was set up ten years ago, it was meant to make the world a safer place. The Court and the various UN war crimes tribunals were supposed to pursue and punish war-criminal dictators as a warning to all the others.
The idea may have been a noble one but, as Syria now demonstrates, it has proved hideously flawed. Far from deterring brutal dictators, the prospect of ending up like Slobodan Milosevic or Charles Taylor has persuaded some of the worst dictators that they only have one choice: to fight it out to the end.
The Assads are only the latest family to prove this point. Before them it was the Gaddafis. As the Libyan regime began to crumble, there were numerous attempts to get members of the family out. Yet even neighbouring Algeria was unwilling to give Gaddafi himself exile, and in the days and weeks before his fall, planes with family members on board were turned away from several countries. We will never know how many people needlessly died in those weeks as the Gaddafis looked for exits from the burning building. It was certainly a building which they had set alight, but it was the international community who had locked the doors. We should find better ways to deal with infernos.
Things were not always like this. No story from a British expat in Saudi is complete without an account of bumping into Idi Amin in the frozen food section of a supermarket in Jeddah. Like everything else in his life, the manner of Amin’s retirement was horrible. But if you hold your nostrils and think it through, was it really the worst option? True, there was never a day in court for the families of the many people he murdered.
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