Sudan's Islamist regime, once shunned by Washington for providing a haven for Osama bin Laden as well as for human rights abuses during decades of civil war, has become an ally in the Bush administration's "war on terror."
Only months after the then US secretary of state, Colin Powell, accused Khartoum of genocide in Darfur, Sudan has become a crucial intelligence asset to the CIA.
In the Middle East and Africa, Sudan's agents have penetrated networks that would not normally be accessible to the US, one former US intelligence official told reporters. Some of that cooperation has spilled over into the war on Iraq; Sudan is credited with detaining foreign militants on their way to join anti-US fighters there.
Sudanese agents have also helped the CIA to monitor Islamist organizations in Somalia.
"The intelligence relationship is the strongest thread between Washington and Khartoum," the official said. "Khartoum is probably the only government in the Arab League that has contributed in a major way to the protection of US forces and citizens in Iraq."
News of the growing cooperation was first reported in Friday's Los Angeles Times. The paper traced the thaw in relations since 2001 to a milestone last week: the visit to Washington by Sudan's intelligence chief, Salah Abdallah Gosh. It reported that Sudan's secret police had begun a crackdown on suspected Islamists, shared evidence with the FBI and allowed US personnel to interrogate al-Qaeda suspects.
In May 2003, Sudanese security forces raided a suspected terrorist training camp and deported more than a dozen, mainly Saudi, militants to Arab states which work closely with US intelligence services, the newspaper said.
Yet a decade ago Sudan was providing a haven to Bin Laden and other international outlaws, such as Carlos the Jackal. In 1993, the Clinton administration placed it on the state department's list of terrorist regimes.
Subsequent approaches from Khartoum were rebuffed -- even as it offered its services against the emerging al-Qaeda network in the 1990s.
"Sudan tried to hand over two guys implicated in the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in east Africa, and the response was to send cruise missiles to hit the aspirin factory in Khartoum," the official said. "They offered up Bin Laden in 1995, and we said we don't even have an indictment on him."
Officially, Washington's position towards Sudan remains unchanged. "Sudan is still considered a state sponsor of terror," a state department spokesman said yesterday.
And although the recent cooperation has yielded important results, it promises to be politically explosive.
The US Christian right and human rights organizations have been strong advocates of the Sudanese rebels, and are unlikely to support any softening of Washington's stance.
But that is precisely what Sudan wants, the Los Angeles Times reported. In return for its help, it wants to be removed from the list of state sponsors of terror, as well as the lifting of economic sanctions.
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