Bush tightens squeeze on Sudan

The European Union has begun to increase pressure on China, an economic patron of Sudan, to act, says Ms. Cooke. The upcoming G-8 summit could serve as a forum for the US, Europe, and perhaps China and Russia to find some common ground on the issue.

"There are possibilities there to get China more cooperative," says Cooke.

China has already expressed its dismay at Bush's new sanctions.

"Expanding sanctions can only make the problem more difficult to resolve," China's representative on African affairs, Liu Guijin, said May 29.

China could be a significant obstacle to US intentions. A major investor in Sudan oil, Beijing has blocked the sending of peacekeepers without Sudanese consent.

At the same time, it has quietly pushed for that consent, and had announced that it would provide 275 military engineers for the UN-heavy support package.

"The Chinese have already played a constructive role," said Andrew Natsios, US special envoy to Sudan, at an April 11 Congressional hearing.

In Sudan, analysts said that the new US sanctions would be ineffective at best, and could harm further progress on solving the violence in Darfur.

"If the US is trying to punish the government of Sudan, the truth is they are going well beyond that and punishing the Sudanese people," says Mohamed Harun, an economist and political analyst in Khartoum. "Sudanese farmers are unable to get their produce to US markets, there are a number of small local industries that are not able to get access to capital."

On the other hand, even with sanctions, Sudan is still able to attract plenty of foreign investment for its growing oil industry, Mr. Harun says, much of it coming from China, Malaysia, and India. This economic growth allows the government "enough resources to keep fighting in Darfur. So the US administration might want to seek an alternative policy. Sanctions are not working."

Khalid al-Tijani, editor of the weekly newspaper Elaff, says that the latest round of sanctions are "a setback to the Darfur peace process." With a planned meeting of the UN and the African Union next week in Addis Ababa, in which Sudan had been expected to agree to a new "hybrid" peacekeeping force of mainly AU troops with UN logistical support, Sudan may take back its promise of support for peacekeepers, says Mr. Tijani.

"Khartoum has already accepted Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the peacekeeping plan, and this meeting was to decide about Phase 3," says Tijani. "This will complicate the situation and could discredit the whole process. I think this will not help the Darfur region. It will backfire."

UN officials in Khartoum declined to comment on the new sanctions, but humanitarian workers say that while attacks between government troops and Darfur rebel movements have declined in recent weeks, the number of attacks – mainly acts of robbery or carjacking – against aid workers and peacekeepers have increased in a sign of growing lawlessness.

Since October, the UN Mission in Sudan has had to shuttle aid workers around in helicopters, rather than in road vehicles, a sign of inadequate and deteriorating security. The World Food Program, which does much of the air transit in Darfur, has been forced to increase its helicopter capacity and costs by 50 percent, from $1 million a month to $1.5 million a month, because of lawlessness. Lacking an adequate peacekeeping force, aid workers say the chaos in Darfur is only likely to increase even more.

Page: 1 | 2