U.S.-Sudan Terrorism Ties Spell Disaster for Anti-Khartoum Activists

By Jim Lobe

September 25, 2001

When President George W. Bush announced his "war" against terrorism, activists who have lobbied hard to persuade Congress to impose far-reaching sanctions against Sudan's National Islamic Front (NIF) government for what they say is "genocidal" repression against the South thought victory was theirs at last. Not only had the NIF hosted the prime suspect, Osama bin Laden, from 1991 to 1996, but the State Department only last April, in its annual report on terrorism, said Khartoum was still being "used as a safe haven of various groups, including associates of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization."

"Sudan must be seen as an essential piece of the (terrorism) puzzle," said Nina Shea, a member of the quasi-governmental U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom shortly after Bush's announcement.

Citing Bush's pledge to "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbored them," Shea said the NIF fit the latter target to a tee.

It now appears, however, that the activists' calculation was wrong, and that, in the brutal logic of the new antiterrorist Realpolitik, Sudan may yet absolve itself in Washington's eyes by being among the first and the most enthusiastic of countries enlisting in Bush's new crusade.

Senior U.S. officials have said Khartoum has "opened their files" to U.S. intelligence agencies and appear prepared to hand over at least two or three of some 26 people in whom Washington is particularly interested.

"If you take the 11th of September as the beginning of the new world order, they've signaled they want to be on the right side," said one official. "They're opening the files, and, in a couple of cases, they've give us more than we asked for."

Already, the administration, working with Republican leaders, has acted to shelve the Sudan Peace Act, the House of Representatives version of which would prevent foreign companies with investments in Sudan's energy sector from selling stock on U.S. exchanges, indefinitely. Congressional aides believe the Act, which passed the Senate in a less stringent form, is probably dead for the year.

Some analysts believe the administration may go much further. "I wouldn't be surprised if they started relaxing sanctions imposed by the Clinton administration," said one congressional aide. "They're very enthusiastic about the kind of offers they're getting from Khartoum."

Anti-NIF activists--spanning the Christian Right, black churches, the Congressional Black Caucus, labor unions, and major human rights groups--have been stunned by the sudden turn of events.

"I can't believe that [the administration] would be so cynical as to leave millions of southern Sudanese to their fate, just because a regime, which has worked hand-in-glove with Bin Laden, says it's opening files and may hand over a few suspects," said Eric Reeves, one of the leaders in the capital-market campaign.

Yet it may be an early signal of what Bush's war on terrorism may mean, at least for much of the Islamic world: the subordination of human and minority rights, among many other issues which nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) have spent years lobbying for, to the war against terrorism.

Washington already has eased wide-ranging nuclear-related sanctions against Pakistan to reward its efforts to secure bin Laden. It appears similarly poised to offer Uzbekistan, a government which has distinguished itself for corruption and heavy-handed repression of practicing Muslims, with all kinds of economic and possibly military aid.

"Rather than demand that countries such as Pakistan, Egypt, and Tunisia democratize," noted Robert Kaplan in the Washington Post, "we will have to increasingly tolerate benign dictatorships and various styles of hybrid regimes, provided that they help us in our new struggle."

The Arab-dominated NIF, of course, is anything but a benign dictatorship, particularly toward minority groups, including the Nuba and the predominantly non-Muslim African inhabitants of the South.

According to Human Rights Watch and other international groups, more than two million people, mainly southerners, have died in the civil war between Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) since 1983, when the government of Jaafar Numeiri adopted shari'a, or Islamic law.

The war intensified after the 1989 military coup d'etat that brought to power the NIF, headed by Gen. Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, who quickly repudiated previous peace efforts mediated by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

A new factor in the war has emerged in the last two years as foreign companies have begun pumping oil from the south. These operations are currently earning the NIF some 500 million dollars a year, much of which has been devoted to the acquisition of new weapons, including helicopter gunships, which have reportedly been used to pursue what human rights groups have called "scorched-earth" tactics against local populations living or near drilling and exploration sites.

A construction company owned by Bin Laden built the main road used by the military and foreign oil companies to extend their reach southward, according to published reports.

The Clinton administration imposed tough economic sanctions against Sudan when it listed Khartoum as a state sponsor of terrorism for the first time in 1993. In 1995, it accused Khartoum of involvement in the attempted assassination of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa and cosponsored a UN resolution that imposed additional diplomatic sanctions.

Largely as a result of U.S. pressure, Bin Laden left Sudan for Afghanistan in 1996 but, after the U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998, Washington fired cruise missiles at a pharmaceutical plant in which bin Laden allegedly had an interest. Washington charged that it was being used to produce chemical weapons.

Since the Bush administration took power last January, its rhetoric against Khartoum has been harsh. In a speech delivered in May, for example, Bush described the country as a "disaster for all human rights" and promised to "speak and act for as long as persecution and atrocities in Sudan last." Among other steps, the administration supplied three million dollars in logistical support to the National Democratic Alliance, the political umbrella for the NIF's opposition, including the SPLA.

While the rhetoric has been tough, the actual policy has followed some of the recommendations made by a task force put together by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) last February. In contrast to recommendations from activists to impose additional sanctions on the NIF, it urged Bush to work closely with European countries, which have pursued a policy of engagement with Khartoum, in the interests of ending the war as soon as possible.

At the same time, the administration vowed to strongly oppose the capital market sanctions in the Sudan Peace Act, which was approved virtually unanimously by the House last June. These included a ban on foreign oil companies being listed on U.S. stock exchanges and a requirement that all companies disclose any business interests they have in Sudan with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The latter provision was included in the Senate version of the bill.

"We believe that prohibiting access to capital markets in the United States would run counter to global support for open markets, would undermine our financial market competitiveness and could end up impeding the free flow of capital worldwide," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said last month.

As the coalition, bolstered by addition of the AFL-CIO, mobilized its forces behind the capital market sanctions in advance of the convening in early September of a conference committee to work out the differences between the House and Senate versions, the administration took new steps to reassure the anti-Khartoum forces that it was on their side.

At a White House Rose Garden ceremony September 6, Bush, who once again harshly denounced the NIF, named former Republican Senator and ordained Episcopalian minister John Danforth as his special envoy to help negotiate peace in Sudan and "get this issue solved once and for all."

At the same time, however, the administration quietly agreed to Egypt's request to lift the UN sanctions against Sudan. Washington, which had sent Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel into Sudan to test Khartoum's willingness to cooperate on terrorism since last summer, decided to abstain when the Security Council was to have taken up the matter September 14.

Five days after the Rose Garden ceremony, the hijacked commercial jetliners hit the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

Sudan immediately denounced the attacks and promised to open its files to the CIA-FBI team, according to senior officials. "They immediately started shouting down all the rat holes that they had nothing to do with it," said one. "So we decided to push harder on an open door."

U.S. and Sudanese diplomats quickly reached a "gentleman's agreement" to put off indefinitely the vote on lifting the UN sanctions "until the dust settles," according to knowledgeable sources. Washington's bilateral sanctions remain in effect, but Congressional analysts believe these also may be eased soon, as Khartoum provides more intelligence and possible logistic support for Washington in its new war. Meanwhile, the war in the south continues.

(Jim Lobe <jlobe@starpower.net> is a contributing editor with Foreign Policy In Focus, online at www.fpif.org, and an editor with Inter Press Service in Washington, DC.)