The U.S. Thinks So, and Has Outlawed The

The connections are tantalizing. Libya shuts down some of its terrorist camps, and elements of the radical Palestinian Abu Nidal organization surface in Sudan. Lebanon's Hizballah and the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas set up offices in Khartoum. Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani visits Khartoum, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel soon arrive to train the fundamentalist people's militias set up by Sudan's Islamic regime. Rumors abound of Syrians, Palestinians and Iranians infiltrating schools in northern Sudan to recruit students for terrorist training camps in eastern Sudan. Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, spiritual leader of the Egypt-based Islamic Group, some of whose members are charged with bombing the World Trade Center, obtained his U.S. visa in Khartoum.

For the past four years, Western intelligence agencies have suspected Sudan of playing a major role in promoting Islamic terror around the world. But there still hasn't been any real proof offered: no reputable eyewitnesses, no photographs, no documents. Nevertheless, the U.S. last week put its official stamp on the proposition, adding the country to its short list of pariah states sponsoring terrorism. The State Department declared that "evidence currently available" showed that Sudan allows its territory to be used as a sanctuary and training ground for all manner of Muslim fundamentalist and radical organizations. The announcement followed news reports that linked two Sudanese diplomats in New York City to the aborted plot to bomb the U.N., although that connection was not cited as a reason for putting Sudan on the terrorist list. Said State Department spokesman Mike McCurry: "There is a repeated pattern of behavior here . . . that we have raised directly with Sudan over . . . many months, and to this day they have been unwilling to address the problem in a way that we consider satisfactory."

The addition of Sudan to a list that includes Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Cuba was ostensibly the culmination of a review that began under the Bush Administration. But U.S. officials may have also timed the announcement to send a signal of support to Egypt, whose secular government is under assault by fundamentalists. For months President Hosni Mubarak has been publicly accusing neighboring Sudan of backing his enemies. "The Sudanese deny it," says Mubarak, "but the camps are there. They are farms. They take people not only from Egypt but also from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and even from Uganda. They act as if they are workers on these farms. But under this umbrella they teach them about explosives and about firearms."

Sudan claims that these "farms" are simply camps for its Popular Defense Forces, Islamic militias that fight along with the Sudanese armed forces. But the presence of Iranians associated with Tehran's fearsome Revolutionary Guard has convinced Western intelligence agents that far more insidious activities are going on. This is the first time that Persian Shi'ite Iran has allied itself with an Arab Sunni Muslim government, but both regimes share a passionate disdain for neighboring secular states. Now that Libya and Syria are attempting to curry favor in the West by cutting their support for terrorist groups, says Philip Robins, Middle East expert at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs, "Sudan is the best ally Iran has got."