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US accused of prolonging Sudan's agony

Aid agencies want a new approach to the famine-stricken country and its 'untouchable' regime

Andrew Marshall
Saturday 23 October 1999 23:00 BST
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The US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, met John Garang, the Sudanese rebel leader, in Nairobi yesterday to discuss possible food aid for his guerrilla army and efforts to end the country's civil war, the bloodiest in the world. But aid agencies in the US say Ms Albright and her government are helping to prolong the conflict in Sudan.

The US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, met John Garang, the Sudanese rebel leader, in Nairobi yesterday to discuss possible food aid for his guerrilla army and efforts to end the country's civil war, the bloodiest in the world. But aid agencies in the US say Ms Albright and her government are helping to prolong the conflict in Sudan.

The Clinton administration is under pressure from congressional leaders, who want the food aid for Mr Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) so that it can devote more time and resources to its 16-year military campaign against the Khartoum government. Although the US gives the SPLA diplomatic support, it has refused to give military aid, and Mr Garang said yesterday that he had not requested it.

The guerrilla leader promised his continued support for peace talks brokered by Kenya, but several rounds of negotiations have got nowhere, and the war has been in a bloody stalemate for the past two years. Despairing at the lack of progress, aid agencies in the US have begun making their discontent with Washington public. Deep divisions within the US administration over Sudan have produced a policy vacuum, according to the agencies, which has prevented any effective American action to end the war.

Since Osama bin Laden, whom America blames for the US embassy bombings in east Africa last year, sheltered in Sudan, the country has become a symbol of terrorism and militant Islam for the American right as well as some in government. Last year, on very shaky evidence, America launched cruise missiles at Khartoum to destroy a factory which it said was used to produce chemical weapons: everyone else, including the owner, says that it was a pharmaceutical plant.

The US has also become obsessed with slavery in Sudan, an institution which persists in part because of the war. The cause has been taken up by anti-slavery groups in the US, by black politicians and Christian groups alike, some of whom have stoked the issue by "buying back" slaves in highly publicised missions to the country. A popular US television series, Touched By An Angel, featured an episode about slavery in Sudan. For the left, especially the black community, this is just as potent an issue as terrorism.

The result is that the Sudanese government is regarded as untouchable. The American embassy in Khartoum was closed years ago for fear of terrorist attack, and Congress has passed resolutions which suggest that the US should arm the opposition. America cannot act as an honest broker in the conflict because it is so obviously on one side; but neither is it capable of doing anything else to end the war.

The administration is deeply divided about what to do - if anything. Richard Clark, a key counter-terrorism official in the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, the Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, are both adamantly opposed to anything that involves a dialogue with Khartoum. Ms Rice, a brilliant young official and one of the few black Americans in senior policy-making roles, is regarded as especially hard-line in blocking any dialogue. And it was Mr Clark who argued for last year's missile strike.

Other officials, especially those who deal with humanitarian issues, want to find a way out of the morass, but the split has never been resolved. "US policy, since about 1991 or 1992, has been driven exclusively by the issue of international terrorism," says Roger Winter of the US Committee on Refugees, a private agency.

It was this impasse which the aid agencies sought to break, organising a meeting with Ms Albright before she left on her Africa trip to make the case for peace. Few came away optimistic. The roots of the conflict lie in tensions between the mainly Muslim north of the country and the Christian and animist south. But over time, each side has fragmented. Whatever the cause, two million people have been killed and millions are refugees.

Aid agencies have done their best, but a famine last year caused by the war which threatened to kill millions was, for many, the last straw. Several of the agencies joined together to call publicly for the US to change focus, arguing that an end to the fighting had to come first, whatever the faults of the regime in Khartoum and whatever the obstacles.

"The US government should adopt a solution-oriented approach by placing a higher priority on bringing the war in southern Sudan to a just end," said the USCR.

"It appears that neither the Sudan government nor the SPLA rebels can, under existing circumstances, win a clear military victory. Thus the war will likely continue indefinitely, costing additional hundreds of thousands of Sudanese lives. This is unacceptable."

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