It has been a long twenty-seven years of struggle for Sudan. Finally, the much-awaited announcement by President Trump came last week that the United States is getting ready to remove Sudan from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST). Though the official announcement will come later after the congressional approval, the news was welcomed by Sudan and its African peers.
For Sudan, getting removed from the SST list has been the top priority. It will be a turning point for the country which is in a historic political transition after the new government came to power. Delisting will lift the roadblocks to critical banking ties, ease the investment risk profile, and allow the United States to support debt relief for Sudan at the international financial institutions.
But the delisting has come at a heavy cost. An economy which is under severe stress after decades of misrule, civil war, food insecurity, has to cough up $335 million to compensate victims of the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole. The irony is, the voiceless people of Sudan who were themselves victims of the abusive, authoritarian regime of President Omar al-Bashir and for whom thousands of civilian lives were sacrificed, will be paying for the sins of their old leadership. Though the misery of the families affected by acts of terrorism cannot be undermined, the penalty the people of Sudan have to pay appears as misplaced. There should be some mechanism to make the sinners and their beneficiaries pay for their crimes instead of innocent civilians.
Another string attached to the delisting is the Trump Administration’s linkage of SST delisting with normalization of Sudan’s relationship with Israel. Political observers point out that such a process is uncalled for pushing Sudan to get entangled in a contentious and unrelated issue.
For decades, the United States supported Sudan’s struggle to overthrow its brutal authoritarian state applying pressures like the SST listing. Now, when the country is on the cusp of political change, on the road to democracy, the heavy penalty of $335 million from a famished and fragile economy looks unfair. Somewhere, the US should strike a balance between the well-deserved compensation for the victims and the political imperatives. Let us not forget that a democratic Sudan can play a key role in bringing stability to the broader Red Sea area and the people of Sudan deserve a better deal.
