Sudan's Leaders Brace for U.S. Shift - Obama Team Seen As Tough on Darfur [View All]

[Pirate Smile]

Source: Washington Post

By Stephanie McCrummen and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 8, 2008; Page A01

NAIROBI -- If the election of Barack Obama has been greeted with glee across much of Africa, there is at least one spot where the mood is decidedly different.


U.N.-African Union peacekeepers drive through the Kalma refugee camp in Sudan's western region of Darfur, racked by violence since 2003. (By Sarah El Deeb -- Associated Press)

In the Sudanese capital of Khartoum these days, political elites are bracing for what they expect will be a major shift in U.S. policy toward a government the United States has blamed for orchestrating a violent campaign against civilians in the western Darfur region.

"Compared to the Republicans, the Democrats, I think they are hawks," said Ghazi Suleiman, a human rights lawyer and member of the Southern People's Liberation Movement, which has a fragile power-sharing agreement with the ruling party. "I know Obama's appointees. And I know their policy towards Sudan. Everybody here knows it. The policy is very aggressive and very harsh. I think we really will miss the judgments of George W. Bush."

While the Bush administration most recently advocated the idea of "normalizing" relations with Sudan as a carrot approach to ending a crisis it labeled a genocide, Obama's foreign policy appointees have pushed for sticks.




Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/07/AR2008120702819.html?hpid=topnews