What Are the Odds That Israel Just Attacked Sudan?

[Draggingtree]

The Atlantic's International Channel:

 

What Are the Odds That Israel Just Attacked Sudan?

 

Armin Rosen

 

Oct 24 2012, 6:21 PM ET

 

Parsing the evidence

Fire engulfs the Yarmouk ammunition factory in Khartoum. (Reuters)

 

It's not often that a government eagerly announces a military facility in its capital city has been destroyed in a stunning and audacious sneak attack, even in light of plausible evidence to the contrary. Yet here we are: Yesterday, Sudanese culture and information minister Ahmed Bilal Osman alleged that the previous evening, four Israeli fighter jets flew over Khartoum from the east and partially destroyed the Yarmouk munitions factory, in the city's south.

The night before, the governor of Khartoum claimed on local television and radio that an accidental fire was to blame for the incident, according to sources I was able to contact in Sudan. And Israel is an all-too-convenient scapegoat for everything from shark attacks to major political assassinations. After all, it makes intuitive sense that a broke, beleagueredand internationally-sanctionedSudanese government would rather trumpet its failure in protecting the capital than allow an exploding weapons factory to serve as an all-too-obvious reminder of the country's dysfunction. Blaming an external enemy could unite a fractured and restive populace; indeed, nationalistic feeling surged during the country's brief military confrontation with the South Sudan this past spring. Acknowledging the truth has no such advantage. It is plausible that Sudan's nominally-Islamist and Iran-allied government would rather blame Israel than openly acknowledge the depths that austerity, economic depression and international pariah-status have brought it to. There was reason to doubt Osman's claims.

But there is plenty of reason not to dismiss them.

[Pepper]

Hmmm