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.



UN: More than 1.3 Million Return to Homes in Sudan

Members of army walks near a destroyed military vehicle and bombed buildings, as Sudan's army retakes ground and some displaced residents return to ravaged capital in the state of Khartoum Sudan March 26, 2025. (Reuters)
Members of army walks near a destroyed military vehicle and bombed buildings, as Sudan's army retakes ground and some displaced residents return to ravaged capital in the state of Khartoum Sudan March 26, 2025. (Reuters)
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UN: More than 1.3 Million Return to Homes in Sudan

Members of army walks near a destroyed military vehicle and bombed buildings, as Sudan's army retakes ground and some displaced residents return to ravaged capital in the state of Khartoum Sudan March 26, 2025. (Reuters)
Members of army walks near a destroyed military vehicle and bombed buildings, as Sudan's army retakes ground and some displaced residents return to ravaged capital in the state of Khartoum Sudan March 26, 2025. (Reuters)

More than 1.3 million people who fled the fighting in Sudan have headed home, the United Nations said Friday, pleading for greater international aid to help returnees rebuild shattered lives.

Over a million internally displaced people (IDPs) have returned to their homes in recent months, UN agencies said.

A further 320,000 refugees have crossed back into Sudan this year, mainly from neighboring Egypt and South Sudan.

While fighting has subsided in the "pockets of relative safety" that people are beginning to return to, the situation remains highly precarious, the UN said.

Since April 2023, Sudan has been torn apart by a power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, commander of the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The fighting has killed tens of thousands.

The RSF lost control of the capital, Khartoum, in March and the regular army now controls Sudan's center, north and east.

In a joint statement, the UN's IOM migration agency, UNHCR refugee agency and UNDP development agency called for an urgent increase in financial support to pay for the recovery as people begin to return, with humanitarian operations "massively underfunded".

Sudan has 10 million IDPs, including 7.7 million forced from their homes by the current conflict, they said.

More than four million have sought refuge in neighboring countries.

- 'Living nightmare' -

Sudan is "the largest humanitarian catastrophe facing our world and also the least remembered", the IOM's regional director Othman Belbeisi, speaking from Port Sudan, told a media briefing in Geneva.

He said 71 percent of returns had been to Al-Jazira state, with eight percent to Khartoum.

Other returnees were mostly heading for Sennar state.

Both Al-Jazira and Sennar are located southeast of the capital.

"We expect 2.1 million to return to Khartoum by the end of this year but this will depend on many factors, especially the security situation and the ability to restore services," Belbeisi said.

With the RSF holding nearly all of the western Darfur region, Kordofan in the south has become the war's main battleground in recent weeks.

He said the "vicious, horrifying civil war continues to take lives with impunity", imploring the warring factions to put down their guns.

"The war has unleashed hell for millions and millions of ordinary people," he said.

"Sudan is a living nightmare. The violence needs to stop."

- 'Massive' UXO contamination -

After visiting Khartoum and the Egyptian border, Mamadou Dian Balde, the UNHCR's regional refugee coordinator for the Sudan crisis, said people were coming back to destroyed public infrastructure, making rebuilding their lives extremely challenging.

Those returning from Egypt were typically coming back "empty handed", he said, speaking from Nairobi.

Luca Renda, UNDP's resident representative in Sudan, warned of further cholera outbreaks in Khartoum if broken services were not restored.

"What we need is for the international community to support us," he said.

Renda said around 1,700 wells needed rehabilitating, while at least six Khartoum hospitals and at least 35 schools needed urgent repairs.

He also sounded the alarm on the "massive" amount of unexploded ordnance littering the city and the need for decontamination.

He said anti-personnel mines had also been found in at least five locations in Khartoum.

"It will take years to fully decontaminate the city," he said, speaking from Port Sudan.