U.S. and European media

October 21, 2022

The following op-ed appeared in the Hurriyet Daily News by Sean Brooks: No time to relieve Sudan's debt.  The global economic crisis has once again raised the issue of the sovereign debt of countries in the developing world. An example of a country struggling with a large debt burden and facing longer-term growth issues is Sudan. The East African nation's external public debt has increased from $13 billion in 1989, when President Omar al-Bashir and the National Islamic Front engineered a coup and came to power, to $34 billion today. During that time period, the Sudanese government has received $4 billion in new public medium- and long-term loans and an estimated $5 billion in new private medium- and long-term loans.  Sudan collected more than $2 billion in new loans from international lenders, almost half of this sum from non-Paris Club bilateral loans, between 2001 and 2006 --when it was still waging war in south Sudan and orchestrating what has been termed "genocide" in Darfur.

The following editorial appeared in the The Los Angeles Times: Obama's Sudan policy: 'incentives and pressure'. The U.S. is seeking to engage Khartoum in efforts to bring peace to Darfur and deny terrorists a haven.  President Obama's Sudan strategy, announced this week, is consistent with his approach to foreign policy elsewhere: Engage, don't isolate. Hold out carrots, but hang on to the sticks. And, quite often, seek the middle ground.  Now the administration has raised the possibility of peace dividends for Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in the country's western Darfur region. This page supports the broad policy of engagement in the belief that it is more effective than isolation and confrontation for achieving U.S. goals. Although Obama's overtures have yet to yield results on most fronts, these are early days.

Sudan Tribune: Sudan launches new website for president Bashir. The Sudanese government launched a multi-language personal website for president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir this week, according to state media.  Sudan official news agency (SUNA) reported that minister for media and communications Al-Zahawi Ibrahim Malik met with the team responsible for creating and maintaining the website headed by Hashim Ali Salem described as the chairman of the board of directors for the portal. SUNA said that Malik discussed the "arrangements and necessary mechanisms relating to launching the website" and called for "intensive media campaign" to advertise Bashir's page. Salem on his end said that the website is updated daily noting that the information contained in media messages "requires a high degree of professionalism."  The site administrator stressed the importance of comprehensive coverage and providing resources.

The Darfur Daily News is a service of the Save Darfur Coalition. To subscribe to the Daily News, please email [email protected]. For media inquiries, please contact Ashley Roberts at (202) 478-6181, or [email protected].