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In oil-rich Sudan, U.S. intervention is the worst option
By
John Parker
Published Jul 1, 2007 11:28 PM
In spite of the current and historic role that imperialist forces have played
in Sudan, the U.S. and European media almost exclusively blame the violence in
the region on the government in Khartoum. This ignores the most important fact
in its history: it was colonialism and imperialism that created the root cause
of the economic crisis facing Sudan today.
The struggle in Sudan is, in fact, a struggle for basic necessities. They have
been denied not by the Sudanese people, but by years of competing British,
French and U.S. efforts to increase their exploitation of the region.
Instead of trying to solve this crisis, in 1998 President Bill Clinton sent 19
cruise missiles slamming into Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world,
and destroyed its sole pharmaceutical plant—that provided over 50 percent
of the medicine there.
Ever since Sudan opposed the first U.S.-led war against Iraq in 1991, U.S.
policy—from both Democratic and Republican presidents—has been
aimed at destabilizing the Sudanese government. In fact, Washington helped
finance a secessionist civil war against the Khartoum government and imposed
economic sanctions on the country.
The missile attack came soon after Sudan took steps to access a
300-million-barrel reservoir of crude oil in the country’s South. There
is a clear relationship between U.S. oil policy and U.S. government hostility
toward Sudan. Likewise, there is clear evidence of indirect U.S. arming and
funding of the rebel forces in Darfur that initiated the violence back in
2003.
Darfur is known to have major yet untapped oil reserves, representing a vast
amount of potential wealth. It is believed to have oil reserves rivaling those
of Saudi Arabia. It has large deposits of natural gas. In addition, it has one
of the three largest deposits of high-purity uranium in the world, along with
the fourth-largest deposits of copper. Unlike Saudi Arabia, however, the
Sudanese government has retained its independence of Washington.
Unable to control Sudan’s oil policy, the U.S. imperialist government has
made every effort to stop its development of this valuable resource. However,
China has helped Sudan, in spite of U.S. efforts, by providing the technology
for exploration, drilling, pumping and the building of a pipeline. China buys
about two-thirds of Sudan’s oil.
So, as it did in in Somalia, Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq and in the former
Yugoslavia, Washington used its dominance over the United Nations to help
justify the forced entry of troops across Sudan’s borders, with the false
promise of bringing stability and ending bloodshed.
This is what is behind the U.S. calls a month ago for sanctions against Sudan,
just four days after the government of Sudan agreed on May 25 to a joint
African Union and United Nations (AU/UN) “hybrid peacekeeping
force” assigned to Darfur to quell the violence in that region.
In an interview with Gulf News, Sudanese Foreign Minister Dr. Lam Akol Ajawin
said: “The message we took from this act by the U.S. is that no matter
how much the Sudanese government cooperates, the U.S. is going to go ahead with
its plans. The sanctions were strange but it did not surprise us in
Khartoum.”
This is not the first time that Sudan’s willingness to negotiate in order
to calm U.S. aggression failed.
In July of 2004 the Sudanese government accommodated the U.S. by allowing small
teams of U.S. soldiers to pass into the country as part of official visits and
even allowed U.S. Special Forces to do weeklong patrols in its Kurush Mountains
to look for alleged al Qaeda activity.
During this period Sudan was holding intense negotiations with warring parties
in the Darfur region. In spite of these attempts at cooperation and moves
towards negotiating a peace, the U.S. rushed through a resolution, adopted on
July 30, 2004, imposing a timetable for sanctions-like measures against Sudan.
Its U.N. ambassador, Elfatih Erwa, and its ambassador to the African Union,
Osman al-Said, separately said Khartoum would comply. “We are not happy
with the resolution, but we are going to implement it—
we have no other option,” said al-Said.
The situation in Sudan is desperate. The U.N. estimates that 200,000 Sudanese
have died from either drought or war-
related causes. That war was started in 2003 by the Sudan Liberation Movement
(SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) over what they considered
unjust resource distribution to a region where people depending on the land
face scarcity of water, arable land and food.
This problem exists all over the south Sahara region, but it could be fixed
through irrigation and the development of Sudan’s rich resources—a
task easily achievable with just a portion of the resources squandered in Iraq
by the U.S.
How U.S. undercut negotiations
Instead of the U.S. assisting in this way, however, it has been creating
obstacles every time the Sudanese government makes efforts to negotiate with
the various factions of the rebel forces who attacked them.
This is made clear in an eyewitness account of one of these negotiations by
Alex de Waal, who was an adviser to the Organization of African Unity and
participated in talks between rebel forces, the U.S. and the Sudanese
government. He was quoted in AfricaFocus online (www.africafocus.org) on April
30. Although de Waal is not partisan toward the Sudanese government, his
account exposes the U.S. role. He explains:
“Long neglected conflicts first exploded in February 2003, when the newly
formed Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) launched guerrilla raids on government
garrisons, and the government responded with its well-tested counter-insurgency
tool of unleashing militia—in this case the Janjawiid. ... It was three
years before a workable peace agreement was tabled. And it very nearly
succeeded. Everything hinged on a few weeks this May [2006], when the Darfur
Peace Agreement was finalized and signed by the Sudan government and one of the
rebel factions. Had the leader of the main part of the Sudan Liberation
Movement also signed, the current crisis would not have happened.”
In the late afternoon of May 5, 2006, after a final 20-hour negotiating
session, the Sudanese government and the SLM faction led by Minni Arkoy Minawi
signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA).
However, de Waal explains that not all of the SLM representatives signed. The
founder of the SLM, Abdel Wahid, refused. After a British official worked into
the night on the text to meet the objections of Wahid, he still did not sign
and instead asked for more concessions.
De Waal asks: “Would those concessions have been enough? It’s not
clear. In the early hours of 5 May Abdel Wahid told [U.S. deputy secretary of
state] Zoellick and [Nigerian President] Obasanjo: ‘I need a guarantee
for implementation like in Bosnia.’ The personal letter he had just
received from President Bush wasn’t enough: what he wanted was
international military intervention to deliver Darfur from the Khartoum
government. ...”
It seems that Wahid had gotten a certain impression from the U.S. government,
including President Bush, that he was entitled to much more.
Because Wahid did not sign, other SLM commanders also refused and instead
gathered in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, to form the National Redemption
Front (NRF) and continue the war with the Sudanese army.
De Waal continues: “As the Abuja negotiations drew to a close, the
Congress Party [Sudan President Omar al Bashir’s political
party—J.P.] launched an internal discussion on Sudanese-U.S. relations.
The central question they asked was: ‘Given that we have made peace with
the South and given them everything they asked for; given that we are
co-operating in the war on terror; why are the Americans still determined to
punish us?’ ...
“The worst fears of Khartoum’s conspiracy theorists had seemed to
be justified when Zoellick arrived in Abuja and revised the security
arrangements agenda of the DPA text, increasing the number of rebel combatants
to be integrated into the army and security forces to 8,000 (80 percent of
these positions, he indicated, would go to Minawi’s men [of the SLM]). As
Zoellick argued and arm-twisted late into the night on 2 May, agitated Sudanese
generals paced up and down in the hotel car park, calling their superiors in
Khartoum on satellite phones. They buttonholed mediation team members—by
now excluded from the action—to ask: ‘What is America’s real
agenda?’”
U.S. intervention has been bloody and brutal
The history of U.S. involvement in Africa is one of brutal terror and colonial
and neo-colonial plunder, using the most sophisticated weapons of mass
destruction against the poorest of countries—like the bombings of
Somalia, Tanzania and Sudan. It includes the murders and assassinations of
anti-imperialist independence leaders who, given the chance, could have helped
solve the problems Africa faces today.
U.S. involvement in Africa should concern itself solely with the implementation
of reparations to that continent. Any other form of involvement, particularly
military intervention in any form, always means escalating death and chaos
through their “humanitarian” claws. Yes, even more than would have
died if not for its interventions.
Maximizing profits is expensive in terms of lives. In Iraq 1.5 million, close
to half of them children, have died because of U.S. sanctions and military
intervention—so far.
Shame on those who, to this day, still don’t understand this reality and
are facilitating a new and real genocide against the people of Africa. It will
echo the cries of torture and heartache heard today by the current victims of
U.S. imperialism in Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Congo,
Palestine, Lebanon and so many other countries.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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