The other side of the story must be told

The furor is already going down. As I think we all knew it would. Driving around Juba today the only sign that anything was afoot was the presence of soldiers outside all the consulates and donor offices. For protection, one assumes.

I was in a meeting most of the day with all Southern Sudanese and myself. Predictably, the Juba-ites were all thrilled with the indictment, having a healthy, long standing dislike of the northern leader. When I started my, now slightly old, tirade about "lives of women and children...blah blah blah... ivory tower...blah blah blah... western paradigm of justice... blah blah blah" they all looked at me kinda cockeyed and said "It's a court. Of course it is justice."

I pointed out the harm the indictment caused, the organizations kicked out, the hundreds of thousands, literally, who now faced god knows what since their lives depended on the aid those organizations gave.

Another cockeyed look. "But that's the whole point. A man who would do this, he deserves jail. This just proves the point that the indictment was right."

Given that my visceral reaction the other day seems, somehow, to be being taken as representing general opinion in the south, I felt obligated to point out that, while I have yet to meet another expat who thinks the indictment was good, the Southern Sudanese around me think it rocks. Hard.