CAIRO, 31 July 2004 — The Arab League is cautioning the West against threatening sanctions on Sudan over a humanitarian crisis in Darfur, a move some in the Arab world see as a US pretext for toppling another Arab government. Sudan says pressure over Darfur, where the United Nations says the world’s worst humanitarian crisis is unfolding, aims to undermine the country’s Islamist government, whose thawing ties with Washington have been put back on ice over the issue.
“Many would say that the US administration, as well as some European countries, have found in the Darfur crisis a long lost pretext to put the government under the sword of international sanctions,” Arab League spokesman Hossam Zaki said, adding an embargo would not help resolve the crisis, but antagonize Khartoum.
The US Congress has said the Arab militias, known as Janjawid, are committing genocide against non-Arabs in Darfur, where fighting has displaced one million and killed 30,000. The Darfur rebels say the government armed and sent the militias against them. Khartoum denies the charges.
Many in the Arab world are angry over the US invasion of Iraq, which toppled Saddam Hussein, and what they see as an unswerving US bias toward Israel at the Palestinians’ expense. They are now questioning Washington’s motives in taking the Darfur issue to the Security Council.
Mohamed Mahdi Akef, head of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, said Washington was using Darfur as part of a plan “designed to fragment all states of the region, the beginning of it (the plan) was in Iraq”. The United States in 1998 launched missiles at a Khartoum pharmaceuticals plant linked to Osama Bin Laden, saying it was making ingredients for chemical weapons. Sudan, which sheltered Bin Laden from 1991 to 1996, has been under US sanctions since 1997 for sponsoring terrorism.
But the United States, under the Bush administration, has taken an active diplomatic role in Sudan. Under US pressure, Khartoum and the southern rebels have made great strides in the last two years toward reaching a final peace deal to end a 21-year-old civil war in southern Sudan, separate from the Darfur conflict. Khartoum has agreed to a southern vote on secession six years after a final deal.
Some Arab writers and politicians are suspicious, however, that the US diplomacy is aimed at splitting the Muslim Arab north of the oil-producing country from the mainly Christian or animist south.
British and Australian statements of readiness to send troops to Darfur have provoked official concern, although Washington has said talk of military intervention is premature.
Sudan’s northern neighbor Libya has said it could not accept the presence of troops from outside the African Union in Sudan, which has said it would fight any foreign soldiers. The Arab League said it was very concerned by talk of such intervention. Zaki said Australia’s troop offer smacks of human rights double standard, especially given that it had voted against a UN General Assembly resolution demanding Israel tear down a wall it is building in the West Bank.
