As she passed each bed-all of them were occupied-Lily silently thanked God for the relative security of the camp and its perimeter fence, however symbolic the protection offered by the thin tarpaulin walls might be. The Janjaweed had attacked the IDP camps before, but such incidents were rare, as they typically resulted in a diplomatic outcry against the regime of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president. Even al-Bashir-a man who topped Parade magazine’s annual list of the world’s ten worst dictators in 2006 and three years later was charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court-had little interest in stirring up serious trouble with the UN or the United States.

At least, that was the general assumption. Personally, Lily wasn’t so sure. Less than a month earlier, the United States had levied harsh sanctions against the North African country, adding to the heavy restrictions already in place as a result of the ICC’s indictment. The punitive measures had touched the highest levels of the Sudanese government, most noticeably in the case of the defense minister, whose U.S. accounts had been frozen.

Al-Bashir had responded to the ICC arrest warrant through polite, if evasive, diplomatic channels-a public fight with its 109 member nations was the furthest thing from what he wanted or needed. But the United States, a nonmember still trying to dig its way out from the global ill will generated by its Iraqi conflict, was another story…and a convenient target for his chest-thumping wrath.

Months after the new sanctions were imposed, he’d given a fiery speech condemning them. And while he’d stopped short of threatening outright retribution, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was on the verge of striking back at the world’s lone superpower and sending out an indirect, albeit powerful, message to the ICC-namely, his intention of submitting to foreign justice was nil. He was not going down without a fight and had cast himself in the convenient, familiar role of a victim forced to retaliate against the imperial American bully.