Geopolitical
Concerns Behind
United Nations Intervention In Darfur
By Chris Talbot
07 August, 2007
WSWS.org
The
United Nations Security Council has unanimously agreed on a resolution
to send a joint UN-African Union (AU) force to the Darfur region of
Sudan. Proposed as the world’s largest peacekeeping force, there
will be 20,000 troops that will incorporate the present 7,000 AU force
already in Darfur plus 6,000 police. It will be deployed under Chapter
7 of the UN’s Charter empowering it to use military force to protect
civilians and aid workers. The first troops are due to be sent in October,
but full deployment will probably take much longer.
Most of the efforts in pushing
through the resolution appear to have come from French President Nicolas
Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who have both used
the Darfur issue since taking office to boost their humanitarian credentials.
It has also enabled them to assure President George Bush of their support.
Speaking at the UN after the resolution was passed, Brown personally
thanked Bush “for his leadership on Darfur.”
There is certainly a worsening
humanitarian disaster in Darfur—a recent UN report stated that
more than half a million people out of a total of 4.2 million affected
were cut off from humanitarian aid. But the driving force behind the
proposed intervention is the interest of the United States and the Western
powers in taking more control over this strategic region and its oil
wealth.
It is intended that most
of the troops in the peacekeeping force will be African, but there will
be a single UN chain of command giving Western governments control over
operations. The current AU force has suffered from lack of funding by
the West and has remained small and ineffective because it was not under
their direct control.
France has already volunteered
to send troops. The conflict in Darfur has spread into neighbouring
Chad and the Central African Republic, where France has troops in place
already and is supporting unpopular regimes against rebel forces.
Britain and France, with
the agreement of Washington, dropped a demand for “further measures”
against the Sudanese government and rebel forces for failing to cooperate.
According to diplomats, a more “conciliatory text” was adopted
to make sure that China did not veto the resolution in the Security
Council and that African countries were kept onside. China buys most
of Sudan’s oil exports and supplies it with arms, and has previously
opposed US and British proposals directed at the Sudan regime. China
has now supported the UN intervention, apparently concerned that the
2008 Beijing Olympics would be targeted by protesters.
Pressure from organisations
such as the Save Darfur Coalition—with widespread support in the
US—has played a role in getting China to agree to a peacekeeping
force. They involve thousands of young people genuinely moved by the
plight of the suffering refugees in Darfur. However, the simplistic
view put forward by the campaign’s organisers that the problem
is merely one of the Khartoum regime backing Arab Janjaweed militias
against the rest of the population has served to distract attention
from the fundamental issue and has been used to legitimise a military
intervention by the major powers.
Darfur is just one tragic
outcome of the imperialist domination of the African continent. It is
also naïve in the extreme to imagine that the Bush administration,
responsible for war crimes in Iraq, could be persuaded to carry out
humanitarian measures in Sudan.
The Sudanese regime—and
countless other oppressive regimes in developing countries that are
not at present singled out for US disapproval—thrives under an
imperialist system that has seen billions of dollars in debt relief
exported to Western banks under International Monetary Fund auspices
and huge profits made from mineral extraction by multinational corporations,
but with the vast majority of the population forced to live in abject
poverty. Whatever anti-Western rhetoric is used for popular consumption,
a vital role is played by such brutal governments as that in Khartoum
in maintaining the status quo.
Whilst the Bush administration
has applied sanctions to the Sudanese regime and publicised the use
of the term “genocide” in relation to Darfur, it has combined
this pressure with tacit support for the regime, using its intelligence
service for a source of information and even covert operations.
Unlike the previous Clinton
administration, which gave Sudan a pariah status, Bush negotiated a
peace between the Khartoum regime and the Southern rebels, the Sudan
People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), in 2005, the so-called Comprehensive
Peace Agreement (CPA), bringing the longest civil war in Africa to an
end. There are currently some 10,000 UN peacekeepers deployed in maintaining
this agreement. Chief among the considerations in Washington was that
in a power-sharing arrangement the SPLM would be able to take some of
Sudan’s oil wealth and open up possibilities for Western companies
as opposed to China.
Given these considerations,
the US did not want a UN intervention in Darfur—in fact, Darfur
was deliberately kept off the agenda in the CPA negotiations and the
Sudanese regime was allowed to pursue its long-standing policy of using
local militias to kill and drive out villagers. This did not stop the
US moving pious resolutions at the UN on Darfur, knowing that they would
be vetoed by China and Russia.
It may be that there has
now been a shift in policy, and the balance has shifted towards those
sections of the US ruling elite, especially in the Democratic Party,
who are demanding a military intervention. Apart from conflicts within
the US administration, there are a number of possible reasons for this
that relate to Sudan.
Firstly, the conflict in
Darfur itself has become increasing complex and violent. The UN peacekeeping
intervention has been heralded without any peace agreement in place.
In May of last year, under the auspices of the United States and Britain,
an agreement was reached between the Sudanese government and one of
the Darfur rebel movements, but the two other movements rejected it,
leading to its collapse.
Instead of the conflict taking
place between these rebels and the government-backed Arab Janjaweed
militia, much of the fighting this year has been between rival Arab
groups. There are now more than 12 different rebel groups, some of them
with links to the Chad government, which is increasingly involved in
the conflict. These groups have now been invited to talks in Arusha,
Tanzania.
One prominent rebel leader,
Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur of the Sudan Liberation Movement, has refused
to attend. Another leader, Suleiman Jamous, is prevented from leaving
Khartoum by the government. It seems unlikely that any meaningful peace
agreement can be reached in the immediate future.
Secondly, the north-south
CPA deal is unravelling and it is possible that conflict between Khartoum
and the SPLM could recommence. The Sudanese government was supposed
to pull its troops out of southern areas in July. According to the International
Crisis Group’s latest report, this failed to happen in the oil-producing
regions. The ICG also notes that the payments from Khartoum to the regional
government in the south, supposedly its share of the oil wealth, are
steadily decreasing.
Thirdly, the Sudan regime
itself is increasingly unstable. With huge disparities of wealth between
government circles that benefit from the oil wealth and the rest of
the population, it is increasingly losing any base of support. As well
as Darfur, there are less-publicised conflicts or potential conflicts
in several other parts of the country, the far North, Eastern Sudan
and the Kordofan region.
Whatever the machinations
within American ruling circles, the chief concern of the US and Western
governments is how to halt the growing Chinese involvement in Sudan
as well as much of Africa. Unlike the International Monetary Fund—backed
by the United States—China has not placed demands on African governments
that they accede to free market policies of “good governance”
before being granted loans or access to finance. It has also invested
in a range of infrastructure projects and assiduously courted African
leaders, avoiding the routine and hypocritical references to human rights
issues made by the West.
As one recent book put it:
“For western politicians and policymakers, China’s growing
profile in the African oil business is more than just a commercial threat
to western businesses. In particular, Beijing’s growing reliance
on African oil has put it on a collision course with US political priorities
for the continent. A growing chorus of voices in Washington—from
congressmen to newspaper commentators—has been complaining about
China’s willingness to do business in countries the United States
is trying to pressure or isolate.” *
The Sudanese government has
granted oil concessions throughout Darfur and other parts of the country,
eager to extend beyond its present oilfields where the output is now
peaking. To put such potential oil wealth under UN supervision and open
to exploitation by Western governments rather than China is a key consideration
behind the proposed peacekeeping intervention.
* Untapped: The Scramble
for Africa’s Oil by John Ghazvinian, Harcourt, 2007.
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