The
Oil War Moves To Sudan
By Doug Lorimer
04 August, 2004
The Green Left Weekly
The Australian and
British governments Washington's partners in last year's illegal
invasion of Iraq have offered to send troops to Sudan as part
of a UN peacekeeping force, despite the fact that there
is no proposal before the UN Security Council for the setting up of
such a force.
The UN estimates
at least 30,000 people have been killed and some 1.5 million made homeless
in Sudan's thinly populated western Darfur region as a result of fighting
between rebel organisations based among the region's black African villagers
and Arab tribal militias, collectively known as the janjaweed.
There's a
good chance that we will send some troops to Sudan, Australian
foreign minister Alexander Downer told Nine Network television on July
26. The next day, Downer dishonestly told ABC Radio National that Canberra
had received a request from the United Nations for us to provide
troops for a UN force.
On June 24, British
Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that his government had a moral
responsibility to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that
we can. Two days later, General Michael Jackson, Britain's top
commander, said he could send 5000 British troops to Sudan if called
upon to do so.
UN resolution
The US had presented
a draft resolution to the Security Council that made no mention of a
UN-authorised military intervention into Sudan, but threatened the oil-rich
African country with economic sanctions unless its Islamist military
government acted to disarm the janjaweed. The resolution, however, has
been stalled in the council by China, France and Russia three
of the five veto-wielding permanent members which are opposed
to international sanctions being imposed on Sudan.
Unable to get a
resolution threatening UN-imposed sanctions to pressure Khartoum to
disarm the janjaweed, in early July US officials began floating the
idea of foreign military intervention. The idea was quickly endorsed
by Republican and Democratic legislators. We need to get an international
peacekeeping force on the ground to save lives immediately, Democrat
legislator Charles Rangel declared on July 13.
Two days later,
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry called on the Bush administration
to stop equivocating and push for a Security Council resolution
approving military intervention in Sudan, including with US troops.
However, with its
own army stretched to breaking point waging an unwinnable counter-insurgency
war in Iraq, Washington is in no position to credibly threaten to send
US troops to Sudan. The June 30 Christian Science Monitor reported that
despite growing desire in the [Bush] administration and Congress
for action on Darfur, there's little willingness to put US boots on
the ground to stop the killing or keep the peace. Republican senators
like Mike DeWine of Ohio and John McCain of Arizona have advocated paying
for other nations' troops perhaps via a UN peacekeeping mission.
But there's reluctance in the UN Security Council reportedly
among nations like China, Pakistan, and Algeria to get too involved
in Darfur.
Without other nations
publicly indicating their willingness to contribute troops to a UN peacekeeping
force, the threat that such a force might be created looked hollow,
leaving Washington without much diplomatic leverage to pressure Khartoum
to act quickly to disarm the janjaweed.
The US desperately
needed some public backing from other countries for the idea of foreign
military intervention in Sudan. Hence, the public sabre-rattling by
London and Canberra.
Washington's concern
about the humanitarian crisis in Darfur is not motivated by the rising
death toll there. Its indifference to the enormous humanitarian crisis
in the Democratic Republic of Congo where at least 3.5 million
people have died over the last few years demonstrates that its
desire to see a quick resolution of the Darfar crisis does not spring
from any humanitarian concerns.
The June 30 Christian
Science Monitor reported: Prodded by the Bush team, Sudan's government
and southern Christian rebels have been inching toward a comprehensive
peace deal for about two years. The war broke out in 1983 after the
south took up arms against Khartoum. Insurgents are looking for more
equitable treatment of southerners and a share of the country's oil
wealth. Negotiators are currently meeting in Kenya to work out details
on peacekeeping and demobilization of troops. Another round of talks
is set for later this year.
Such a deal
would end Africa's longest-running civil war. It would also ... enable
the US to proceed with lifting sanctions against Sudan and restoring
formal diplomatic ties, which the US did on Monday with Libya, another
Muslim country with past ties to terrorism.
At one point
in January, a north-south deal was so close that Sudanese leaders from
both sides began applying for visas to go to the White House for a signing
ceremony. But recently, southern rebels have said they won't join with
Sudan's government if it's involved in genocide in Darfur.
It is this threat
which could stall Washington's moves to lift its sanctions on
US corporate investment in Sudan that has led Washington to elevate
the humanitarian crisis in Darfur to the top of its immediate diplomatic
agenda.
The current government
of Sudan, headed by General Omar Hassan Ahmad al Bashir, came to power
in a military coup in 1989, and is based on an alliance between Sudan's
military elite and the right-wing National Congress Party (formerly
the National Islamic Front). After coming to power, Bashir quickly began
implementing an International Monetary Fund restructuring program to
privatise state enterprises and encourage new foreign investment.
However, Bashir's
regime earned Washington's hostility by siding with Baghdad during the
1991 Gulf War. In 1993, the Clinton administration branded Sudan a terrorist
state, claiming that the Bashir government had allowed Palestinian
and Lebanese guerrillas to train on Sudanese soil, and in 1997 the US
imposed a trade and investment embargo on Sudan.
The following year,
Washington fired cruise missiles into what it alleged was a chemical
weapons factory in Khartoum but which later proved to ber a pharmaceuticals
plant.
However, since 9/11,
Bashir like Libya's military ruler Colonel Gaddafi has
moved to normalise relations with Washington. According
to the US State Department website, Sudan has provided concrete
cooperation against international terrorism and publicly
supported the international coalition actions against the al Qaeda network
and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
A major motivation
for Washington to find a pretext to drop its trade and investment embargo
against Sudan is the country's emergence as a potential major oil exporter.
From the mid-1970s
extensive oil exploration began in Sudan, with Chevron (Caltex) spending
US$1.2 billion and discovering oil fields in southern Sudan. However,
Chevron abandoned its concessions in Sudan in 1985 due to their location
in an area where fighting was taking place between government troops
and the guerrillas of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM),
a rebel force backed by the predominately Christian black population
in the country's south.
Chevron's oil concessions
were later developed by the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company,
a consortium dominated by the China National Petroleum Corporation,
following the beginning of peace negotiations between Bashir's government
and the SPLM in 1997. After the construction of an oil pipeline by GNPOC
from the central-southern area to Port Sudan on the Red Sea in July
1999, Sudan began exporting crude petroleum (primarily to China and
India). Last year, oil exports accounted for 70% of Sudan's export revenues.
In July 1998 the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that a Chevron representative
estimated Sudan had more oil than Iran and Saudi Arabia together.
However, Washington's economic sanctions against Sudan meant that ChevronTexaco
and the other US oil corporations have been unable to get their hands
on this potential source of enormous profits.
The conflict in
Darfur which threatens to stall the signing of a final peace
deal between Khartoum and the SPLA, and Washington's planned lifting
of economic sanctions against Sudan has been spurred by the drought
and the near-famine conditions that have afflicted the region since
1984.
The government maintains that the conflict in Darfur is primarily a
tribal one, centred around the competition for land between predominantly
Arabic speaking semi-nomadic pastoralists and black African subsistence
farmers. However, leaders of the black African tribes in Darfur insist
that the depopulation of villages and consequent changes in land ownership
are part of a government strategy to Arabise Darfur.
Intensified fighting
Fighting between
the two main Darfur opposition groups the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army
(SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudanese
military and Arabic tribal militias intensified in late 2003.
The Sudanese military
has used aerial bombing to terrorise civilians whom the government alleges
are harbouring SLM/A or JEM guerrillas. At the same time, black villagers
have reported recurrent and systematic attacks, burning of buildings
and crops, arbitrary killings, gang rape and looting by the janjaweed.
The SLM/A and the
JEM claim to be seeking greater political autonomy for Darfur and a
more equitable share of resources from the central Sudanese authorities.
Khartoum, however, claims the Darfur rebels are only bandits and
armed gangs.
In April 2004, government
mediators from neighbouring Chad persuaded Khartoum and representatives
of the SLM/A and JEM to agree to a truce to allow humanitarian assistance
to reach several hundred thousand people driven from their homes by
the fighting. However, attacks by the janjaweed have blocked delivery
of such aid.
In response to the
threats of foreign intervention made by London and Canberra, on July
27 Ibrahim Mahmud Hamid, Sudan's humanitarian affairs minister, invited
Western states to send more aid rather than troops, which he said would
make the situation worse.
On July 29, US Secretary
of State Colin Powell sought to mobilise more support for Washington's
sanctions-threatening resolution by appearing conciliatory toward Khartoum.
Powell publicly distanced Washington from the aggressive posture taken
by its British bulldog and its Australian terrier, declaring that talk
of military action was premature.
We should
not underestimate what a difficult choice that would be in a sovereign
country where there is no UN resolution for any such action and where
the government, I believe, still has the ability to take action to bring
this violence under control, Powell added.
On July 31, the
Security Council passed by 13-0, with China and Pakistan abstaining,
a version of the US-drafted resolution that warned Sudan it would face
unspecified measures if it did not act to fulfill its promise to disarm
the janjaweed.