State Department Sanctifies Sudan

The United States State Department asked Congress not to enact proposed legislation imposing new US sanctions on Sudan.

Testifying before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Adam Szubin, Director, Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control, said that United States efforts have been to guide and foster a diplomatic solution by making it clear to Sudan that undermining International efforts will have serious consequences.

Szubin noted that such a bill seeks to have an economic impact on Sudan. “It would have companies doing business in Sudan blacklisted which is seen as targeting our allies,” he added. He said that the most effective way is to increase pressure on the Sudan government and China to participate in the United Nations and African Union deployment of a hybrid force in Darfur.

Elizabeth Dibble, the Acting Assistant Secretary of State, told the committee that though sanctions seek to change behavior, it is only one part of the efforts. “Sanctions would send the wrong message to the government which is coorperating in the peace process as well as to the rebels,” she added.

The Senate committee was on Wednesday October 3rd deliberating on the Sudan Divestment Authorization Act of 2007 (S.831) which seeks to authorize states and local governments to prohibit investment of state assets in any company that has a qualifying business relationship with Sudan.

“We are concerned that some initiatives to increase economic pressure on Sudan will damage our relationship with our key partners rather than increase pressure in Khartoum,” said Jendayi Frazer, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. “U.S has and will continue to lead efforts in Sudan,” she said.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) said, “The U.S is a moral force in the world and we need to move forward to creating a disincentive to people who do business with Sudan.” He said that he did not understand how the State Department can come before his committee and say this is inappropriate.

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), a sponsor of the bill, said, “we need to act as a congress to allow states and local governments to divest from Sudan…We have a responsibility to ensure that genocide does not continue on our watch or on our dime.”

Szubin argued that this legislation would send mixed messages to the government of Sudan from both local and state authorities as well as undermine the President’s constitutional duty of setting foreign policy.

Democratic Senator Richard J. Durbin, commended President Bush for the courage to declare this a genocide which was echoed by the former Secretary of State, Colin Powel and subsqently his successor, Condoleeza Rice. He however added that this bill would require the Bush administration to create a list of companies that support the Sudanese government and prohibit federal government contracts being awarded to companies that support Khartoum.

This Bill has yet to move out of the senate but officials from the State Department maintained that forced divestments could undermine US diplomacy on Darfur and set back progress made so far.

Opponents of sanctions as a foreign policy tool argue that unilateral economic sanctions by US cannot work in a global economy. Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat (former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union), writing from experience in a paper entitled “Do Economic Sanctions Work?,” noted that “To begin with, the United States ought to exhaust a series of diplomatic efforts—ranging from friendly dialogue to relatively more coercive action—before it considers the imposition of sanctions. If these preliminary measures fail, the United States should seek, in a second phase, to coordinate the imposition of sanctions with its allies and others, preferably in the United Nations framework.”

According to the Sudan Divestment Taskforce, a lobby group that advocates for sanctions on Sudan, 20 states have adopted divestment policies from Sudan, five states have currently introduced Sudan-targeted divestment legislation and 55 universities have adopted divestment policies from Sudan.

Emmanuel Opati is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.