-Caveat Lector-
Increasingly, US stands alone on Sudan
EU nations move towards engagement
By Declan Walsh, Globe Correspondent, 7/1/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/182/nation/Increasingly_US_stands_alone_on_Sudan+.shtml
HARTOUM, Sudan - There are few tourist traps in this city of blast-furnace
temperatures, grinding poverty, and strict Muslim laws. But one unlikely
attraction is to be found on the northern edge of town, where the ugly
industrial zone trails off into the desert.
A smiling guard welcomes visitors to El Shifa, the manufacturing plant
destroyed by a deadly barrage of American cruise missiles in 1998.
President Clinton, who ordered the attack, claimed the factory was a
secret chemical weapons facility; Sudan said it manufactured life-saving
medicines.
Now the owner is bringing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the US
government and, to prove his point, allows anyone who wishes to look
around.
''We respect America, but she did something bad for us here,'' said Abdul
el-Munign, a young man who guides the curious through the rubble.
This stark skeleton of El Shifa is also a symbol of the persistent enmity
between the United States and Sudan's Islamic regime. For the United
States, Sudan is a pariah state in the same league as Iraq, North Korea,
and Afghanistan. American companies are prohibited from doing business
here, the US Embassy is officially closed, and the State Department still
considers Khartoum to be a terrorist safe haven.
But recently other nations, particularly in Europe, have started to reject
America's policy of isolating Sudan. Since last year, Britain, France, the
Netherlands, and other European Union countries have undertaken a policy
of ''constructive engagement'' with President Omar el-Bashir's government.
That has meant renewed contacts with government officials, funding for a
program to combat the slave trade, and turning a blind eye to United
Nations sanctions imposed in 1996.
The move has sparked a quiet but heated war of words in the
air-conditioned cool of Western diplomatic circles here. ''The Americans
often give the impression that all they want to do is overthrow the
government,'' grumbled one senior European diplomat. American officials
retort that Europe is turning a blind eye to official brutality in the
name of pragmatic politics.
One prickly question lies at the heart of the debate: whether one of the
world's most notorious ''rogue'' regimes is capable of reforming itself
from within.
The regime here, which came to power in a 1989 military coup, has done
much to warrant its unenviable reputation. In its early years Khartoum was
a city of fear, where opposition figures disappeared into notorious
''ghost houses,'' never to reemerge. Osama Bin Laden, the Islamic
fundamentalist suspected of masterminding the 1998 bombings of US
embassies in east Africa, used to reside here.
More recently the government has been accused of terrible abuses in
prosecuting the 18-year-old war against southern-based rebels: razing
villages to clear the way for lucrative oil exploration, fueling the slave
trade, and mercilessly bombing civilian and humanitarian targets in the
rebel-held south.
In Washington, an eclectic coalition of conservative Christians and black
rights activists have turned Sudan into a political hot potato. The most
influential campaigner is the Rev. Franklin Graham, the head of the
evangelical charity Samaritan's Purse and a confidant of President Bush,
who has advocated further military strikes against the Khartoum
government, which he describes as ''pure evil.''
That description infuriates Sudan's government.
''We are mistreated more than any other country in the world,'' said Mahdi
Ibrahim, a presidential adviser recently appointed minister of
information. Ibrahim also objected to frequent portrayal of the civil war
as a religious one that pits northern Muslims against southern Christians.
''Two million southerners are living in Khartoum. Why would they come if
we were persecuting them?'' he asked.
One answer is that they had little choice. Most southerners fled to
Khartoum to escape the fighting and have been forced to live in huge,
squalid camps that ring the city and lack the most basic facilities. Many
complain of being treated as second-class citizens.
But religious intolerance appears to be waning. Islamic sharia law has
been in force in northern Sudan since 1983 but is loosely enforced these
days. A small number of women refuse to wear the veil in public, and
alcohol is tolerated in private homes. The number of judicial amputations
of convicted criminals has also fallen.
Nevertheless, there are still reasons for mistrust. Last Easter a
Christian celebration in central Khartoum was violently broken up by riot
police. Alfred Taban, a southern journalist who edits the independent
Khartoum Monitor newspaper, was there. ''The police threw grenades, one of
which chopped off a medical student's hand. People were
