U.S. lifts sanctions on Sudan banks, ports, railways

U.S. lifts sanctions on Sudan banks, ports, railways

Friday, October 13, 2017 9:28 am


Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir

The U.S. has lifted sanctions on dozens of Sudanese entities, including banks, ports, oil and industrial corporations, the Treasury Department said on Thursday.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control published a list of entities that are now formally removed from the U.S. sanctions list, including African Drilling Company, Bank of Sudan, Sudan Air, Sudan Railways, Petroleum General Administration and African Oil Corporation, among dozens of others.

Thursday’s Treasury Department Action formally marks the end of decades of US-imposed sanctions on the country, though some measures related to the conflict in Darfur will remain in place.

Washington first slapped economic, trade and financial restrictions on Sudan in 1997, accusing the country of supporting terrorism, destabilising neighbouring states and violating human rights.

NAN reports that the U.S. first imposed sanctions against Sudan in 1997, citing the country’s support for international terrorism, human rights violations, and meddling in the politics of its neighbours, such as Ethiopia and Eritrea.

In 2006, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush expanded the scope of those sanctions, freezing the assets of some Sudanese officials involved in the conflict in Darfur, a region in the country’s west where security forces and government-backed militias were carrying out a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing.

In January 2017, then U.S. President Barack Obama temporarily lifted some of the sanctions on Sudan, promising that the next administration would fully remove them later in the year if Khartoum’s behavior improved.

Sudan would have to cooperate with the United States on counter-terrorism and take on the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group operating in the borderlands between Sudan and the Central African Republic.


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