US sanctions on Sudan have no effect without UN action
May 30, 2007 (WASHINGTON) — New US sanctions on Sudan are “too little, too late,” according to activists and experts who argue that the victims of the Darfur bloodshed are being sacrificed on the altar of global diplomacy.
For sanctions to be truly hard-hitting the UN Security Council will have to act in concert against Sudan, commentators said. But China, Sudan’s leading oil customer and a top arms supplier, has routinely stymied that route.
“These US sanctions on their own are insufficient to establish the necessary costs needed to hold the government of Sudan and the other actors accountable,” said David Mozersky, Horn of Africa director at the International Crisis Group.
According to Mozersky, the Sudanese regime has capitalized on global disquiet over US policy in Iraq and the Middle East to deflect criticism over what Washington calls the Darfur “genocide.”
President Omar al-Beshir’s government can decry US-led pressure as “Western imperialism or a Zionist conspiracy, which actually has nothing to do with the situation on the ground,” the analyst said.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon pleaded for more time to secure the deployment of a robust peacekeeping force in Darfur in conjunction with the African Union (AU).
But President George W. Bush signaled his patience with Sudan was wearing thin as he unveiled the tougher sanctions Tuesday, ramping up pressure on a country that remains on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.
“The people of Darfur are crying out for help, and they deserve it,” Bush said. “The United States will not avert our eyes from a crisis that challenges the conscience of the world.”
China, a veto-wielding permanent Security Council member, criticized the sanctions even before Bush unveiled them.
But Britain welcomed them and France said it was open to ramping up UN measures, ahead of a Group of Eight summit in Germany next month at which Darfur is likely to figure.
From Washington, the Save Darfur Coalition welcomed Bush’s decision, “while recognizing that these measures are too late and too little.”
The US administration must work with its partners “to bring the full weight of international pressure to bear on the al-Beshir regime to end the genocide and permit the prompt entry of UN peacekeepers to protect civilians,” it said.
The four-year conflict in Darfur has left at least 200,000 people dead and forced more than two million people from their homes, according to the United Nations. Sudan disputes those estimates, saying 9,000 people have died.
Sudan’s UN envoy Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohammad called Bush’s move “very regrettable” coming, he said, just when Khartoum was cooperating on a UN-AU peacekeeping force for Darfur.
“The US is not a responsible superpower,” he told AFP, saying Washington’s “hostile” attitude explained Khartoum’s “Look East” policy of close ties with China.
The goal of the US sanctions is to force Sudan to allow the full deployment of peacekeepers, disarm the Janjaweed militias blamed for much of the carnage, and let humanitarian aid reach a region that is roughly the size of France.
The stricter sanctions will bar another 31 companies, including oil exporters, from US trade and financial dealings, and take aim at two top Sudanese government officials.
Bush said he had directed US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to seek a new UN resolution to broaden economic sanctions on Sudan’s leaders, expand an arms embargo on Sudan, and bar Sudanese military flights over Darfur.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the new US sanctions were “welcome but long overdue” and “urged the United Nations Security Council and the European Union to immediately impose similar sanctions against Sudan.”
But Mozersky at the International Crisis Group said the Bush administration, for all its condemnation of the brutal violence in Darfur, needs Chinese cooperation on North Korea and other diplomatic fronts.
“It can’t all be blamed on China,” he added. “Western countries and African countries as a whole have shown high-blown political rhetoric on Darfur, but there’s simply a lack of political will to act.”
(AFP)