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| Volume IX, March 2002, Number 1 |
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| EXCERPT: Sudan and the United States: Is a Decade of Tension Winding Down? |
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| Yehudit Ronen |
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Dr. Ronen is a research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Bar Ilan University.
Following over a decade of consis-
tently hostile relations with Sudan,
the United States indicated a
willingness to consider Sudan's bid to rehabilitate its international stature in the fall of 2001. This shift was reflected in the U.S. abstention, rather than a veto, in a Security Council vote on whether to lift the U.N. sanctions imposed on Sudan some five years earlier. The move resulted in the lifting of the sanctions in September 2001. Given Washington's central role in the imposition of the sanctions, their revocation seemed to signal a thaw in the prolonged bilateral antagonism. The Sudanese government, while relieved, was aware, nevertheless, that only the removal of Sudan from the U.S. blacklist of states sponsoring international terrorism would provide the hoped-for basis for a substantial rapprochement. This goal was considered by Khartoum as vital to the survival of the government, which was threatened by mounting internal and external difficulties. As of December 2001, Sudan had not been removed from the list.
The roots and development of the bilateral dispute, which ultimately turned Sudan into a pariah state and adversely affected the region as well, are analyzed below, viewed mainly through the Sudanese prism. The article also examines the tactics and strategy used by Sudan to cope with the U.N. sanctions, U.S.-imposed punitive measures, and perceived American political efforts at eliminating the Sudanese regime. Research for this study has relied extensively on the Sudanese and other Arab media.
Emerging Tension, 1990
The military coup d'état launched by Umar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir on June 30, 1989, put an end to the three-year-old democratically elected government led by al-Sadiq al-Mahdi of the Umma party. This changing of the political guard marked a watershed in Sudan's domestic and foreign affairs, as the new regime committed itself single-mindedly to turning Sudan into a fully Islamic state. An announcement by the new regime on New Year's Eve 1990 of the inauguration of the Sharia as the law of the land was particularly worrisome to the United States. The Americans feared the impact of Sudan's militant Islam on other countries in the Middle East and Africa, namely, the destabilizing of their governments and, consequently, the endangering of American interests in the region.1
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| 1 For a survey of U.S. interests in the Middle East during the 1990s, see Barry Rubin, "The United States and the Middle East," eds. Ami Ayalon/Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, Middle East Contemporary Survey, 1990-99, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992-2001).
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