FrontPage Mag
written by Ryan Mauro
Tuesday March 1, 2011
President Obama is rewarding the government of Sudan for permitting the referendum on the secession of South Sudan by removing it from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. This will drop some sanctions on Sudan just as protestors demand the resignation of President Omar Bashir, a man indicted for genocide who has recently pledged to turn his country into a Sharia state.
“For those who meet all of their obligations, there is a path to greater prosperity and normal relations with the United States, including examining Sudan’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism,” President Obama said. The State Department confirms that the process to de-list the African country has begun.
The U.S. apparently agreed to de-list Sudan if the regime of President Omar Bashir allowed a referendum to be held on whether South Sudan should become its own country. This motion was approved and the new country will be formally created in July. Around the time of the vote, Bashir announced that he’d transform Sudan into a state where all law is based on Sharia and Arabic would become the only language. This means that the U.S. will be starting a new relationship with a fully radicalized Islamic state that will promote the ideology behind terrorism, if not terrorism itself.
The State Department had previously set the stage for Sudan’s de-listing by saying the “bilateral counterterrorism relationship remains solid” but that “hard-line” elements were upset that the U.S. had not removed their designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism because of this cooperation. The State Department praised Sudan for helping to stop the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq and cooperating in the investigation of the murder of two U.S. embassy workers in Khartoum by an Al-Qaeda-linked group on January 1, 2008.
The State Department glossed over the Bashir regime’s current ties to terrorism, saying that although elements of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaeda are in Sudan, the government “does not openly support the presence” of the latter two. Hamas is welcomed as “freedom fighters” but their activity is limited to fundraising, the State Department’s report on Sudan claims. The key word to notice in the report is “openly,” as it is highly questionable whether a regime as tyrannical as Bashir’s wouldn’t know about the presence of terrorists on its land. Even if Sudan’s words are being met with action, the State Department’s admission that it allows Hamas to fundraise is surely a qualification for remaining on the list of State Sponsors.
Various reports cast doubt on the State Department’s assertion about the nature of Sudan’s links to terrorism. An intelligence report in 2006 said that 15 members of Al-Qaeda were helping to train the state-sponsored Janjaweed militia in Darfur. In January 2009, Israel bombed a truck convoy in Sudan that was part of an Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ supply line to Hamas from Port Sudan. In April 2009, Egypt arrested about 50 Hezbollah members planning attacks on Israeli targets, some of which told their interrogators that they sought to send operatives to Sudan for training. The deputy-editor of an opposition newspaper was arrested in June 2010 for reporting that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were operating a weapons factory in Khartoum that was supplying Hamas, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and unidentified extremists in Somalia.
The ideology of radical Islam will undoubtedly be promoted once Bashir turns Sudan into a state based solely on Sharia law. To make matters worse, it is growing increasingly close to Iran and has declared the beginning of a nuclear program. Government agents have reportedly contacted remnants of the Abdul-Qadeer Khan nuclear black market network and the completion of a nuclear reactor is set for 2020. In 2006, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was in Khartoum when he said that Iran would share its nuclear technology with Islamic countries.
The de-listing of Sudan sends the wrong signal to the South Sudanese, the victims of the regime’s oppression and the protestors currently demanding the resignation of President Bashir. He has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on genocide charges and is one of the biggest mass murders alive. His government is already threatening South Sudan, saying that war will follow if it harbors rebel forces from Darfur or if the tribes in the oil-rich Abyei Province unilaterally declare that they’ll unite with the South. The regime has also been accused of being behind a militia in the south that massacred over 200 people in the South this month.
The announcement will infuriate the protestors in Sudan that have become active since the overthrow of Tunisian President Ben Ali. There have been scattered protests, sometimes numbering hundreds, and dozens of demonstrators have been arrested and even more assaulted. The regime has reacted with swift brutality, including the deployment of members of Bashir’s political party carrying knives to attack students on campuses. The protestors are still trying to organize online with one group having over 16,000 members and a rallying call of, “Our brothers in Tunisia did it and so did our brothers in Egypt. It is about time for us.” The regime has responded by creating an “Electronic Jihad” unit to shut down the opposition’s websites and block Internet access for its enemies.
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