Sudan Optimistic US Will Soon Remove it from Terror List

Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok (AFP)
Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok (AFP)
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Sudan Optimistic US Will Soon Remove it from Terror List

Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok (AFP)
Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok (AFP)

Sudan’s government has welcomed statements by the United States administration on removing it from its terror list after it was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1993 under former US President Bill Clinton, cutting it off from financial markets and strangling its economy.

In a press statement on Saturday, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok stressed the transitional government’s adherence to continue working with US President Donald Trump’s administration to remove Sudan from the list and allows it to become part of the international community.

He praised the role played by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat known for his interest in Africa who urged US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “do everything" he can to support Hamdok and seize the chance “to build a new democratic partner in the region.”

On Thursday, Pompeo told the Committee he wants to delist Sudan, adding that legislation on a settlement should come before Congress “in the very, very near term.”

“There’s a chance not only for a democracy to begin to be built out, but perhaps regional opportunities that could flow from that as well,” he stressed.

On June 26, Pompeo held a phone call with Hamdok, during which they discussed means to strengthen the US-Sudan bilateral relationship and reviewed progress towards addressing the policy and statutory requirements for consideration of the rescission of Sudan’s State Sponsor of Terrorism designation.

Sudan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Haydar Badawi Sadig, for his part, said Pompeo’s remarks indicate that his country will soon be delisted.

He told Asharq Al-Awsat that his country welcomes the US willingness to end this issue and hopes to accelerate its implementation.

Sadig further pointed out that Pompeo and Coons’s keenness to remove Sudan from the terror list indicates both US executive and legislative bodies’ attempts to support the democratic transformation in Sudan.

“This would constitute an opportunity and a different model in Sudan’s troubled environment and is compatible with Sudan’s aspiration to be delisted,” he noted.



Syria: Elaborate Military Tunnel Complex Linked to Assad's Palace

A fighter affiliated with Syria's new administration carries the decapitated head of an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of toppled president Bashar al-Assad, removed from the abandoned Republican Guard base on Mount Qasyun. Bakr ALKASEM / AFP
A fighter affiliated with Syria's new administration carries the decapitated head of an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of toppled president Bashar al-Assad, removed from the abandoned Republican Guard base on Mount Qasyun. Bakr ALKASEM / AFP
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Syria: Elaborate Military Tunnel Complex Linked to Assad's Palace

A fighter affiliated with Syria's new administration carries the decapitated head of an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of toppled president Bashar al-Assad, removed from the abandoned Republican Guard base on Mount Qasyun. Bakr ALKASEM / AFP
A fighter affiliated with Syria's new administration carries the decapitated head of an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of toppled president Bashar al-Assad, removed from the abandoned Republican Guard base on Mount Qasyun. Bakr ALKASEM / AFP

On the slopes of Mount Qasyun which overlooks Damascus, a network of tunnels links a military complex, tasked with defending the Syrian capital, to the presidential palace facing it.
The tunnels, seen by an AFP correspondent, are among secrets of president Bashar al-Assad's rule exposed since the opposition toppled him on December 8.

"We entered this enormous barracks of the Republican Guard after the liberation" of Damascus sent Assad fleeing to Moscow, said Mohammad Abu Salim, a military official from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant group in the alliance that overthrew Assad.

"We found a vast network of tunnels which lead to the presidential palace" on a neighboring hill, Salim said.

During Assad's rule, Qasyun was off limits to the people of Damascus because it was an ideal location for snipers -- the great view includes the presidential palaces and other government buildings.

It was also from this mountain that artillery units for years pounded opposition-held areas at the gates of the capital.

An AFP correspondent entered the Guard complex of two bunkers containing vast rooms reserved for its soldiers. The bunkers were equipped with telecommunications gear, electricity, a ventilation system and weapons supplies.

Other simpler tunnels were dug out of the rock to hold ammunition.

Despite such elaborate facilities, Syria's army collapsed, with troops abandoning tanks and other gear as opposition fighters advanced from their northern stronghold to the capital in less than two weeks,.

On the grounds of the Guard complex a statue of the president's brother Bassel al-Assad, atop a horse, has been toppled and Bassel's head severed.

Bassel al-Assad died in a 1994 road accident. He had been the presumed successor to his father Hafez al-Assad who set up the paranoid, secretive, repressive system of government that Bashar inherited when his father died in 2000.

In the immense Guard camp now, former opposition fighters use pictures of Bashar al-Assad and his father for target practice.

Tanks and heavy weapons still sit under arched stone shelters.

Resembling a macabre outdoor art installation, large empty rusted barrels with attached fins pointing skyward are lined up on the ground, their explosives further away.

"The regime used these barrels to bomb civilians in the north of Syria," Abu Salim said.

The United Nations denounced Bashar's use of such weapons dropped from helicopters or airplanes against civilian areas held by Assad's opponents during Syria's years-long civil war that began in 2011.