Op-ed: ‘Wrong time for US to remove Sudan from the terrorism list’

In an op-ed in US News & World Report on Friday, Enough Project's John Prendergast writes that the US move towards normalising relations with Sudan ignores critical developments and new circumstances that affect core US national security interests.

Prendergast is Founding Director of the Enough Project, an anti-atrocity policy group that supports peace and an end to mass atrocities in Africa’s deadliest conflict zones. He writes: “This is a moment of reckoning for the Khartoum regime. To accelerate US-Sudan normalisation with this imploding economy and increasing repression as an intensely volatile backdrop would be severely ill-timed at best and harm US interests at worst.”

He adds, “If the US decides to press ahead with normalisation negotiations, then significant benchmarks, pressures and incentives would make that process more impactful. Benchmarks could include ending persecution of Christians and repression of civil society groups, creating accountability for stolen public funds, stopping support for radical groups and clerics, securing peace agreements with the various groups in rebellion around the country, allowing aid deliveries to the millions who are now denied access, and laying the groundwork for a democratic transition away from a security state that has been in power for nearly three decades.”

A report published last week by the Enough Project highlights serious concerns including links to extremists and terrorists, abuses against Christians and other religious minorities, and regional destabilisation. In December 2017 the Enough Project published Radical Intolerance: Sudan's Religious Oppression and Embrace of Extremist Groups in which Dr Suliman Baldo examines the Sudanese government’s persecution of Christians and many others in Sudan.

Read the full op-ed here