Sudan: Getting quick debt relief & credit seems bleak

• On his return from his recent trip to Washington DC, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said that the transitional government will be closing the offices of both Hamas and Hezbollah, designated by the US as terrorist groups.
• By remaining on the list, Sudan is prevented from accessing the much-need $10bn in aid it was hoping to raise to repair the battered economy.
• According to professor David Shinn, a former US diplomat and an expert on Sudanese affairs, the US is keeping Sudan on the SST list to see how the transitional government will bring the RSF under its control. 
• As it will take more than three years to remove Sudan from the SST list, the hope to get immediate debt relief and credit seems bleak. Read more:

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Sudan needs US support – both diplomatic and economic

Opinion Piece from The Africa Report.com

Published Monday 10 February 2020 09:51, updated Tuesday 11 February 2020 16:10

By Jihad Mashamoun (pictured below) Doctoral candidate of Middle East Politics within the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies of the University of Exeter, England, United Kingdom

The Sudanese government is working hard to get itself removed from the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST) in order to get much-needed investment into the country.

On his return from his recent trip to Washington DC, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said that the transitional government will be closing the offices of both Hamas and Hezbollah, designated by the US as terrorist groups.

By remaining on the list, Sudan is prevented from accessing the much-needed $10bn in aid it was hoping to raise to repair the battered economy.

Although Hamdok’s visit to the US was certainly positive – the US agreed to upgrade its diplomatic representation to the ambassador level – removing Sudan from the US list will take longer than the three-year period of the transitional government.

So what are the implications of the US keeping Sudan in its SST list? How could the US help Sudan overcome those obstacles?

From a distance

As the US does not want the bloody crackdown on protesters of 3 June to occur again, Makila James, deputy assistant secretary for East Africa and the Sudans, has informed US House officials that the government is looking at options including sanctions should similar events occur.

That pressured the Transitional Military Council (TMC) to reach an agreement with the opposition. However, the US remains uneasy about the inclusion of the military in the transition process.

That is because the transitional process includes military elements of the former regime of president Omar al-Bashir.

Those elements include Lt. General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, the former chairman of the TMC, and Lt. General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo ‘Hemeti’, former deputy chairman of the TMC and who is the commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Both military leaders have been implicated in the genocide that took place in Darfur in 2014 [Sudan Watch Ed: stating that genocide took place in Darfur in 2014 is an error, it should read 2004 not 2014 - also, as far as I am aware, genocide in Darfur has not been proven in a court of law. In my view, the Darfur war, reportedly starting in 2003, was a horrific counter-insurgency costing 300,000-400,000 lives and badly affecting and displacing millions of other Darfuris]. Moreover, the independence of Lt. General Hemeti and his RSF from the Sudanese Armed Forces has been a cause of concern US officials, especially since the emptying of the protest site in front of the Sudanese military headquarters on 3 June.

According to professor David Shinn, a former US diplomat and an expert on Sudanese affairs, the US is keeping Sudan on the SST list to see how the transitional government will bring the RSF under its control.

What about the security establishment?

Another point of concern for US officials is the hold of the former regime over the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), which has been recently revamped into the General Intelligence Services (GIS).

The US included Sudan on the SST list in 1990s even though its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had joint operations with the NISS, which was headed by Salah Abdallah ‘Gosh’ at the time. In 2005, the CIA flew him into its headquarters as a reward for Sudan’s support in detaining suspected militants and providing information on Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda following the 11 September 2001 attacks.

In the 1990s, Sudan invited and hosted Bin Laden. The US had deemed him a threat for his planning of the attack on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The US attack on the Shifa pharmaceutical factory in 1998 was a turning point where Sudan abandoned Bin Laden by attempting to hand him over to the CIA.

Thereafter, the Bashir regime decided to work with the US intelligence agencies to repair the relationship between the two countries and to remove Sudan from the SST list.

One of the central individuals who was tasked with supporting ties with the US was the controversial Salah Gosh. He and the Bashir regime helped the CIA in counter-terrorism operations.

With the removal of Salah Gosh from his position as head of the NISS, the US has concerns about its counter-terrorism partner.

On 2 December, Cameron Hudson, who was a former US diplomat and former chief of staff of the George Bush administration, said the US worries that Salah Gosh has supporters who could undermine the country’s reform efforts.

The recent mutiny of the operations unit of the GIS shows that the US’s fears were well founded.

That is because it became apparent that Lt. General Mustafa Abubakr Dambalab, who was appointed as the chief of the GIS, was a supporter of Salah Gosh. 

Salah Gosh founded the operations unit of the NISS in 2005.

Sources say Salah Gosh manipulated the operations unit to mutiny and to try to instigate a coup as Lt. General Hemeti on 13 January 2020.

Sailing into safer waters

As the recent mutiny has shown that the supporters of the former regime will continue to threaten the transition process by creating insecurity, it is apparent that the inclusion of Sudan on the SST list is also threatening the transition process.

As it will take more than three years to remove Sudan from the SST list, the hope to get immediate debt relief and credit seems bleak.

However, to help guide Sudan’s transitional process into safe waters, there are a series of immediate measures that could satisfy the immediate goals of both Sudan and the US:

• 1.  As fellow Sudanese have understandably great expectations, the US could help Hamdok’s government in managing the expectations of the population by appointing a pro-active ambassador.
• It is recommended that the ambassador work with both the Sudanese government and the governing Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces party in communicating clearly what the US expects from Sudan.
• 2.  The US could help address Sudan’s security problems by working with its regional allies to hand over Salah Gosh and other members of the former regime to Sudan so that they can face prosecution for the crimes they committed against the people since 30 June 1989.
• 3.  While Hamdok’s government has been operating with public support so far, removing fuel and food subsidies to balance the books will undermine it. Therefore, rather than following policies driven by the narrow economic agenda of the World Bank and IMF, the government and the international community could work together in retrieving the billions of dollars that the former regime leaders have stashed outside Sudan.

View Original: https://www.theafricareport.com/23171/sudan-needs-us-support-both-diplomatic-and-economic/

Sudan: UN chief wants Sudan dropped from terror list

Getty Images/BBC World Service

UN chief Mr Antonio Guterres said post-Bashir Sudan needs support in its political transition 

UN chief wants Sudan dropped from terror list

Report by BBC World Service

Dated 10 February 2020 5:08

The UN's Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has told African leaders that it's time to remove Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Addressing the annual African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Mr Guterres said the UN would drum up international support that would enable the country to overcome its challenges.

Sudan is being welcomed back into the international fold following the toppling last year of the former president, Omar al-Bashir.

The leaders at the summit will discuss an African-led peace effort to end the civil war in Libya.

They will also consider how to tackle worsening militant insurgencies across Africa.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cq23pdgvgm8t/sudan

Why Sudan and South Sudan are a US CIA favourite

Note from Sudan Watch Editor: Copied here below is an astonishing article. Since 2004 I have lost count of the number of times that the US promised to remove Sudan from the state sponsors of terror list and lift sanctions in exchange for action that included behaviour.  

The more intelligence that the US wanted to squeeze from Sudan in pursuit of Al Qaeda, Bin Laden et al, the more it dangled a carrot. The US never followed through. Who can blame Sudan for feeling stung. 

Also, the article explains how the US was behind splitting Sudan apart. It makes me feel sick to read what went on behind the scenes while millions of Sudanese were terrorised, displaced, maimed, starved, killed.

Hat tip to Justin Lynch for such candid reporting. Note the date of report. Yellow highlighting is mine.

Article from The Daily Beast

Written by JUSTIN LYNCH

Dated 09 January 2019 4:50AM ET

Why is Sudan’s Genocidal Regime a CIA Favorite?

Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters

One of the most respected American diplomats to work in Africa, Princeton Lyman, was set to meet in September 2012 with members of a Sudanese plot to overthrow President Omar al-Bashir, who is accused of genocide in Darfur.

For hours Lyman waited in an opulent hotel overlooking the Nile River in Cairo for Salah Gosh, Sudan’s former director of national security and at one time a CIA collaborator, who was a participant in the plan.

As the State Department’s special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, Lyman had tentatively exchanged messages with the plot’s members for months. Lyman described the group to me as military men who felt “they had been professionally betrayed” by Bashir’s leadership. The Sudanese men reached out to Lyman in early 2012 as discontent was growing inside the military. Accused of genocide, funding terrorism, and waging war against South Sudan, Khartoum was seen as a problem-child of a global order. No longer, said the army officials, who wanted to see if the Americans would recognize a military takeover in Sudan, even though under U.S. law such recognition was illegal.

“I was very conscious of the fact that you could not have the United States policy for the overthrow of even an indicted [leader],” Lyman told me. But he believed that the United States should engage with anyone seeking reform in Sudan, especially if the change could come with a minimum of chaos and carnage.

Weeks earlier, Lyman gave a speech including language for the plotters that laid out what a new relationship would look like. It was a diplomatic high-wire act that did not explicitly support the coup, but embraced change if it came.

“The government would show itself to be accountable, committed to democracy, to respect for human rights,” Lyman said Aug. 1, 2012, according to his prepared remarks. “I can imagine a Sudan Armed Forces no longer as one in violation of international norms but one taking its place as a highly regarded professional military.”

Lyman ended with a flourish. “If it comes to pass, the United States will respond.”

As diplomatic signals go, few are more blunt.

Back in Cairo a few weeks later on the September day at the hotel, Lyman waited to meet Gosh. And waited. Lyman told me that Gosh was pulled into the plot at the late stages to give it a political face and he did not hatch the plan himself. But Gosh never appeared for the meeting. Lyman returned home dejected, and did not communicate again with the group.

Bashir uncovered the plot. Gosh was detained. But the American involvement has never been revealed until now.

The United States offered no military, financial or any other form of support to the plan—only a promise that the American government would engage with the new leaders if the plot took place. Yet the fact Lyman met with participants in a plot already set in motion is a sign of the intimate American relationship that exists with top Sudanese military and political figures.

Lyman told The Daily Beast these details days before he passed away in August last year. He shared the story, he said, because he thought it showed the importance of meeting with anyone who pursued reform in Sudan and demonstrated the risks diplomats should take, and do take, in the name of peace. His account was confirmed and expanded on by Colin Thomas-Jensen, Lyman’s special adviser at the time, and others who are familiar with the events.

Today, new protests in Sudan are approaching a new boiling point, and Lyman’s story is history. But it suggests the still very relevant and largely untold story of the relationship between Sudan and the United States—ties largely based on the clout of the powerful intelligence services in both the Trump and Obama administrations.

This article is based in part on interviews and documents from 13 current and former American officials serving in the State Department, Pentagon, CIA, and other areas of the U.S. government.

The CIA declined to comment. The White House referred questions to the State Department. The State Department is under furlough, but in a January 8 joint press release with other countries said that it was “appalled by reports of deaths and serious injury to those exercising their legitimate right to protest,” adding that its future engagement will depend on the government’s “actions and decisions.”

The current mass protests, which began in December, have spread across Sudan and threaten to topple the three-decade rule of Bashir. Demonstrators have adopted the chorus of "the people demand the fall of the regime," a slogan from the 2011 Arab Spring protests. Security forces have killed at least 37 protesters, according to a December 24 release by Amnesty International. Citing the Sudanese interior minister, the Associated Press reported that 816 people have been arrested.

“These protests are as serious as can be,” said Alex De Waal, professor at Tufts University and author of seven books on Sudan. “Any next steps involve one of two things. Either it is for Bashir to step down gracefully and be assured his safety by a regional body, or it would be through a takeover from a coalition of military and army officials.”

Gosh, who is now head of Sudan’s intelligence service, is seen under the circumstances as a potential king-maker. His relationship with the CIA and other intelligence services is well known. He was chauffeured to Washington on a private jet in 2005 to discuss intelligence cooperation and the situation in Darfur which then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had acknowledged as a “genocide“ in September 2004.

Even after some details of the half-baked plot of 2012 were uncovered, Gosh managed to climb back into Bashir’s inner circle in 2018 with support from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

“The extent to which the U.S. is conveying any messages that are shaping thinking in Khartoum is likely entirely dependent on what the CIA is saying to Salah Gosh,” said a former U.S. official familiar with the situation.

Although Sudan has been listed as a state sponsor of terror since 1993 and the U.S. has accused al-Bashir more than once of genocide for his government’s actions in Darfur, cooperation between the two countries has been close on particular issues that Washington sees as a priority, particularly the fight against terrorist jihadis.

After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., Sudan—which had sheltered Osama bin Laden in the 1990s—cooperated closely in the hunt for al Qaeda operatives. Afraid they might be next on the list of countries targeted as an “axis of evil,” Sudanese forces conducted counter-terrorism missions to stop the flow of militants from West Africa to Iraq, where some tried to join the jihad against U.S. forces on the ground there.

Although his secretary of state had accused Bashir of genocide in Darfur, where his regime which anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 people, former President George W. Bush was secretly in contact with the Sudanese leader, according to a Bush White House official. That included a phone call in January 2005, when the intelligence community learned that Bashir was wavering over whether he should sign a deal to give South Sudan independence. Bush eventually convinced Bashir to sign the agreement.

The relationship gained an added dimension after the 2011 civil war in Libya created a constellation of militant groups. With its strategic location nestled on the southern border of Libya, Sudan’s counter-terrorism ties with America blossomed. Talks were held repeatedly to reform the political relationship with Sudan.

Although the United States promised to remove Sudan from the state sponsors of terror list and lift sanctions in exchange for actions that included good behavior, the Americans never followed through. The Sudanese felt suckered by the Americans, according to Lyman and current and former U.S. officials involved in the talks.

An inflection point in the American-Sudanese intelligence relationship came in 2015 when Sudan dramatically reduced its counterterrorism collaboration with the Americans.

Then-CIA director John Brennan was one of the biggest advocates for reform of the American-Sudanese relationship. Sudan “cut their C.T. cooperation, and then Brennan calls whoever and says ‘What the fuck, why aren’t these guys cooperating with me?’ I think they have a sense of how to create a little tension inside the U.S. government,” a former Obama administration official said. “There was a scream from across the river [at the CIA]: ‘We need this relationship, isn’t there anything we can do?’”

For the CIA and the Pentagon, clandestine access to Libya and information regarding al-Shabaab leaders who were educated in Khartoum was considered highly valuable.

Under then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice, the White House began a process to restore relations with Sudan. As one of the last acts of the Obama administration in January 2017, the United States began a five-track process to restore relations that depend on humanitarian access, stopping violence and counter-terrorism collaboration.  

That process has expanded under the Trump administration, and in late-October the United States entered a second re-engagement with Sudan.

That normalized relations with Sudan is a foreign policy goal with rare bipartisan support of both the Obama and Trump administrations is in no small part due to the former CIA officials serving in both the Obama and Trump White Houses who value the counter-terrorism and intelligence sharing benefits of closer diplomatic engagement, according to current and former officials involved in internal deliberations of both administrations.

State Department officials said that normalized relations with Sudan depend on the fulfillment of conditions laid out in its agreement, which include human rights and humanitarian access.

However, those inside the U.S. government opposed to the plan doubt the Sudanese are offering substantial intelligence cooperation. These American officials argue it sends a bad signal that a genocidal regime can be welcomed back into the international community. And they say normalized relations unfairly reward Khartoum as it still supports some terrorist actors or and continues to wage war against its own people.

A decision to fully restore relations may be on the horizon, nonetheless. The Trump administration agreed with Sudanese officials to end the second phase of the re-engagement plan in August 2019, although that timeline could shift based on Khartoum’s compliance, according to a current official and another former official familiar with the matter.

But Congress, which has the ability to block the action, has not yet been informed of the timeline, according to a Senate aide.

A fully restored relationship with Sudan would be a sign of how influential the CIA has become with the Arab state.

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, having the intelligence community play the preponderant role in shaping and executing policy toward Sudan has actually been the exception rather than the rule in the post-9/11 period, and only became the case in the last two years of the Obama administration and now under President Trump,” said the former American official who discussed the CIA’s potential communications with Gosh.

For the Sudanese government, restored relations would be cause for celebration.

As midterm election results rolled in on the night of Nov. 6, Sudanese foreign minister Dirdeiry Mohamed Ahmed held court in the Fairmont Hotel in the Georgetown District of Washington D.C. He had just met with the State Department to discuss restoring relations. But Dirdeiry, as American officials call him, barely touched the glass of water in front of him as he jabbered at two reporters.

“The United States is definitely a very important state in the world, and we would like to have good relations with it,” Dirdeiry said. “The level of cooperation that Sudan is having with the United States in particular and also there in the region at large in countering terrorism is exemplary.”

SOURCE: https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-is-sudans-genocidal-regime-a-cia-favorite