LONDON — “The calamities of a people are the gifts of another.” So says an Arabic expression common in Sudan that could easily be the country’s motto. Tragic events have a knack for conspiring to extend the longevity of the Sudanese regime — or rather, the Sudanese regime has a knack for leveraging tragic events to stay in power.
The latest calamity to benefit the government of Omar al-Bashir, who became an international pariah when he invited Osama bin Laden and other terrorists to Sudan in the 1990s and later earned the distinction of being the first sitting head of state indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes committed in Darfur, is the massive refugee crisis gripping Europe. In exchange for cooperating with the European Union to halt the movement of migrants and refugees through Sudanese territory, Bashir’s government is being quietly invited in from the cold.
For almost three decades, Khartoum has faced crippling U.S. and EU sanctions. And since his ICC indictment in 2009, Bashir has been a fugitive from justice in much of the world — only able to visit a handful of countries in Africa and the Persian Gulf without fear of arrest. Now Bashir’s government is set to receive a generous chunk of the EU’s $2 billion “Emergency Trust Fund for Africa,” which aims to combat migration at its source by promoting development and strengthening border security. For Sudan, the refugee crisis has been a godsend.
For a combination of reasons — its strategic location next to Libya and Egypt, its largely ungoverned hinterland, and its porous borders — Sudan has become a major transit hub for refugees and migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Syria who are hoping to reach Europe. Historically, the Sudanese government has been rather relaxed about migration through its territory. But presented with the carrot of EU funds, and the possibility of normalization of relations with European nations, it has suddenly become far more disciplined about policing the movement of people within its borders.
Refugees in Sudan say officials who previously accepted bribes from people on the move now appear unwilling to do so, and Khartoum’s notoriously chaotic police force has suddenly gotten more organized when it comes t apprehending migrants, particularly from Eritrea. In May, close to 1,000 Eritreans were reportedly rounded up in Khartoum and either taken to prisons there or deported back to Eritrea. Then in June, Sudan captured Mered Medhanie, an Eritrean smuggler thought to be responsible for the 2013 drowning deaths of almost 400 migrants near the Italian island of Lampedusa, and extradited him to Italy.
Read more: Bashir Comes in From the Cold
Source: FP