Far away from Darfur’s agony, Khartoum is booming

Despite the image of Sudan as a land of cracked earth and starving people, the economy is booming, with little help from the West. Oil has turned Sudan’s economy into one of the fastest growing in Africa – if not the world – emboldening the nation’s already belligerent government and giving it the wherewithal to resist Western demands to end the conflict in Darfur.

American sanctions have kept many companies from Europe and the United States out of Sudan, but companies from China, Malaysia, India, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are racing in. Foreign direct investment has shot up from $128 million in 2000 to $2.3 billion this year – despite an American trade embargo.
As long as Asian countries are eager to trade with Sudan, despite its human rights record, the American embargo seems to have minimal effect. The Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al- Bashir, continues to demonstrate his disdain for the West by refusing to allow UN peacekeepers into Darfur, despite continued bloodshed and intensifying pressure from the United States. [The chief UN envoy, Jan Pronk, left Khartoum on Monday after Bashir’s government, intensifying diplomatic hostilities, called him an enemy of Sudan and ordered him to leave, Reuters reported.]

“The government knows it doesn’t need America,” said Abda Yahia El- Mahdi, a former finance minister who is now a private consultant. “The only people who are being hurt by the sanctions are the Americans, who are missing out on this huge boom.”

International Herald Tribune