CAIRO: The crisis in western Sudan has dealt a blow to improving ties between Washington and Khartoum, which now faces a new set of sanctions if the government cannot stop Arab militia attacks on African villagers.
Progress towards ending a 21-year-old civil war in Sudan's south and Khartoum's cooperation in the US "war on terror" had warmed its ties with Washington, which in 1997 imposed economic sanctions on Sudan as a "state sponsor of terrorism".
But Washington is now leading efforts to bring Sudan to task over the western region of Darfur, where the US Congress has labelled as genocide the military campaign by the Arab militias. A draft UN resolution circulated by Washington threatens more sanctions against Khartoum if it fails to act on Darfur.
"It's quite a setback for Khartoum," said Douglas Johnson, author of 'The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars'. "The Sudanese government were in a position where they were being patted on the back for their cooperation in the war on terrorism, they were bringing a war to an end. But that's all now been dissipated," he said.
Khartoum and rebels from the southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) have over the last two years made significant progress towards ending the civil war in the south. US pressure has pushed the process forward.
"There were a lot of groups within Europe, and even in the United States, who were looking forward to doing business with the Sudan," Johnson said. Sudan has been seeking foreign investment to develop its oil industry, which has been shunned by western firms because of shareholder worries about human rights abuses. Analysts say Sudan has at least two billion barrels of recoverable crude.
DEAL OFF THE TABLE: Washington last year said it would review all sanctions against Sudan if it reached a deal with the SPLM, even as Darfur rebels had launched a separate uprising and accused Khartoum of arming the Arab militias, known as Janjaweed.
"The earlier deal is off the table and it's hard to imagine in the near term the kind of measures that were being discussed," said J. Stephen Morrison, Africa programme director at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Khartoum's miscalculations are the base on which all of this has happened," Morrison said. "You have exceptional mobilization in the US, especially among African American activists and conservative religious leaders."
The same US lobby groups have pushed Washington to pressure Khartoum to pursue peace in the mainly Christian or animist south. Sudan has said international concern over Darfur, which is mainly Muslim, aims to undermine the Islamist government of Omar Hassan al-Bashir, which seized power in a 1989 military coup.
Frosty US ties with Khartoum, which hosted Osama bin Laden from 1991 to 1996, reached a low in 1998 when Washington launched missiles at a pharmaceuticals plant it said was linked to bin Laden and making ingredients for chemical weapons.
Bilateral dialogue resumed in 2000. Washington in May removed Sudan's name from a blacklist of countries it says are uncooperative in its war on terrorism. But it did not wipe Sudan off a list of states it says sponsor terror because Khartoum had not severed all links with anti-Israeli groups, such as Hamas.
PEACE IN BALANCE: Washington says normalization with Khartoum now hinges on addressing Darfur, regardless of a peace deal in the south. "Sudan can't realize its full peace dividend until it realizes peace in Darfur," a western observer said.
Pressure from Washington and other countries over Darfur, where the UN says one million people have been displaced and 30,000 killed, could delay or undermine efforts to finally end war in the south, analysts say.
The SPLM and Khartoum in May signed accords paving the way to an end to Africa's longest running civil war, which has killed an estimated two million people, mainly through famine and disease, and uprooted four million others.
"The way the situation is evolving lowers the incentives for signing a deal right now," Morrison said. "Khartoum is not expecting the big pay-off now that it would have received a few months ago in terms of normalization."
Ibrahim Dargash, an advisor to Sudan's foreign minister, said the imposition of sanctions could delay the conclusion of a deal in the south because Khartoum would be preoccupied with containing the negative effects of any embargo. -Reuters
