George Bush imposed new US sanctions on Sudan earlier this week for failing to halt what he labelled the genocide in Darfur. The “final straw” came at the weekend, says Tom Baldwin in The Times, when Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir announced his opposition to the deployment of a 22,000-strong joint UN and African Union peacekeeping force. Al-Bashir agreed in November, but has since stalled at every stage, says Steve Bloomfield in The Independent. Bush lost patience when he declared he would accept only technical and logistical support.
The US sanctions target 31 state-run firms mainly involved in Sudan’s oil industry, but are seen as largely symbolic. Bush has exempted some of the “biggest players”, says James Gerstenzang in the Los Angeles Times, particularly Chinese oil interests and firms supplying raw materials, such as gum Arabic, to big US industries. Administration officials said that putting sanctions on the larger firms would be “extreme”, or even “militant”, and said their intention was to “send a message to the Sudanese government”.
Kenneth Bacon, president of Refugees International, says the sanctions were a step in the right direction, but “limited, late and unilateral”. Tony Blair has called for EU-wide sanctions, says Bloomfield, but the EU has failed to find agreement. China, which buys two-thirds of Sudan’s oil, dismissed concerns. Liu Gujin, China’s Darfur envoy, who has just visited the region, says, “I didn’t see a desperate scenario of people dying of hunger”. What Darfur needs is investment, not sanctions, he adds. “Only when poverty and underdevelopment are addressed will there be peace in Sudan.” In any case, US sanctions, which have been in place to some extent for ten years, don‘t seem to have made much difference. Khartoum has no shortage of partners in the East and Sudan is emerging as a fast-growing oil producer, with GDP doubling in the past five years to $27.7bn.