Darfur Makes Sudan's Omar al-Bashir Barack Obama's Biggest African Foe

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In The Media

Darfur Makes Sudan's Omar al-Bashir Barack Obama's Biggest African Foe

Darfur is being pushed perilously close to the edge by the Sudanese government. President Obama's biggest test in Africa will not be pirates, but Omar al-Bashir, the first sitting president with a warrant for his arrest.

Published on May 26, 2009

Source: U.S. News & World Report

Darfur Makes Sudan's Omar al-Bashir Barack Obama'sPresidents don't get to choose their first foreign policy crisis. It usually chooses them. For President Clinton, it was the killing of 18 U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu. For President Bush, it came when a U.S. EP-3 military plane collided with a Chinese fighter pilot, forcing the American crew to land on the Chinese island of Hainan. Many think that President Obama's first crisis came last month in the unlikely form of Somali pirates. (Actually, pirates have been patrolling those waters longer than there have been American presidents and they will likely be there hundreds of years from now.)

While Obama may have handled the high seas showdown, his most dangerous foe in Africa isn't a rag-tag group of teenagers with AK-47s and speedboats. No, that adversary is Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, the world's first sitting president with a warrant for his arrest.

Darfur, the war-torn western region of Sudan, is being pushed perilously close to the edge by the Sudanese government. The biggest test for Obama's foreign policy in Africa will not be pirates; it will be Bashir.

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Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

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