Sudan could explode: Now is not the time for the U.S. to play nice with Khartoum

By Eric Reeves

December 16, 2016 (SSNA) — During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama called Darfur a “stain on our souls.” As president, he re-iterated his charge that the regime in Khartoum was responsible for genocide. But in stark contrast to his rhetoric as a senator and a presidential candidate, President Obama’s administration has sought rapprochement with the very same regime that he had long excoriated.

Indeed, all his moral indignation has mattered very little in the eight years during which U.S. policy toward the regime has been guided by the view of Obama’s former special envoy for Sudan, Princeton Lyman:

“We [the Obama administration] do not want to see the ouster of the [Khartoum] regime, nor regime change. We want to see the regime carrying out reform via constitutional democratic measures.” (Interview with Asharq al-Awsat, December 3, 2011)

Eric Reeves is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights.