In late October, while much of the Africa-watching world was focused on the spread of Ebola into Mali and the emergence of a case of the disease in New York City, American President Barack Obama quietly renewed sanctions against Sudan for another year with a short letter released by the White House.
The sanctions regime, now in its 17th year since former President Bill Clinton signed them into law in 1997, continues a tool of American foreign policy that has a decidedly mixed history.
In one illustrative example, while more than half a century of embargo and sanctions against the Castro regime in Cuba has failed to foster regime change or create a more positive relationship with the United States, the economic effects of sanctions on Iran played a significant role in the renewed vigor of anti-nuclear talks.
On the African continent the record is similarly mixed, with the South African apartheid regime crushed under international sanctions and pressure, such sanctions have failed to foster regime change or normalization with Mugabe in Zimbabwe and al-Bashir in Sudan over the last 17 years.
According to the Department of the Treasury, the Sudanese sanctions are comprehensive, comprising both general and more targeted trade restrictions.
They are both restrictions on conducting business with the Government of Sudan, including a trade embargo, and sanctions targeting “individuals and entities contributing to the conflict in the Darfur region.”
They also include the prohibition of all transactions of “property and interests in property of the Government of Sudan,” in addition to several other types of transactions including importing Sudanese goods into America, exporting Sudanese goods or services from the US or by a US entity, the fulfillment of a contract for a Sudanese entity by an American, the extension of credit or loans to the Government of Sudan, certain cargo transactions and all oil transactions, broadly construed.
The final category is, of course, the most detrimental to Sudan, a country that relies heavily on oil revenue.
Crimes Against Humanity
While a majority of oilfields that were once a vital part of Sudan belong to its southern neighbor since independence in 2011, South Sudan is still largely unable to export or process raw petroleum, relying on the North for both. This causes Sudan to have a significant stake in petrodollars, even without the sovereignty over expansive oil fields it once had.
Sudan, for its part, has decried the extension, issuing a statement from the country’s Embassy in Washington that called it an “irrational routine” that is “thoroughly entrenched in US policy.”
The Embassy went further, saying that “The maintenance of these sanctions for the past 17 years was premised on one false issue after another. Their lifting has always been conditioned on goals that, once met by Sudan, invariably give birth to new ones that now become the condition.”
This is an understandable complaint from the Sudanese government, as the sanctions initially were put in place in large part due to the country’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, and were extended last week because Sudan “pose[s] an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” but the United States has repeatedly acknowledged Sudan’s participation and cooperation in anti-terrorism operations.
In addition to these understandable criticisms at the American sanctions regime, the Sudanese embassy also denounced the sanctions as a “unilateral” punishment, a statement that is rather misleading.
While it is true that this sanctions package is concocted solely by the United States, it is far from the only country or international body to sanction the al-Bashir regime. In addition to the United States, the United Nations has its own sanctions regime stemming from a 2005 Security Council resolution.
This package, from the world’s most powerful intergovernmental organization, includes an arms embargo and individually targeted frozen assets and travel restrictions that is implemented by a number of UN member states.
Arms Embargo
There is also a de facto travel ban on the country’s President due to his indictment at the International Criminal Court, making the Rome Statute’s 122 member states treaty-bound to arrest al-Bashir upon his entrance to their country.
Sanctions against Sudan have had limited success and are part of a wider tool of foreign policy, used by America and much of the rest of the world, that has a decidedly mixed record.
For every F.W. de Klerk, transitioning South Africa from apartheid after being profoundly influenced by the international isolation, there is a Mugabe, al-Bashir or Castro that changes nothing and uses the sanctions regime as a useful scapegoat for all of the country’s problems.
While Sudan may have a point that the United States is continually moving the goalpost, the al-Bashir regime is far from angelic. Through his 25 years of rule (and it was recently reported that he will stand for reelection in 2015) he has been accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
While there are no easy answers in foreign policy, sanctions against the regime have had limited success in changing the regime’s behavior and have been in place for some of the regime’s worst atrocities.
Such atrocities are reason enough to continue to isolate the regime, but it is vital that other coercive methods are used as well in an effort to bolster success and the correct goalposts, namely a cessation of atrocities, are used if any change is to be had.
Andrew Friedman is a human rights attorney and consultant who works and writes on legal reform and constitutional law with an emphasis on Africa. He can be reached via email at afriedm2@gmail.com or via twitter @AndrewBFriedman.
