Slow on Sudan: A bill stalls; has AIPAC reneged?

In June 2001, Nina Shea, the director of Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom, believed she could count on the pro-Israel lobby's support for legislation on human rights in Sudan. At the time, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's top priority for Congress was the renewal of sanctions against foreign oil companies doing business with Iran and Libya. The top priority for Shea's impromptu coalition -- black congressmen, evangelical Christians, Southern Baptists, and social conservatives -- was to punish foreign oil companies fueling Sudan's military campaign against Christians and animists in the country's 19-year civil war.

Shea, therefore, wanted to amend the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) to include Sudan. AIPAC did not want to weigh its legislation down with amendments that might jeopardize its passage. So the two sides reached a compromise: AIPAC's legislative director, Brad Gordon, promised AIPAC's support for the Sudan Peace Act, and in exchange Shea's coalition promised to drop support for the Sudan amendment on ILSA.

An unfettered ILSA passed Congress in July 2001; but -- one year later -- the Sudan Peace Act is in danger of dying a procedural death as it awawaits action in the Senate.

"AIPAC said they would help with this," says Shea, "but I don't think this is a priority for them." Rev. Walter Fauntroy, head of the National Black Leadership Roundtable (affiliated with the Congressional Black Caucus), puts it this way: "We thought we had an understanding. If we did not push Sudan on the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act we could expect help from AIPAC in moving the Sudan Peace Act. This hasn't happened yet."

And time is running out. With only weeks left on the Senate calendar, majority leader Tom Daschle has yet to bring up a motion to appoint conferees on the Sudan Peace Act -- and it doesn't appear that he will. Daschle's spokeswoman, Ranit Schmelzer, said recently that "it would require over a week of floor time to appoint conferees."

None of this bodes well for the Sudan activists who say that forbidding the Canadian, Chinese, Malaysian, and Russian oil companies to do business with Khartoum is the most effective way to force the Sudanese government to end the war. Peace talks are underway in Nairobi, but, according to Shea, "there is no political will [for the government] to sit down in good faith with the opposition. [They] are convinced they can win the war."

Shea has a point. Much of the money Sudan derives from its oil pipeline goes to purchase Russian-made MiG fighters, Eastern European attack helicopters, and other advanced armaments. Indeed, a confidential November 2000 International Monetary Fund report found that Khartoum doubled military expenditures only one year after its oil pipeline became operational in 1999.

U.S. sanctions on the oil companies aim to make it unprofitable for them to continue to underwrite Sudan's military. Under the House version of the Sudan Peace Act, the New York Stock Exchange would have to de-list PetroChina, a subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Company, because the Chinese own a 40 percent stake in the pipeline project in Sudan. The legislation would also prohibit Petronas, Malaysia's national oil company, from issuing corporate bonds in the U.S. -- as it did in May, when it raked in $1 billion in a deal financed by Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney.

Unfortunately for the bill's supporters, AIPAC has not come through on its commitment of last year. On March 15, Shea and Fauntroy, along with nine other key activists, wrote AIPAC president Tim Wuliger to urge his lobby to persuade the Bush administration and the Senate leadership to lift their opposition to the sanctions. Shortly thereafter, AIPAC's Brad Gordon phoned Daschle's staff to make the case for moving the bill forward. Gordon would not agree to be interviewed for this article, but AIPAC spokeswoman Rebecca Needler said in a statement: "AIPAC believes this is important legislation and we want to see it enacted. Those that think AIPAC is not providing support are simply misinformed."

But according to signatories of the letter and Senate staffers, AIPAC's efforts stopped there. A phone call to Daschle's staff appears a far cry from Gordon's "solemn pledge" on behalf of his organization -- as quoted in the March 15 letter -- to "do 'whatever it took' to help ensure passage of the Sudan Peace Act." "Moving Daschle to name conferees to the Sudan Peace Act is going to require more than a perfunctory phone call to a staff member," says Shea. "This might require a mass mobilization, a full- court press."

But is it necessarily true that AIPAC could -- in and of itself -- turn the legislative tide in favor of the Sudan bill? Measuring AIPAC's actual influence in Congress is a tricky matter. Despite its name, AIPAC is not a PAC: As an organization, it does not raise money for political races. But many of its members do -- and AIPAC's support for legislation often carries with it the support of skilled fundraisers. Phone calls from AIPAC leaders to congressional leaders can frequently move or block legislation, especially in the foreign-affairs arena.

And this is who Fauntroy means when he says, "We need to see Jewish decision-makers that impact the U.S. Congress weigh in on this matter with the Senate leadership." The recent case of Earl Hilliard's failed re- election bid in Alabama illustrates -- for Fauntroy, at least -- AIPAC's influence. Last month, Hilliard -- who in 1987 visited LiLibyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, and this May opposed a House resolution supporting Israel's right to defend itself -- lost his primary runoff by 12 points. Fauntroy says that "hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from outside his district" -- much of it from supporters of Israel -- was a major factor in Hilliard's loss. This is a claim that cannot be verified: Hilliard's constituents may have voted for his opponent because the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct reprimanded Hilliard for misusing campaign funds; alternatively, he may simply have been a victim of redistricting. But the perception that AIPAC's membership can unseat a five-term congressman leads Fauntroy and others in the Congressional Black Caucus to conclude that AIPAC has the muscle to sway Daschle to at least name conferees to the Sudan Peace Act.

Whatever the case, AIPAC has good reason to make an extra effort: the merits of the bill itself, and the villainy of the regime it seeks to undermine. A May 22 report by a team of U.S. and European observers found that militias trained in the north "burn villages, loot cattle, rape and kill civilians, and abduct and enslave men, women, and children." Sudan's government remains on the State Department's list of sponsors of terrorism because it harbors Hezbollah and other groups operating against Israeli civilians. In April, Sudan's military urged "all parties, institutions, trade unions, students and youths, men and women" to go to militia training camps in solidarity with the Palestinian intifada. The Sudanese government is committed, at least rhetorically, to the destruction of Israel.

The Sudan activists are making an incontrovertible point: Israel's friends should stand with Israel's friends -- and against Israel's enemies.