Sudanese Wonder if Fundamentalist Course Can Right History of Failure : Africa: The regime denies U.S. accusations it has links to terrorism. It contends such charges are meant to thwart the spread of Islam.

Seventeen years ago, huge sums of development money pouring into Sudan were going to transform this vast land into a breadbasket for the Middle East. A conciliatory Sudanese president was in the process of forging a lasting peace with the rebellious south. A Sudanese union with Egypt was to ensure that moderate Arabs controlled the Nile.

But none of that happened.

Today, Sudan instead finds itself cut adrift by old Western and Arab friends, a renegade that last August was placed on the U.S. State Department’s list of nations supporting international terrorism.

The $800 million that once gushed into Sudan from the Middle East, Japan and the West--and made up 55% of the national budget--has dried to a trickle (maybe $50 million), and the Sudanese are left to ponder if all that has gone wrong can perhaps be righted by the fundamental Islamic course their government now follows.

Sudan has fought a civil war for 28 of its 38 years of independence from Britain and Egypt.

In those 38 years, it has had 30 governments. Sudan has trod every conceivable political path: Marxism, socialism, democracy, military dictatorship and now a populist style of Islamic fundamentalism.

It has at various times made alliances with the West, the Communist bloc, the moderate Arabs, the radical Arabs.

Everything has failed. Year after year Sudan--Africa’s largest country, a quarter the size of the U.S. mainland--has slipped further backward politically and economically.

Now, with inflation running about 200% annually, Khartoum’s furnace-like heat, swirling desert dust and sense of futility seem to have hammered the Sudanese into a somnolent state of lethargy. Islam has become the last refuge for a people captive to quiet desperation.

The young, disfranchised men who have flocked to Islam are the same ones who 20 years ago in Africa would have become Communists. For them, the marriage of politics and religion finds expression as a form of nationalism that views as irrelevant--or untrue--charges that their government harbors terrorists, violates human rights and wants to impose Islam on the Christian and pagan south.

Both publicly and privately, government officials deny the existence of “ghost houses”--little security offices tucked away in Khartoum’s labyrinth of dirt streets where Amnesty International has chronicled, by victims’ names and dates, a constant pattern of human rights abuses.

Nor do they acknowledge any link to terrorism or any presence of terrorists, contending that such charges are fabrications of American policy-makers intent on thwarting the spread of Islam.

“That’s simply not true,” said Donald Petterson, the U.S. ambassador, who has spent most of his 30-year diplomatic career in Africa. “Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Abu Nidal--these (extremist) organizations have offices here, and there is a relationship between them and elements of the government that is undeniable. We also have credible information that activities such as the training of terrorists go on here.”

Petterson--the West’s point man in attempts to bring Sudan’s behavior more into line with accepted international practices--also said the U.S. Embassy has documented evidence of detention, torture and summary executions.

“The government’s standard reply when I bring up human rights,” he said, “is, ‘That’s a pack of lies.’ To which I say, baloney.”

The United States has not publicly linked Sudan with any specific act of terrorism, as it has Libya, but few Sudanese outside the government refute the assessment of one non-American diplomat: “This is a place that welcomes people no one else wants.”

Petterson said firm evidence of Sudan’s involvement in terrorism came to light last summer from sensitive sources he will not discuss.

To travel in Sudan today is to return to the Africa of a generation ago. The security apparatus is pervasive, and people choose their words carefully.

Everything appears to be in an accelerated state of decay. Mounds of paperwork--usually in triplicate with no carbon paper provided--are required for the simplest task. Checking into a hotel, for example, visitors must provide a photograph and fill out a form that will be sent to the government for inspection. Multi-party democracy is not even in the national vocabulary.

While much of Africa has become more relaxed and democratic in the 1990s, Sudan seems caught in a time warp, its development retarded by ethnic discord--the 26 million Sudanese speak 100 languages and the Arab north is at war with the African south--by former President Jaafar Numeiri’s neglect of the economy and infrastructure, by an absence of foreign investors who once packed the Khartoum Hilton but would now find a mostly empty hotel.

Numeiri was a conciliator who made peace with his political enemies and a treaty with the embattled south. But in 1983, needing a new alliance, he reached out to the Muslim Brotherhood, became devout and made the Sharia (Islamic law) the law of the land, even in the non-Muslim south. The partnership bought him an additional two years of power, until 1985, when he was overthrown in the only African coup ever led by the middle and professional classes.

Sadek Mahdi, Numeiri’s democratically elected successor, was toppled in 1989, bringing to power the current military regime of President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir.

His is not a government of wild-eyed mullahs. Many of his subordinates are articulate, Western-educated, dedicated to making the country work and as gracious as the Sudanese people themselves. In private they do not speak piously, and they are candid about the country’s immense problems and the government’s inability to solve them.

But all indications are that Bashir is free to govern only as long as his policies do not run counter to the aims of the National Islamic Front.

Publicly espousing tolerance and moderation, the NIF has taken control of key ministries, crippled trade unions, purged the military of non-Muslim commanders and orchestrated Sudan’s increasingly rigid observance of Islamic dictates: All women are veiled and, as passengers, segregated in the rear of buses. Anyone caught drinking alcohol is flogged. Zakat, the Islamic tax for charity, is mandatory (a man who owns 40 camels is taxed one camel a year).

The leader of the NIF, Hassan Turabi, a soft-spoken, erudite, Sorbonne-educated sheik, is widely seen as an architect of the Islamic revival that has spread from Algeria to Afghanistan.

He is not a junior partner to Iran, Sudan watchers say, and the Islam he espouses contains large doses of capitalism, an emphasis on nationalism and considerable equality of women (who are allowed to serve in the militia and work side by side with men).

Though Iran views Sudan as a useful avenue into Africa, particularly neighboring Egypt, Turabi and Bashir’s positions are frequently at odds with those of Tehran.

Sudan, for instance, was critical of the allied coalition in the Persian Gulf War--and of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Sudan has not denounced the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, saying it is up to the Palestinians to decide what is best for them. And in public statements it has been decidedly conciliatory to Washington lately, referring to the United States in the government-controlled press as a “friendly” country and welcoming the recent arrival in Khartoum of Ambassador Melissa Wells, President Clinton’s special envoy.

Washington, however, has been clear that relations will not improve until Khartoum cleanses its human rights record and severs terrorist links.

By all accounts, the terms for repaired relations that would enable Ambassador Petterson to forsake his bodyguards and armored vehicle have fallen on deaf ears.

“Eventually all this will work out,” a senior official said, expressing a view that does not square with reality. “I think we’re already seeing a softening in the White House’s position. They’re starting to realize the importance the Sudan has to the West.”

In the barren offices outside his door, cobwebs clung to the ceiling corners, and a legion of government workers sat at empty desks. Why, the man was asked, is Sudan important to the West? He sipped his tea, thought awhile and did not answer.