With the announcement that the Sudanese government under President Omar al-Bashir is close to reopening negotiations with rebel groups in Darfur, promising a ceasefire in the meantime, the Sudanese people along with the rest of the world may finally see and end to the violence in sight. But we must not get our hopes up quite yet. Several attempts at peace including an actual ceasefire have all lagged and eventually broken down completely over the last three years as genocide has continued in Sudan. As the report details the upcoming negations in Libya, it is hard to believe that this time around any agreement will stick as the government has yet to acknowledge their support of the Janjaweed militias who carry out the genocide. Bashir’s rhetoric about bringing an end to the nearly decade long conflict have amounted to nothing but hollow promises. His Islamic government has financed and supplied the Janjaweed militias for several years in their attempts to destroy all existence of the non-Arab African population in the western Darfur region. As the African Union remains largely ineffective in containing the violence, constrained by weak mandates and poor logistical support, the UN now stands to beef up its police force in the Darfur region.

What are worse for Sudan right now are the continued sanctions being imposed on them by the US. As the oil industry stands as the only means of economic growth in Sudan, the US sanctions (in not allowing Sudan to use the US dollar in their transactions) seem to be standing in the way while the Bush Administration has done little to end the admitted genocide there. Why would Bush not engage Sudan economically, instead handing them and their now 3rd highest producing oil industry in all of Africa, to China? With continued US impotence on action in Darfur, the best and possibly only way to save the suffering Sudanese now may be to engage, rather than isolate, economically. The greatest chance the US has in affecting the course of events in Sudan lie in the economic sector. And as is usually the norm in impoverished areas where the government cares little for its citizens, sanctions almost always robs the wrong people of their only source of livelihood.

As the economic tides turn in Sudan with promised reforms to open up international trade, the potential for the US to intervene without using military force as many Americans now condone is vastly more available. Further isolation of the Sudanese economy represents a major missed opportunity for the US and the Bush administration to salvage what has been a disastrous attempt thus far. With an estimated 11% growth rate this year, Sudan represents a chance for the US to alter its mostly unimpressive interaction in Africa, and more importantly a chance for the US to work with rather than against Islamic governments abroad. A strategy of engagement economically poses the only real chance at ending genocide in Sudan that has claimed an estimated 200,000 to 450,000 lives since 2003.