U.S. efforts to guide Sudan to democracy end in war

Sudan had become an important test case in U.S. President Joe Biden’s core foreign policy goal of bolstering democracies worldwide, which in his view weakens corrupt leaders and allows nations to more capably stand as bulwarks against foreign influences, reported The New York Times on Wednesday.

However, “on April 23, the same American diplomats who had been involved in the negotiations in Sudan suddenly found themselves shutting down the embassy and fleeing Khartoum on secret nighttime helicopter flights as the country spiraled into a potential civil war,” said the report.

“An urgent question at the heart of the crisis is whether the United States miscalculated how difficult it would be to introduce democracy in a country with a long history of military rule, and the risks of negotiating with strongmen who talk about democracy but never deliver,” it noted.

Senior American diplomats “made the mistake of coddling the generals, accepting their irrational demands and treating them as natural political actors,” Amgad Fareid Eltayeb, an adviser to Sudan’s deposed prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, was quoted as saying.

“This fed their lust for power and their illusion of legitimacy,” he said.

Just weeks ago, American diplomats thought Sudan was on the verge of a breakthrough agreement that would advance its transition from military dictatorship to full-fledged democracy. But, the reality turned out otherwise, bearing the failure of the U.S. diplomatic policy in this country, added the report.