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August 9, 2004
Gary Leupp
Why
Iraqi Christians are Moving to Syria
August 7 /
8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
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All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
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Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
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Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
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Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
Sex,
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Serpents in the Garden
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David
Cobb's Soft Charade: the Greens and the Politics of Mendacity
Derek Seidman
An
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Mike Whitney
The
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William S. Lind
Corruption in the Marine Corps
David Price
In
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Mike Ferner
The Kerry Show: When Peace is Off
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Bruce Anderson
Two
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The Tale of Saddam's Cameraman
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August
9, 2004
Crisis
in Sudan
Oil
Profits Behind West's Tears for Darfur
By
NORM DIXON
For at least 18 months now, Western
governments have quietly stood by as the non-Arabic-speaking
black farmers of the Darfur region in western Sudan have borne
the brunt of a vicious ethnic-cleansing campaign carried out
by state-sponsored bandits known as the janjaweed.
Refugees report that attacks
on farming villages are often preceded by raids by Sudanese air
force fighter-bombers and attack helicopters. The janjaweed,
recruited from Arabic-speaking pastoralist tribes, then routinely
murder any male villagers they can get their hands on, systematically
rape or kidnap the women, and plunder and destroy the villages
and crops. The attacks and their consequences have resulted in
the deaths of up to 50,000 people and the displacement of 1.5
million; aid agencies warn that hundreds of thousands may die
from disease or starvation in the coming months.
Why then have the governments
of the United States and the European Union (EU) only now begun
to express concern over the fate of the people of western Sudan
and demand that the Islamist military regime in Khartoum bring
the janjaweed under control? The answer - as it most often is
when rich countries threaten to intervene in the Middle East
and Africa - is access to invest in and extract profits from
Sudan's burgeoning oil export industry. Pressure on Khartoum
Beginning in earnest in July,
Washington, backed by the EU, began to ratchet up the pressure
on Khartoum to rein in the janjaweed. On July 1, US Secretary
of State Colin Powell visited Khartoum, where he sternly warned
Sudan's government: "Unless we see more moves soon ... it
may be necessary for the international community to begin considering
other actions, to include Security Council action."
Three days later, with Powell's
threats still ringing in their ears, Sudan's rulers issued a
joint communique with UN secretary-general Kofi Annan in which
they promised to "immediately start disarming the janjaweed
and other armed outlaw groups", "allow the deployment
of human rights monitors" and "ensure that all individuals
and groups accused of human rights violations are brought to
justice without delay".
The Sudanese government committed
itself to "ensure that no militia are present in areas surrounding
internally displaced persons camps" and pledged to "deploy
a strong, credible and respected police force in all areas where
there are displaced people, as well as areas susceptible to attacks".
It was also agreed that an African Union military force of 300
troops would be allowed into Darfur to protect AU officials there
to monitor a cease-fire negotiated in April between Khartoum
and the main rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army
(SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).
In mid-July, Powell circulated
a draft UN Security Council resolution that threatened Khartoum
with unspecified "sanctions" unless it implemented
the July 3 UN-Sudan communique.
Despite the fact that the draft
UN resolution did not authorise the use of military force and
there were no public plans for a UN intervention force in Darfur,
the British and Australian governments added to Washington's
pressure on Khartoum by letting it be known that they were prepared
to send troops to the region if called upon. Britain's top commander,
General Mike Jackson, said on July 26 that he could send 5000
troops to Sudan if needed, while on July 25 Australian foreign
minister Alexander Downer, claiming to have received a "request
from the United Nations", declared that "there's a
good chance that [Australia] will send some troops to Sudan".
On July 22, the US Congress
unanimously called on President George Bush to consider "multilateral
or even unilateral intervention to prevent genocide should the
United Nations Security Council fail to act".
Agreement on a Security Council
resolution remained stalled until late on July 29 when Washington
finally dropped specific mention of the imposition of "sanctions"
from the fourth draft. Eight of the UN Security Council's 15
members - including veto-wielding China and Russia - had opposed
the specific threat of sanctions.
In its final form, the resolution
warned that unless Khartoum made progress in implementing the
July 3 communique within 30 days of the resolution's adoption,
the Security Council would "consider further actions, including
measures as provided for in Article 41 [of the UN Charter]".
Article 41 excludes military action but allows economic and diplomatic
sanctions. The resolution was passed on July 31, by a margin
of 13-0, with China and Pakistan abstaining. Oil
Some left-wing commentators
have interpreted the motive behind Washington's newfound concern
for Darfur - as well as the British and Australian governments'
volunteering of troops for a phantom UN intervention force -
as an effort by Washington to justify an Iraq-style invasion
of Sudan to achieve "regime change" and seize control
of its potentially massive oil reserves.
While US and European governments'
goal is renewed access by their countries oil corporations to
Sudan's oil wealth, Washington's latest threats against Sudan
are part of a "carrot and stick" approach that it has
pursued with Khartoum since the 9/11 attacks. Knowing that Sudan
is desperate to "normalise" relations with the US,
Washington is attempting to lure Khartoum back into the neocolonial
fold using the "carrot" of promises to lift US economic
sanctions imposed in 1997 and the "stick" of the threat
of further sanctions. Such an approach was successful with neighbouring
Libya.
Washington too is eager to
lift its economic sanctions. Since 1997, US oil companies have
been excluded from profiting from the massive expansion of Sudan's
oil industry since 1999, which has been dominated by Chinese,
Malaysian, Indian, Canadian and some European companies. Fighting
in the 21-year-long civil war in Sudan's oil-rich south, as well
as pressure from human rights activists, has forced Canadian
and most European firms to sell off or suspend their operations
in southern Sudan over the last two years.
Upon coming to office in 2001,
one of the Bush administration's earliest foreign policy objectives
was to secure a peace agreement between the southern-based Sudan
People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and Khartoum, allowing Washington
to lift sanctions. Bush appointed former US senator John Danforth,
now Washington's UN ambassador, as his "special envoy for
peace in Sudan".
In July 2002, Danforth, who
led an international "Trioka" made up of US, British
and Norwegian officials, succeeded with bribes and threats in
convincing the SPLM and Khartoum to sign a draft peace agreement
that promised a referendum six years or so after a final peace
agreement is signed and an autonomous secular government in the
south (while Islamic law would continue to govern the northern
two-thirds of the country). An informal cease-fire agreement
was reached in October 2002.
In May this year, Khartoum
and the SPLM agreed that government revenue from the export of
oil from the southern oil fields would be split between the SPLM-dominated
southern regional government and the central government in Khartoum.
All that remained was for further talks, which were scheduled
to begin on June 22, to finalise procedures for an internationally
monitored cease-fire agreement and a timeline for implementing
the peace deal.
Since February 2003, when the
Darfur rebellion erupted, Washington and the EU all but ignored
the atrocities taking place in Darfur in the hope that they would
not impact on the main game. Only when the escalating crisis
in Darfur threatened to derail the north-south peace deal and
prevent the opening up of Sudan's lucrative oilfields to Western
exploitation did the US start waving the threat of UN sanctions
against Sudan.
According to the July 23 issue
of Middle East International, SPLM leader John Garang "recently
warned there would be no deal that ignored Darfur... Far from
completing arrangements for a formal cease-fire by the middle
of July as planned, substantive talks have yet to commence."
Washington's underlying policy
approach was summarised in an article in the June 10 International
Herald Tribune co-written by Chester Crocker, a former assistant
US secretary of state for African affairs in the Reagan administration:
"Implementing Sudan's complex, six-year transition agreement
will be far more difficult than negotiating it... The agreement
will fly apart without sustained international attention... Peace
will only have a chance in Sudan if there is active US leadership.
The United States has the needed leverage, including through
the potential to lift sanctions and normalise diplomatic relations.
It can also provide serious resources and play a key role on
the UN Security Council."
In this framework, Crocker
recommended that the US "address the immediate crisis in
Darfur, while aggressively nailing down the broader north-south
peace agreement". `African solution'
Apart from a few face-saving
outbursts from Sudanese government ministers and army leaders
soon after the Security Council resolution was passed, the Sudanese
regime seems to have fallen into line. On August 5, Reuters reported
that Jan Pronk, Annan's special representative in Sudan, was
already telling reporters that "the government has to be
commended for keeping its promise [on action in Darfur]. We have
full access [for relief supplies]... They have deployed many
more police in the region and they have stopped their own military
activities against villages."
That same day, Brigadier Jamal
al Huweris, police commissioner in northern Darfur, told the
Sudanese Media Centre, a pro-government newsagency, that the
janjaweed would soon be disarmed.
Meanwhile, the African Union
announced on August 4 it will send up to 2000 troops, drawn from
Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania, to Darfur with an expanded mandate
to protect refugees, "disarm and neutralise" the janjaweed
and allow the deliveries of aid supplies.
Sudanese foreign minister Mustafa
Osman Ismail told Reuters on August 5 that Sudan would cooperate
with the AU force. The rebel SLM/A and JEM, as well as the opposition
National Democratic Alliance, have also endorsed the "African
solution" of an AU peacekeeping force in Darfur.
Norm Dixon writes for Australia's Green
Left Weekly, where this essay originally appeared.
Weekend
Edition Features for July 31 / August 1, 2004
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Poets Basement
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