It is unfortunate that this morning's headlines from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's trip to Sudan focus on how her delegation and its accompanying American reporters were roughed up by Sudanese Government thugs.  As distasteful as that is, it shouldn't distract from the real issue -- the humanitarian disaster zone that is Sudan.  When it comes to the sanctions which are now, in part, a response to the situation in Darfur, NPR reporter Jackie Northam interviewed Rice earlier today in Darfur:

MS. NORTHAM: One last question. I understand that they were interested in things like motor parts, like airlines and that sort of thing. Is that a system where you could ensure that this going to go forward, the carrot and the stick?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we haven't decided about the issues with sanctions that (inaudible.) The case that they made is a logistical problem for getting assistance into areas like this (inaudible) the south. I'll go back and assess that argument.

QUESTION: But would that be option, is there --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think --

QUESTION: (Inaudible) not popularize anything?

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, I think we had a good look at the argument that's going to be an issue for humanitarian reasons. And obviously, you know, if there is a case (inaudible) management, the humanitarian side, that we'd be willing to look at it. But I have to go and have people that I know -- actually, make that a (inaudible) (Laughter.)

And there's this from an earlier briefing while Rice was en route to Africa:

QUESTION: Are you also looking to the day when you can revisit the sanctions issue and what would what steps, what are the thresholds or the markers that they would have to meet?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the sanctions issues will eventually be revisited. There is a terrorism list issue that still has to be addressed and, of course, we continue to have concerns about Darfur. I think that we’re proceeding on two tracks here in parallel that we think will help each other. On the one hand, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and getting the government set up and getting a government that can respond as a whole to the situation in Sudan is very important. And so you do need to support that process to the degree that you can and the Congress has appropriated some funding to be able to do that.

On the other hand, we still have to hold the Sudanese Government accountable for what is going on in Darfur and the UN Security Council Resolution, if you remember, holds out the prospects of further sanctions if we can’t get movement on Darfur. So, these tracks are in parallel and I’ll admit that it’s not the easiest thing to manage between the two tracks, but they really are very much related. And to the degree that the Comprehensive Agreement gets firmly embedded and you get a new government, I think it will be easier to deal with the Darfur situation.

I read all this as meaning that there's little chance of any significant loosening of US sanctions on Sudan anytime soon.  There might be some minor adjustments to enable genuine humanitarian activities, but that's all.

Just past February the US Government made it easier for USAID and organizations operating under its auspices to carry out their work by permitting them to temporarily export things like computers, cell phones, and GPS receivers to Sudan without prior government authorization.  And since the adoption of the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act (TSRA) of 2000 agricultural commodities, medicines, and medical devices have been eligible for an expedited licensing procedure (pdf).

One last thing.  While I do not ordinarily participate in the media criticism that is the stock-in-trade of many blogs, I could not overlook the egregiously afactual rantings of Bev Smith, a guest on Thursday's NPR program News & Notes with Ed Gordon.  Among other topics, Gordon's guests discussed Rice's visit to Sudan.

I will begin by stipulating that the Bush Administration's efforts on Darfur have been woefully inadequate.  There is much more that the president could have done and could still do.  If Samantha Powers ever writes a second edition of her Pulitzer Prize-winning account of US inaction in the face of genocide, A Problem from Hell, I fully expect a chapter on this administration's shortcomings in Darfur disturbingly similar to her account of the Clinton Administration's failure to act on Rwanda.  But on the more positive side, Bush is the first US president in history to use the word "genocide" while in office.  His administration specifically calls the atrocities in Darfur genocide, despite the UN's unwillingness to do so, and has pursued (rather ineffective) action in the Security Council.  Still, you only get so much credit for word choice and UN jawboning.  US leadership has been severely lacking in Darfur and Bush's legacy will reflect it.

But none of these criticisms lead to Smith's absurd conclusions, which you can listed to for yourself here.  This is my transcript (starting from about 16:10 in the audio):

Well, I really think that we need to examine the relationship the United States has had with Sudan.  We are quiet and have been quiet until Tony Blair raised the issue.  And I think that there are strained relationships between the puppets that we have put in place in government and the like.  If we allow those questions to be answered then we would have to ask what role the United States played in...when it was silent about all the atrocities and I think that may be some of the feelings that we have that we want to find out more and we're not going to find out more in a press conference in a country as their guest.  We are going to have to leave the president's palace and go somewhere else to get the real answers and it might be to the president here in the United States.

Smith makes three main assertions:

1. The US has been "quiet" on the subject of Darfur and is a johnny come lately to Tony Blair's leadership: You can accuse the US of many things when it comes to Darfur, but being quiet is not one of them.  In fact, sometimes it seems like all the administration has done on this issue is talk about it.  And while the US officially declared that the situation in Darfur was genocide on September 9, 2004, as far as I can tell the UK has never made a similar, formal statement.
2. The Sudanese Government is a "puppet" of the US: Huh?  Is there any evidence of this at all?  Sudanese President Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir took power in a coup and shortly thereafter remade Sudan as an Islamist regime.  Sudan sheltered Osama bin Laden before he fled to Afghanistan.  President Clinton ordered crippling economic sanctions against Sudan in 1997, not to mention a cruise missile strike on a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum the following year.  The sanctions remain firmly in place under the Bushies.  Is this any way to treat a puppet?
3. President Bush bears more responsibility for the Darfur genocide than the Sudanese Government: As ridiculous as it sounds, that is the unavoidable implication of Smith's statement that to get to the bottom of the genocide "We are going to have to leave the [Sudanese] president's palace and go somewhere else to get the real answers and it might be to the president here in the United States."  As far as Smith is concerned, primary accountability for Darfur belongs not to the Sudanese officials who ordered endless atrocities against civilians, but to George W. Bush.

What should the US be doing to stop what's happening in Darfur?  For that, I'll direct you to an interview with Samantha Powers herself.

Comments

[Lyle]

The problem with criticizing the U.S. on Dafur is that we are already in Iraq. The Sudanese people are not more important than the Iraqi people. They are both groups of human beings that need our help, but we can only choose to effectively help one of them and we chose Iraq. The other thing is that people like Kofi Annan and other world leaders have known for well over a year that America wasn't going to save the Dafur and therefore nobody was, yet they go on talking like if only someone choose to go help the Dafur all would be well.

Unless American troops are sent into Dafor or to overthrow the Islamic government in Khartoum, the people of Dafur are going to continue to be killed, mutilated and raped. The African Union cannot help these people and neither can the Europeans.

[rilkefan]

Your point 3) sounds ridculous because your interpretation is in fact so. Smith clearly says that no foreigner can get useful information by asking questions at a press conference, not that the Sudan govt is innocent or a secondary actor. We can, however, press the Bush admin to do more and hold it responsible for what it failed to do. Your reading is (at least on the basis of what you quote) unreasonably strained.

[rrgg@none.com]

How about if, just once, any nation except the US takes action to solve a problem like this? It's interesting that only the US is criticized over the Sudan, yet only the US and UK even seem remotely concerned about it.

[Dom]

Rilkefan is wrong. Smith says:

"I really think that we need to examine the relationship the United States has had with Sudan". Such a relationship -- and it isn't much of one -- has no bearing on the genocide, unless she seriously believes it does. It is a side issue, maybe even a non-issue.

What needs to be examined is the rascism behind this tragedy. Is it true that the Arab population refers to the Blacks as "sons of dogs", even while they are being murdered and raped?

[blank]

Well, Sudan was once our "puppet" as a cold war player against the Russian-backed Ethiopia. But that arrangement is about 20 years dead. As for the U.S. not doing enough about the Sudan--well, we have been pressing for sanctions for quite some time via the Security Council. I'll give you a few guesses about who doesn't want to impose these sanctions. And if we can't even get sanctions against the Sudan, you can imagine how impossible it would be to get any real military intervention there. Which would really be moot, as the damage is mostly done already.

[Al]

damned if you do (Iraq), damned if you don't (Sudan);
its really all about the damning, isn't it?
what are the European armies doing right now? we know where the US army is. Why are the Europeans insisting on such apperance of uselessness?