KHARTOUM, SUDAN — The billboard in downtown Khartoum delivers a not-so-subtle message to passing cars: "A real Sudanese never stands against a president during his time of need," reads the text, under a picture of a smiling President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir.
As if anyone in the Sudanese capital needed any reminders, an arrest warrant on genocide charges is expected to be issued against Bashir on Wednesday by the International Criminal Court, in a case that threatens to send the country down a path of uncertainty and instability.
Many hope that the war-crimes case stemming from Bashir's handling of the Darfur conflict in western Sudan will prod the hard-nosed regime into making reforms and ending the six-year war.
But officials and analysts, both inside and outside the country, worry that the case could instead push the ruling party into a more antagonistic, isolationist stance, or even ignite another civil war.
"This is a whole new reality," said Fouad Hikmat, the Horn of Africa director at the International Crisis Group. "It's anybody's guess what happens now."
The arrest warrant is only the latest dark cloud emerging in what some see as a perfect storm brewing against Sudan's Islamist-led ruling party, which seized power in a 1989 coup.
National elections this year will test the party's popular support and could unravel a fragile power-sharing agreement it forged with southern rebels. A new U.S. president has filled his administration with advisors who advocate a get-tough stance toward Sudan. Falling oil prices are bringing the country's once-thriving economy to its knees.
"This is going to be a decisive year for Sudan -- one that could determine whether the country will survive or not," said Hayder Ibrahim, founder of the Center for Sudanese Studies, an independent think tank in Khartoum.
The ICC case arose from the government's counter-insurgency campaign in Darfur. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has accused Bashir of supervising a genocidal plot to wipe out certain tribes in the region. Private militias allegedly funded by the government killed 35,000 people and led to the deaths of at least 100,000 others from hunger and disease, according to the ICC case.
Government officials deny that genocide has taken place and accuse Western nations, chiefly the U.S., of using the ICC to topple an oil-rich Islamic republic with a history of opposing Washington policy in Africa and the Middle East.
