Sudan Hand in Glove With Terrorism

Prof Dr Colonel (Retired) K Prabhakar Rao

Sudan a country on east coast of Africa, of late has emerged as the sponsor and abettor of international terrorism. "A number of international terrorist groups including AlQaeda, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Egyptian al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the Palestine Islamic Jihad, and Hamas continued to use Sudan as a safe haven, primarily for conducting logistics and other support activities." Sudan, in northeast Africa, is the largest country on the continent, measuring about one-fourth the size of the United States. Its neighbors are Chad and the Central African Republic on the west, Egypt and Libya on the north, Ethiopia and Eritrea on the east, and Kenya, Uganda, and Democratic Republic of the Congo on the south. The Red Sea washes about 500 miles of the eastern coast. It is traversed from north to south by the Nile, all of whose great tributaries are partly or entirely within its borders.

The 20th century saw the growth of Sudanese nationalism, and in 1953 Egypt and Britain granted Sudan self-government. Independence was proclaimed on Jan. 1, 1956. Since independence, Sudan has been ruled by a series of unstable parliamentary governments and military regimes that is the hall mark of African nations. Under Maj. Gen. Gaafar Mohamed Nimeiri, Sudan instituted fundamentalist Islamic law in 1983. This exacerbated the rift between the Arab north, the seat of the government, and the black African animists and Christians in the south. Differences in language, religion, ethnicity, and political power erupted in an unending civil war between government forces, strongly influenced by the National Islamic Front (NIF) and the southern rebels, whose most influential faction is the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). It allowed pro-government militias called the Janjaweed to carry out massacres against black villagers and rebel groups in the region. These Arab militias, believed to have been armed by the government, have killed between 200,000 and 300,000 civilians and displaced more than 1 million Human rights violations, religious persecution, and allegations that Sudan had been a safe haven for terrorists isolated the country from most of the international community. In 1995, the UN imposed sanctions against it (1).

Sudan sponsors terrorism ruled by a radical Islamist regime. They harbored Osama Bin Laden before he moved to Afghanistan and Hamas and Hezbollah have both operated terrorist training camps in Sudan. However, these activities are not significant in comparison to the slaughter of Sudan's black Christian population at the hands of government-backed Islamist militias. Tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children have been systematically eliminated in Sudan and this has been correctly termed "genocide.” by UN (2)

On Aug. 20, 1998, the United States launched it’s cruise missiles that destroyed a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Khartoum which allegedly manufactured chemical weapons. The U.S. contended that the Sudanese factory was financed by Islamic militant Osama bin Laden. Ever since Lt. Gen. Omar Bashir's military coup in 1989, the de facto ruler of Sudan had been Hassan el-Turabi, a cleric and political leader who is a major figure in the pan-Arabic Islamic fundamentalist resurgence. In 1999, however, Bashir ousted Turabi and placed him under house arrest. (He was freed in Oct. 2003.) Since then Bashir has made overtures to the West, and in Sept. 2001, the UN lifted its six-year-old sanctions. The U.S., however, still officially considers Sudan a terrorist state. Seventeen families representing USS Cole bombing victims are suing the government of Sudan in federal court. A federal judge in Norfolk, Va., has scheduled the case for trial. This lawsuit is one of many attempting to make it very expensive for countries to sponsor terrorism (3).

Sudan and North Korea have begun cooperating with the United States in fighting terrorist groups but have not yet done enough to be removed from a U.S. list of countries sponsoring terrorism, as per the State Department officials. The department’s annual report on terrorism, made public, says Sudan opened discussions on the issue with U.S. officials last year. The report also says Sudan agreed to sign international agreements on fighting terrorism and took domestic steps that reflected this new resolve. “They’ve evidenced a serious interest in getting out of the terrorism business. That’s something we want to encourage,” said Edmund J. Hull, the State Department’s acting coordinator for counterterrorism. The report says, however, that Sudan remains a safe haven for members of several terrorist groups, including Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda organization, and has not fully complied with U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that it end assistance to terrorists(4). The sanctions which the US imposes on countries including Sudan are (5):-

a. No arms-related exports.

b. Controls over dual-use exports

c. Restrictions on economic assistance

d. Financial restrictions

e. US opposes loans by the World Bank and similar institutions

f. Sovereign immunity waived to allow families of terrorist victims to file for civil damages in US courts

g. Tax credits denied for income earned in listed countries

h Duty-free goods exemption suspended for imports from those countries

i. Authority to prohibit a US citizen from engaging in financial transactions with the government on the list without a license from the US government.

j. Prohibition of Defense Department contracts above $100,000 with companies controlled by countries on the list.

Thus it is seen that Sudan continues to be a terrorist linked State. The country is found to be a sympathizer to the international terrorists and is found to be safe haven for the terrorists and is on active list of terrorists of USA that is waging a war against terrorism in the world. The country is torn apart with internal feuds, Islamic fundamentalism, poverty and backwardness and as typical Islamic country harbors hatred towards west and abets terrorism and is a sanctuary for such evil doers.

Bibliography

1. Sudan, http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:-hfixL5JeYcJ:www.infoplease.com

/ipa/A0107996.html+Sudan&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4

2. Christopher Holton, Lucent-Alcatel: Doing business with states sponsoring terrorism, Special to world Tribune.com, Thursday, April 6, 2006http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:-iI0TZBUN9cJ:www.worldtribune.com

/worldtribune/WTARC/2006/ss_holton_04_06.html+Sudan+sponsoring+Terrorism&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=in

3. Eric Niiler, Sudan Sued by Families for Sponsoring Terrorism, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5314494

4 Alan Sipress, Sudan and North Korea co operate but on terrorism list
THE WASHINGTON POST -- Volume 121 >> Issue 22 : Tuesday, May 1, 2001

Washingtonhttp://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:4B7lBUpMDD0J:www-tech.mit.edu

/V121/N22/Terrorist-22.22w.html+Sudan+sponsoring+Terrorism&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8

5. US List of State sponsors of terrorism, http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:RMQQTkfK1TgJ:en.wikipedia.org

/wiki/U.S._list_of_state_sponsors_of_international_terrorism+Sudan+sponsoring+Terrorism&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3

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