Sudan is central to Noam Chomsky’s critique of selective definitions of terrorism because the 1998 U.S. bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, in his account, caused consequences that were both prolonged and largely obscured. He presents the attack not as an isolated strike but as a disruption of medicine production, humanitarian work, and a possible political opening. The case becomes a measure of whether the same standards used to judge official enemies are applied to powerful states and their actions.

The Al-Shifa bombing and its consequences

Chomsky describes the destruction of Al-Shifa as a state action quickly reduced to a footnote in accounts of terrorism. Its effects, he argues, cannot be measured only by the people killed directly in the attack. Sudan requested a United Nations investigation into the bombing and its justifications, but Washington blocked the inquiry; Chomsky says few others seemed willing to pursue it. He insists that any assessment of victims must include deaths resulting from the loss of essential services, not just immediate casualties.

The factory had supplied affordable medicines and veterinary products across Sudan and produced 90 percent of the medicines most commonly used in the country, according to a report cited by Chomsky. A year after its destruction, people were reportedly suffering and dying from malaria, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases. Sanctions on Sudan further restricted imports of the pharmaceuticals needed to replace the lost production. Chomsky therefore presents the bombing’s effects as cumulative: the attack removed a major source of medicine, while the conditions that might have mitigated the shortage also constrained the country’s ability to respond.

The scale of the resulting deaths remains uncertain in the account. Chomsky cites field-based assessments by the Near East Foundation describing Sudan’s severe health and infrastructure pressures, including endemic disease, limited arable land, chronic shortages of clean water, debt, a devastating civil war, and sanctions. Jonathan Belke’s estimate that tens of thousands may have suffered and died from disease within a year is described as plausible, not as a confirmed count. Chomsky’s emphasis is on the difficulty of measuring delayed harm—and on the danger that uncertainty will be used to make it disappear from public judgment.

Aid, conflict, and the blocked inquiry

The effects described extend beyond the loss of factory output. According to a Human Rights Watch report cited by Chomsky, the bombing prompted United Nations agencies based in Khartoum to evacuate their American staff, and other relief organizations also withdrew. Aid efforts were delayed, including a U.S.-directed project in a government-held town where more than fifty people from the south were reportedly dying each day. The United Nations estimated that 2.4 million people in parts of southern Sudan were at risk of starvation, making the interruption of relief a further source of danger.

Chomsky also cites a Financial Times report that the attack appeared to halt a gradual movement toward compromise among Sudan’s warring parties. That process might have led to a peace agreement ending a civil war that had killed 1.5 million people since 1981, and might have contributed to peace in Uganda and the Nile basin. The report linked the setback to the loss of anticipated benefits from a change in the Sudanese government’s direction: it had appeared to be moving toward pragmatic engagement with the outside world, efforts to address internal crises, an end to support for terrorism, and reduced influence for radical Islamists. In Chomsky’s presentation, these are reported possibilities and assessments, not proof that the bombing alone determined the course of the conflict.

The absence of an investigation compounds the uncertainty. Chomsky argues that the Sudanese request for United Nations inquiry was blocked by Washington, leaving estimates of the bombing’s consequences without the clarification such an investigation might have provided. The lack of a settled accounting does not, for him, justify excluding indirect deaths or broader consequences; instead, it makes consistent scrutiny more important.

Terrorism and the standard of judgment

Chomsky uses Sudan to challenge the practice of reserving the word terrorism for violence by adversaries. He cites the official U.S. definition, which describes terrorism as calculated violence or the threat of violence for political, religious, or ideological aims, including intimidation and coercion. On that definition, he argues, terrorism is not exclusively a weapon of weaker non-state groups: it can also be part of state action. His claim is that the classification should follow the conduct and its effects rather than the identity or power of the actor.

This is why he contrasts the treatment of the Al-Shifa bombing with the response to the September 11 attacks. After the attacks, he said that their death toll might be comparable to that of the 1998 bombing; the comparison provoked intense condemnation. Chomsky treats that reaction as evidence of a moral asymmetry: violence attributed to powerful states can be normalized or forgotten, while violence by official enemies is recognized and condemned. He argues that responsibility also extends to citizens who, as taxpayers, have not secured meaningful reparations, have allowed perpetrators refuge or immunity, and have accepted the burial of such acts in selective public memory.

The argument does not depend on treating every estimate as certain. Rather, Chomsky applies to Sudan the accounting standards he says are used for crimes committed by official enemies: include deaths that follow from an act, and do not dismiss the consequences as mere error or as a by-product of ordinary institutional policy. By this measure, Al-Shifa becomes a test of whether condemnation rests on a stable principle or shifts according to who wielded the force.

Sudan, intelligence, and strategic consequences

Chomsky links Sudan’s treatment to a further claim about missed intelligence before September 11. He cites an investigative report in The Observer, attributed to a CIA source, according to which Sudan had repeatedly offered information about Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda that the Clinton administration rejected. The reported offers included a database on bin Laden and more than two hundred members of his network, with photographs, biographies, and information about Al-Qaeda’s financial interests in different regions. The source argued that access to this material would have improved the chances of preventing the attacks. Chomsky presents the account as a grave intelligence failure and attributes the rejection to hostility toward Sudan; the evidence he cites is the reported source’s assessment, not an independently established finding in the passage.

He places the bombing within a broader critique of the language and purposes of military force. Chomsky argues that terms such as “humanitarian intervention” can obscure violence, and that calling a campaign a war on terrorism is propaganda unless it genuinely targets terrorism according to the stated definition. He also contends that the United States’ official doctrine of low-intensity warfare resembles its own definition of terrorism. The Sudan case gives this broader claim a concrete form: a state strike, he argues, should be examined through the harm it produces and the evidence surrounding it, not set aside because the actor is powerful or the target is politically isolated.

Sudan also recurs in Chomsky’s discussion of the post-September 11 period. He connects the United States’ establishment of major military bases in Central Asia with expanded strategic reach toward the region’s resources and the Persian Gulf, and interprets the Afghanistan bombing as a demonstration of U.S. power. These arguments widen the frame beyond Sudan, but sharpen the role the country plays in the book: it is both a site of direct and indirect harm and an example through which Chomsky asks readers to distinguish declared purposes from consequences and strategic interpretations.