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 بالانجليزي: تقرير مهم عن علاقات السودان بالغرب
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06:10 AM March, 07 2019 سودانيز اون لاين
Abureesh-أمريكا
مكتبتى
رابط مختصر
The Wall Street Journal
WORLD AFRICA
Sudanese Press for Change, Putting U.S.’s Embrace of Despot Under Scrutiny
U.S. and Europe have supported Sudanese leader amid push to stem migration and stop terrorism
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By Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Jared Malsin
Updated March 6, 2019 12:06 p.m. ET
A bloody uprising against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is putting Western and Arab powers in an awkward spot: Few are ready to ditch the long-ruling despot, but they aren’t prepared to support him, either.
Three months of protests against Mr. Bashir’s 30-year rule have morphed from petitions against soaring bread prices to nationwide demonstrations pitting thousands of civilians against Sudan’s feared military and secret police. Mr. Bashir has replaced his cabinet with hard-line generals, launching a brutal crackdown that has left at least 51 people dead, according to Human Rights Watch.
The standoff is raising issues for Western and Middle Eastern governments that have spent recent years cultivating Mr. Bashir as a strategic ally in one of the world’s more turbulent corners.
In return for sanctions relief since late 2017, Mr. Bashir’s Islamist government has provided the U.S. with crucial intelligence on jihadist groups across the Arab world and ditched an alliance with Iran to support Saudi Arabia.
Sudan also has become an instrumental part of European Union migration policy, receiving some €100 million ($113.1 million) since 2016 from Brussels to curb the flow of refugees and migrants from East Africa—through Sudan—to Europe.
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Sudan’s cooperation has contributed, along with other factors, to a drop in the numbers of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe from Africa to 150,000 last year from roughly one million in 2015.
“Bashir has a cunning record of allying himself with everyone and being beholden to no one,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior analyst for Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group. “He has a reputation for transactional diplomacy.”
Three months of protests against Mr. Bashir’s 30-year rule have morphed from petitions against soaring bread prices to nationwide demonstrations pitting thousands of civilians against Sudan’s feared military and secret police.
Three months of protests against Mr. Bashir’s 30-year rule have morphed from petitions against soaring bread prices to nationwide demonstrations pitting thousands of civilians against Sudan’s feared military and secret police.
Mr. Bashir has squelched several protest movements since seizing power in a 1989 coup, but some analysts and diplomats say the current demonstrations—supported by a large cross-section of Sudanese society—are the most serious threat to his rule.
To stifle dissent after his security forces failed to contain the latest uprising, Mr. Bashir declared a state of emergency, banned protests and installed military brass in top government positions. The government, which denies killing demonstrators, last week said Mr. Bashir would step down from the leadership of his party, a gesture protesters dismissed as meaningless. Defiant demonstrators are continuing to take to the streets.
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On Tuesday, a one-day strike closed businesses in the capital Khartoum and other parts of the country, as pressure mounted on Mr. Bashir to resign.
“The political will to reform is zero, and people are fed up with Bashir’s inability to deal with crises, including the economic one,” said Shamael Elnoor, a journalist at opposition newspaper Al-Tayar. “The Sudanese are defying bullets and detention to continue to protest.”
A yearlong economic crisis has prompted the collapse of the Sudanese economy and sent inflation to 72.9% in January, according to the national statistics service.
The uprising poses a strategic challenge for Washington, which has cautiously embraced Mr. Bashir’s government after decades seeking its isolation.
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The U.S. placed Sudan on the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1993, when it harbored Osama bin Laden. It then imposed economic sanctions in 1998 and bolstered them in 2007, after Mr. Bashir led the army on a brutal campaign against civilians and opposition groups that the United Nations says left around 300,000 people dead in the restive region of Darfur.
Mr. Bashir is the only sitting head of government to be wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes and genocide for his role in Darfur.
But intelligence cooperation and concessions by Khartoum, including breaking all relations with Iran and North Korea, led the U.S. to lift some sanctions in October 2017 and the U.S. is currently negotiating removing Sudan from its terror list.
The U.S., together with the U.K., Norway and Canada, last week condemned the state of emergency. But people familiar with the State Department’s thinking said the recent change in U.S. policy, buttressed by lessons from the Arab Spring, when the U.S. backed a series of revolutions that failed, has muted the Trump administration’s response to the protests and ensuing crackdown.
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“The U.S. is speaking out of both sides of its mouth,” a senior U.N. diplomat in Khartoum said. “They have to defend their choice to lift sanctions and bring in American business. But they can’t be quiet when people are getting killed.”
The State Department said the U.S. remained deeply concerned about the situation in Sudan and called on the government to listen to the people’s legitimate demands “rather than jail and suppress them.”
“Progress in the U.S.-Sudan bilateral relationship is dependent on Sudan improving its human-rights record, including respecting freedoms of expression, press, religion or belief, peaceful assembly, and association,” an official said in a statement.
The EU is in a similar bind as the U.S. While condemning violence and calling for sweeping overhauls in Sudan, the EU hasn’t stepped up pressure on Mr. Bashir, even though it treats him as persona non grata because of the ICC arrest warrant. A spokeswoman said EU funding to Sudan was distributed through development agencies and nongovernmental organizations and wasn’t funneled through Sudanese government agencies or their budgets.
Despite a ban on protests, defiant demonstrators are continuing to take to the streets.
Despite a ban on protests, defiant demonstrators are continuing to take to the streets.
The diplomatic deadlock has been echoed across the Middle East, where most regional powers have refused to overtly criticize Mr. Bashir or offer the kind of financial or military support that could change the calculus of the crisis to his favor.
The flat response reflects the former general’s history of tangled regional alliances, where he has appeared to play rivals off against one another.
Eager for Saudi economic investment, Sudan broke ties with Iran in 2016. Consolidating the move, thousands of Sudanese soldiers are fighting in the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.
But Sudan’s government is also a traditional ally of Turkey and Qatar, bitter rivals of Saudi Arabia in a regional contest for power.
Unsure whether Mr. Bashir will survive or can be trusted, wealthy Gulf states have refused to bail out Sudan’s economy and help ensure his regime’s survival.
“They aren’t getting any political payback for their financial investments, so none of them are interested in spending more money in this context,” a senior Western official based in Khartoum said.
—Jessica Donati in Washington contributed to this article.
Write to Matina Stevis-Gridneff at mailto:[email protected]@wsj.com and Jared Malsin at mailto:[email protected]@wsj.com
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Abureesh
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست