You Can’t Fool Us, President Bush – We Know Khartoum is Still Your Friend

I woke up yesterday morning to read some seemingly good news -- A Washington Post headline read, “Bush Approves Plan to Pressure Sudan.” Apparently, as part of his mysterious Plan B, President Bush approved a plan for the U.S. Treasury to aggressively block U.S. commercial bank transactions connected to the government of Sudan.

Sounds significant, but as Eric Reeves points out, “Treasury's plan to block commercial bank transactions connected to the Khartoum regime, even those involving oil revenues, will be only a minor, short-term inconvenience.”

A short-term, minor inconvenience is not going to convince President Bashir to stop arming the government-organized Janjaweed militias responsible for the genocide of the Darfurian people.

Let’s be honest, President Bush. Darfur is not at the top of your priority list, is it? If it were, you would have said more than “save the people of Darfur” in your State of the Union address. You would not invite one of Sudan’s chief perpetrators of the genocide to the United States just months after declaring that it is, in fact, a genocide.

If you gave Darfur the attention it deserves, you would have laid out a powerful plan for mounting pressure on Sudan. This plan would use U.S. economic and political ties with Europe, China, and Russia to stop business in Sudan. This plan would recognize the potential role of the Arab League in ending the genocide. And this plan would raise the priority of Darfur in each and every one of your international negotiations, not giving Sudan any room to waver on its promises to accept a U.N. peacekeeping force.

Can this work?

Africa Action, an informed U.S. organization working on Darfur policy, notes, “In the 1990s, as a result of U.S. sanctions and the removal of any American diplomatic presence from Khartoum, the Sudanese government expelled Osama bin Laden and distanced itself from terrorist networks. . . . Time and again, the Sudanese government has acted in response to punitive measures, while it has ignored international pleas and condemnation.”

World leaders can do more -- and we can keep the pressure on them to do so.