Scott Gration

By Fatma Naib in Africa on January 18th, 2011
Photo by Fatma Naib

The journey into Darfur started at the break of dawn. I was greeted at the UN airport in Khartoum by personnel who ensured I made it onto the plane.


As we waited in the freezing cold in the open air waiting area, I started to observe the truly international faces around me - Ethiopians, Nigerians and Bulgarians. 

The plane finally arrived. An hour and a half later, the captain announced that we were in Al Fashir, Darfur.

By Fatma Naib in Africa on April 7th, 2010
An Umma party supporter carries a banner which reads "boycott" in Arabic
The last 24 hours have proven to be the most stressful since the Al Jazeera crew arrived in Khartoum to cover the multi-party elections scheduled on April 11.
We and other media outlets were invited to a press conference at the National Elections Commission [NEC] headquarters on Tuesday.
As we arrived we were told that Scott Gration, the US special envoy to Sudan had just left. We waited in the blistering sun for over an hour before Al-Hadi Mohammed Ahmed, member of the NEC announced that the elections will go ahead as scheduled.
I couldn't help but think that in this roller coaster of an election, Ahmed's announcement should come as some relief for the nearly 16 million eligible voters.
By Mohamed Vall in Africa on October 26th, 2009
Photo by Getty Images

Obama's new policy of "carrots along with sticks" towards Sudan has drawn ridicule and derision both on the part of some humanitarian organizations and mainstream US media. "Naive" is the term most widely used by those critics to describe Obama's special envoy to Sudan Scott Gration.

While the Sudanese doubt the possibility of any major change in US policies towards Sudan, western critics of the new policy doubt if there will be any major change in the Sudanese government's behaviour with regard to the conflict in Darfur in particular. They believe the US government has decided to reward the regime in Khartoum with incentives in exchange for empty promises from that regime.

By Mohamed Vall in Africa on October 25th, 2009
Photo by AFP

The announcement of a new US policy towards Sudan has come after years of secret cooperation on terrorism. Sudan helped the CIA with anti al-Qaeda efforts in the Horn of Africa region. The Sudanese have not even been trying to hide this fact.

They were expecting immediate dividends: the lifting of US sanctions, removing Sudan from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. But none of that happened. So during the Bush years, Khartoum got really frustrated that after all it had given (historic concessions to the southerners in the Naivasha peace agreement and cooperation on terrorism) the US government had not changed its hostile stance towards the government of Sudan. Economic and military sanctions remained in place, Sudan's name has been kept on the list of state sponsors of terrorism and the US has been the only country on earth to label the conflict in Darfur as genocide.

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