One of the mechanisms of oversight on American
governments has traditionally been the United States Congress.
With regard to the Sudanese issue, however, the U.S. Congress
has itself been caught up in the anti-Sudanese frenzy put
into motion by the Clinton Administration. The United States
Congress, the legislature of the most powerful country in
the world, has passed resolutions on Sudan whose poor drafting
and factual inaccuracies would embarrass a high school debating
society.
The 1999 Sudan Peace Act, a horrendously misnamed piece of
legislation, committed the United States to providing US$
16 million to the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) rebel
movement in southern Sudan to develop "a viable civil
authority, and civil and commercial institutions". This
despite the fact that John Prendergast, the former Africa
director at the National Security Council, has stated that
the SPLA has:
attained possession of adequate means of coercion
and has terrorized the southern population into passive
compliance. The predominant instruments of the movement
since 1983 have been and still are coercion and corruption.
It has not managed to integrate society around any positive
values.
The Act also specified that the President detail options and
plans for the "provision of nonlethal assistance to participants
of the National Democratic Alliance". Both these items
served to materially bolster the evidently coercive and corrupt
SPLA and to encourage it to continue with its war. The Act
spoke in terms of an "ongoing slave trade" in Sudan
(S.1453, 106th Congress, 1st Session, 19 November, 1999).
A typical Senate resolution (S. Res. 109, 106th Congress,
1st Session, 1 July, 1999) spoke of "slave raids",
"slave markets", "tens of thousands" of
slaves, stated that Sudan was a "rogue state because
of its support for international terrorism", and that
it was implicated in the "World Trade Center bombing
in New York City in 1993". It further declared that on
August 20, 1998, American forces "struck a suspected
chemical weapons facility in Khartoum" in retaliation
for the bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania. The Senate resolution contained, therefore, as two
major indictments, the al-Shifa "chemical weapons"
factory and the World Trade Center allegations, which were
demonstrably untrue.
With regard to the World Trade Center bombing, the Clinton
Administration, clearly no friend of Sudan, has on three separate
occasions denied that there was any Sudanese government involvement
in the World Trade Center bombing. This finding was comprehensively
restated in 1996 by Ambassador Philip C. Wilcox Jr., the Department
of State's Coordinator for Counterterrorism. On the occasion
of the release of the 1995 Patterns of Global Terrorism,
on 30 April 1996, Ambassador Wilcox made it very clear that
there was no Sudanese involvement whatsoever in the World
Trade Center bombings:
We have looked very, very carefully and pursued all
possible clues that there might be some state sponsorship
behind the World Trade Center bombing. We have found no
such evidence, in spite of an exhaustive search, that
any state was responsible for that crime. Our information
indicates that Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and his gang were a
group of freelance terrorists, many of whom were trained
in Afghanistan, who came from various nations but who
did not rely on support from any state.
The al-Shifa bombing is equally clear cut. The factory had
no chemical weapons link whatsoever. There are House and Senate
inquiries being pursued at the moment into the al-Shifa bombing
fiasco. Several Congressmen have questioned the Administration's
grounds for attacking the factory. Senator Pat Roberts, for
example, has stated:
[T]he strike in regards to the Khartoum chemical plant
cannot be justified.These are pretty harsh words. I know
one thing for sure. The intelligence agencies of other
countries look at that and they think, 'Wait a minute,
if you hit the wrong target or if in fact the justification
was not accurate, it is either ineptitude or, to get back
to the wag-the-dog theory, something else is going on.
That gets to our credibility. And that is why both the
administration and the Congress must insist on a foreign
policy where if you draw a line in the sand, if you make
a statement, your credibility is tremendously important.
This did not stop Senator Roberts from voting for similarly
distorted and discredited claims about Sudan in patently flawed
legislation and resolutions on Sudan. Congress has therefore
clearly included in resolutions on Sudan very serious claims
that are clearly inaccurate. If Congress cannot get simple,
well-documented facts correct regarding very grave matters
such as weapons of mass destruction technology, and the bombing
of New York city, many of its other claims about that country
must also be questioned.
Other, similarly flawed, resolutions, such as House of Representatives
Resolution 75, also passed in 1999, contained all of the above,
and spoke of genocide and an "extremist and politicized
practice of Islam". Resolution 75 also called for the
provision of anti-aircraft missiles to the SPLA, and to provide
the SPLA's "humanitarian" wing, the SRRA, with funds
and assistance.
It can be argued that the Clinton Administration's questionable
Sudan policies have come full circle. The US Congress has
been the focus of pressure group politics, by organisations
and individuals themselves at least in part reacting to the
unjustified and unprecedented demonisation of Sudan by the
Clinton Administration. The Administration's own rhetoric
and propaganda about Sudan has painted it into a corner. Deeply
questionable and unproven allegations have been accepted at
face value by a Congress led on this issue by a handful of
anti-Sudanese legislators influenced by questionable and discredited
groups such as Christian Solidarity International. These legislators
have also aligned themselves with a rebel movement in southern
Sudan that has been responsible for some of the most brutal
and cold blooded war crimes of the Sudanese conflict.
Even a cursory examination of some of the sources from which
the United States Congress draws its information on Sudan
explains its poor judgement. The Congress, and the Washington
establishment, appear to be content to form their opinions
from congressional hearings limited time and time again to
the same circle of discredited and partisan anti-Sudanese
activists. These include people such as Roger Winter, director
of the federally-funded United States Committee of Refugees.
He has openly admitted that he was "not neutral in this
situation", and that he "promotes" the "demise"
of the Sudanese government. Winter also refers to SPLA-controlled
areas as "liberated areas".
Another frequent "witness" appearing before Congressional
hearings has been Baroness Cox, an anti-Sudanese activist
associated with Christian Solidarity Worldwide and Christian
Solidarity International. Her claims with regard to Sudan
have long been questioned. She has been described as "overeager
or misinformed" by reputable human rights activist Alex
de Waal, with regard to claims about slavery in Sudan. Her
claims that Sudan was involved in chemical weapons have been
denied by the British government and UNSCOM. Cox's allegations
about genocide in Sudan were contradicted by the British government.
And her assertions, as late as 1999, that Sudan was involved
in the World Trade Center bombing have even been contradicted
by the Clinton Administration itself. Even the very sympathetic
biography of Cox records that full-time humanitarian aid workers
in Sudan "feel she is not well-enough informed. She recognizes
a bit of the picture, but not all that's going on". In
February 2000 a Canadian government report stated that CSI
reports "were questioned, and frankly not accepted".
Nonetheless, Baroness Cox is presented to Congress as a key
commentator on Sudan.
One further partisan vehicle for anti-Sudanese activity has
been the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom,
a body brought into being by the 1998 International Religious
Freedom Act, passed by Congress. This Act requires an annual
report on religious freedom. It perhaps comes as no surprise
that Sudan features among the five countries cited as "countries
of particular concern". The others are China, Iran, Iraq,
and Myanmar. Indeed, at the March 2000 United Nations Commission
on Human Rights meeting in Geneva, Rabbi David Saperstein,
the chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious
Freedom, and Ambassador Robert Seiple, U.S. Ambassador-at-large
for international religious freedom, chose to focus on Sudan
during their discussions with non-governmental organisations
and the press. It perhaps also comes as no surprise that Saudi
Arabia was not singled out in the Congressionally-funded Commission's
first annual report on religious freedom. nor was Saudi Arabia,
or any other countries apart from Sudan and China, mentioned
in the comments of Rabbi Saperstein and Ambassador Seiple
during their presentation at the Commission on Human Rights.
The double standards of the U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom are central to its usefulness to the Clinton
Administration. These double standards were highlighted by
the fact that the Commission has also taken a stance, on grounds
of "religious freedom" against investment in Sudanese
oil projects, while it remains mute with regard to the Saudi
Arabian oil industry. It is a matter of record that the Sudanese
government has on several occasions invited the U.S. State
Department's Committee on Religious Freedom, the Commission's
forerunner, to visit Sudan to assess at first hand the religious
situation in Sudan. They never visited.
Even Congressional organisations such as the House Republican
research committee, the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional
Warfare, have produced patently false claims with regard to
Sudan. In February 1998, this organisation claimed, amongst
other things, that in the wake of the Gulf War, Iraq had secretly
transferred 400 Scud missile systems, some twelve hundred
vehicles, to Sudan. This was supposedly accomplished in the
face of the unprecedented satellite, electronic and physical
surveillance of that country by the United States, the United
Nations and other concerned members of the international community.
Even the Clinton Administration felt it had to contradict
these wild claims: "We have no credible evidence that
Iraq has exported weapons of mass destruction technology to
other countries since the (1991) Gulf War."
Claims made in the House Task Force report were also contradicted
by the British government, the British Defence Intelligence
Staff, and UNSCOM, the United Nations body tasked with disarming
Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. On 19 March 1998,
the British government stated:
We are monitoring the evidence closely, but to date
we have no evidence to substantiate these claims.Moreover,
we know that some of the claims are untrue.The defence
intelligence staff in the [Ministry of Defence] have similarly
written a critique which does not support the report's
findings.Nor has the United Nations Special Commission
reported any evidence of such transfers since the Gulf
War conflict and the imposition of sanctions in 1991.
The Federation of American Scientists has also stated with
regard to this report that "material produced by this
Task Force has historically consisted of an uneven admixture
of unusually detailed information and blatantly incredible
fabrications".
"Opinion" on Sudan has also in part been led by
Congressionally-funded bodies such as the United States Institute
of Peace (USIP). While claiming, despite its federal funding,
to be "independent" and "nonpartisan",
USIP has merely echoed the Administration line on Sudan. It
has held "consultations" on Sudan during which the
Sudanese government perspective was noticeably absent. Present
were several Sudanese opposition groups, Sudan "experts"
such as John Prendergast and Roger Winter, as well as Congressional
aides and government departments hostile to Sudan. Given that
the board of directors of the United States Institute of Peace
includes senior Administration officials, including intelligence
and defence chiefs, USIP's anti-Sudanese stance is unsurprising.
Given that the United States Congress derives at least some
of its information regarding Sudan from the above selective,
partisan and questionable sources, it is not surprising that
it is as ill-informed as it so clearly is regarding the reality
of Sudan.
In passing, it should be mentioned that there is also considerable
hypocrisy with regard to Congressional positions on Sudan.
In April 1998, for example, the Clinton Administration, in
response to lobbying from its grain producers, lifted sanctions
with regard to Sudanese imports of grain. An Administration
official stated that: "I believe the change came from
a lot of pressure from [Congress], from agricultural senators
who want to sell their wheat".
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