US Enlists Sudanese Spies in War on Terror

The CIA is recruiting Arab-speaking Sudanese citizens to infiltrate Middle Eastern radical groups in spite of US sanctions against the country over Darfur, it emerged today.

Faced with the impossibility of placing white Americans into such groups, the CIA has made such deals in the past, arguing that intelligence creates strange bedfellows.

The Sudanese recruits have been handing over information about individuals passing through Sudan to Somalia and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa and to the Middle East, in particular, Iraq.

The Sudanese government is reported to have detained suspects in Khartoum at the request of the White House.

The US state department issued a report describing Sudan as a "strong partner in the war on terror". A state department official said the Sudanese have done things that had saved lives. He acknowledged there was a contradiction: "The bottom line is that they are bombing their people.... Dealing with Sudan, it seems like they are always playing both ends against the middle."

A former high-ranking official, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, acknowledged the importance of the intelligence: "If you've got jihadists traveling via Sudan to get into Iraq, there's a pattern there in and of itself that would not raise suspicion. It creates an opportunity to send Sudanese into that pipeline."

A US official still in their post told the paper: "Intelligence cooperation takes place for a whole lot of reasons. It's not always between people who love each other deeply."

US intelligence agencies do deals with all sorts of governments in the Middle East and central Asia, not only for intelligence-gathering but for secret detention centers and as fueling stops in rendition cases. The Iranian government provided information to the US to help its takeover of Afghanistan in 2001.

Another former CIA official said: "There's not much that blonde-haired, blue-eyed case officers from the United States can do in the entire Middle East, and there's nothing they can do in Iraq. Sudanese can go places we don't go. They're Arabs. They can wander around."

Osama bin Laden was based in Sudan in the 1990s, a sanctuary that led to president Clinton ordering a missile attack. The Sudanese government, since the departure of the al-Qaida leader for Afghanistan, has been working with the US.

But relations have been soured by Darfur, a high profile issue in the US, with campaigners calling for tough sanctions against Khartoum. Although Mr Bush has taken an international lead on sanctions, critics claim he has not gone as far as he could have, and blame this on the intelligence cooperation.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, said he did not believe sanctions would ruin the intelligence cooperation. "We certainly expect the Sudanese to continue efforts against terrorism, because it's in their own interests, not just ours," he said.

In Sudan today, the government rebuffed appeals by the new French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, to allow a joint United Nations-African Union force into Darfur. The government, while saying it was agreed in principle, set out various caveats.