In 1993, the United States accused Sudan of sheltering members of Hezbollah, an Islamist political party and militant group based in Lebanon that the United States deems as terrorists. As a result, Sudan was added to the U.S State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism List. On Monday, October 19th, 2020, however, after 27 years of being on the list, President Trump announced on Twitter that an agreement had been reached between the two sides. With the US presidential elections just a few weeks away, and with growing fears that he might not get a second term, Trump and his administration are doing everything they can to give him a boost in approval ratings. To that extent, they have been successful in coercing a desperate Sudanese state to succumb to paying $335 million in reparations, and, the more integral part of the agreement, normalizing relations with Israel, making it the 5th Arab country to do so after Egypt, Jordan, the U.A.E, and Bahrain, and the 3rd Arab country to do it in the past 2 months.

 

Ever since becoming one of only 4 countries to be put on the State Sponsors of Terrorism List, along with North Korea, Syria, and Iran, Sudan had been unable to access any type of foreign aid. U.S. allies were not allowed to invest in Sudan, and international organizations were not allowed to provide its economy with any sort of debt relief. The restrictions were so extremely meticulous that even in January of this year, when a group of activists tried raising money to feed starving lions on the GoFundMe website, the crowdfunding company halted the movement, saying that it went against U.S.-imposed sanctions. Indeed, the sanctions were so successful in hampering the Sudanese economy that almost all private companies in Sudan presently operate only on the black market. Moreover, after the split of Sudan into Sudan and South Sudan in 2011, Sudan suddenly found itself without three-quarters of its oil revenues and two-thirds of its total exports, leaving an already disintegrated economy even further distraught.

 

In recent months, other than having to deal with its own outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, Sudan has been faced with a polio outburst, a record number of floods, and an agricultural calamity that has placed 10 million inhabitants at risk of starvation. Consequently, the current Sudanese transitional government was desperate to achieve any economic victory it could attain. Ever since demonstrations were successful in ousting the Sudanese president in 2019, the interim government that succeeded him swiftly enacted a number of successful reforms in the country, hoping that they would be enough to convince the U.S. to remove Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List. What Sudanese officials didn’t expect was having to pay $335 million and normalizing relations with an enemy of the state. And while the general public is against such a peace treaty, there is a consensus among the Sudanese people that it is a price they are willing to pay in order to get their country back on track. This is reflected by the words of the acting foreign minister of Sudan, Mr. Omer Ismail, who has been quoted as saying: “We have won the battle to restore the dignity of the Sudanese people. This is not a solution to all our problems, but it is the beginning.”

Nevertheless, this occurrence is bigger than the three countries involved, the U.S. elections, and the troubles of the Sudanese economy. This deal sets a dangerous moral precedent for the global fight against terrorism. The fact that the U.S. removed Sudan from its State Sponsors of Terrorism List in exchange for political concessions could mean one of two things: either that the Trump administration still believes that Sudan is a terrorism-supporting state, but has increased the country’s ability to fund terrorism in return for a small, potentially insignificant bump in the coming election, or that the U.S. State Department had previously been aware that Sudan was no longer a terrorism-supporting state, but left its economy to further deteriorate without viable cause. In truth, it almost doesn’t matter whatever the veracious accounts of the event turn out to be, as both scenarios are equally atrocious. For if “the land of freedom and democracy” is willing to stoop to such low levels in the name of politics, what horrendous acts should we then expect from other global powers?

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