the move “outrageous” for its moral equivalence. He is right, but he misses the broader point.
For 10 weeks beginning in November 2017, the ICC sent investigators to Afghanistan to look into supposed war crimes by U.S. forces, the CIA, some European partners, and the Afghan National Security Forces. In theory, the ICC mandate also included the Taliban, but in practice, the ICC was unable to go to Taliban areas. It was a silly, publicity-seeking move by Bensouda, and it went nowhere, though it did temporarily silence her African critics.
Khan follows the same path. He ignores China’s repression of the Uyghurs, the atrocities the Iranian and Syrian regimes commit against their own people, and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh. The failure to pursue any of these cases is not due to a lack of evidence.