Sudan still has a long way to go before it is removed from the US state sponsors of terrorism list as its civilian government faces an “insurmountable task”, said Cameron Hudson, a former chief of staff to the special envoy for Sudan and ex-director for African Affairs on the National Security Council.
Washington has a long list of demands from Khartoum before removing sanctions, Hudson said in an article released by the Atlantic Council as Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok visited the US.
The Trump administration fears the “possibility that the military will reassert its authority as soon as sanctions are lifted,” he added.
He said Washington wants clarifications about the security and intelligence service after the recent reforms and whether the agency was fully under civilian control.
In addition, he pointed to the presence of “a number of known international terrorists and rebel groups from neighboring countries most of whom use the large, ungoverned desert expanse from the Red Sea to Libya as an ample hiding ground.”
Hudson, who is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Africa Center, said that Hamdok became the first Sudanese leader to visit Washington since 1985.
Moreover, he noted that the Palestinian Hamas movement and Lebanese Hezbollah party, which are designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the State Department, maintained a political office in Khartoum.
Hudson added that before removing Sudan from the terror list, Khartoum should pay more than USD300 million in compensation to the victims of the 2000 USS Cole bombing and more than USD2 billion in compensation for the families of the victims of the 1998 Nairobi and Dar es Salaam US embassy bombings.
Hamdok had arrived in Washington on Sunday at the head of a ministerial delegation. During his first visit to the US, he is hoping to reach an agreement with the American administration over the removal of his country from the state sponsors of terrorism list.
