Sudan to be removed from US terror blacklist after $335m pledge for American victims

Sudan's Prime Minister, Abdalla Hamdok, told The Telegraph last month that his country's economy was 'collapsed'

Credit: AFP

President Donald Trump last night announced that Sudan will be removed from his blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism once the North African state sets aside $335m in compensation for American victims. 

"GREAT news! New government of Sudan, which is making great progress, agreed to pay $335 MILLION to U.S. terror victims and families," Mr Trump tweeted on Monday night.

"Once deposited, I will lift Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. At long last, JUSTICE for the American people and BIG step for Sudan!," he added. 

Sudan’s removal from the blacklist would be a major development for the economically crippled North African state, which hopes to rejoin the international community after an uprising in 2019. 

It would also be another diplomatic coup for the US president ahead of November’s elections, as he seeks to present himself as a peacemaker in the Middle East and beyond.

Though Mr Trump did not reference Israel, there has been fervent speculation about Sudan looking to sign a peace deal with Israel in the coming days, following similar accords signed between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Removal from the blacklist is contingent on Sudan paying compensation for victims of the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, attacks conducted by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network while bin Laden was living in Sudan.

The country is shifting towards democracy after a popular uprising last year led the military to overthrow dictator leader Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. A military-civilian government now rules the country, with elections possible in late 2022.

In an interview with the Telegraph in September, Sudanese prime minister Abdalla Hamdok said the country was in urgent need of international aid as the economy was in ruins.

"To say we inherited a relatively broken economy is a gross underestimation. We inherited a collapsed economy," he said. 

If the US does remove Sudan from the list in the coming days, it would have a transformative effect on that economic situation, and bolster the forces of liberal democracy in a country which once vied with Saudi Arabia to be the leader of the ultra-conservative Islamic world. 

The northeast African nation has been an international pariah state since the 1990s when the US listed it as a state sponsor of terrorism. 

The pariah status came when Mr Bashir prosecuted Christians, supported Al Qaeda, hosted Osama Bin Laden and imposed a raft of Islamic morality laws which made apostasy punishable by death and forbade women from wearing trousers. 

The US sanctions have left Sudan almost completely cut off from the international financial system, crippling the country’s economy. Currently, it is impossible to use any international debit or credit card anywhere in the country. 

The 2019 uprising, months of peaceful protests where ordinary people marched on the streets chanting for liberty and justice, toppled Mr Bashir’s Islamist regime.

But decades of conflict and corruption mean that Sudan’s economy is in free fall and Sudanese liberals in the capital Khartoum have been desperately trying to lobby the White House to remove the sanctions so that they can avoid complete economic collapse and safeguard the hardwon gains of the revolution.