No to British, US or Other Big Power Military Intervention in Sudan!

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The Crisis in Sudan:
No to British, US or Other Big Power Military Intervention in Sudan!

UN Press Briefing on Sudan

Oil Will Be the Driving Factor for Military Intervention in Sudan

Big-Power Contention in Sudan

According to news agency reports, tens of thousands of people have recently taken part in demonstrations in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, protesting against any foreign military intervention in Darfur or any other part of Sudan. The protests follow threats of military intervention by Britain and the US jointly or under the auspices of the UN, allegedly to solve the crisis in Darfur.

            On July 30, a UN Security Council resolution, sponsored by the US, threatened Sudan’s government with unspecified sanctions if it did not do more to end the “ongoing humanitarian crisis and widespread human rights violations” in Darfur. However, the final wording of the resolution has been seen as something of a defeat for the US government, which wished to make the threats to Sudan’s government more explicit. The UN resolution also gave support to the continuing efforts of the African Union (AU) to find an “African solution” to the crisis. Last weekend the chairman of the AU, Nigeria’s president Obasanjo, travelled to Khartoum where he was assured by the government of Sudan that measures were being taken to alleviate the problems faced by the people of Darfur. For his part, Obasanjo promised the help and support of African countries in order to end the crisis. He also stressed the need for an African-led resolution of the crisis, including the deployment of an African peacekeeping force.

            The crisis in Darfur, which has produced hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and thousands of deaths, is itself largely the consequence of the civil war that erupted over a year ago in the region, and which was temporarily brought to a halt by a ceasefire agreed last April. Sudan’s other major civil war, the longest in Africa, which lasted for over twenty years in the south of the country, has also recently been halted by a ceasefire and peace negotiations.

            These conflicts are a consequence of the legacy left by British colonial rule in Sudan, a fact that is hardly ever mentioned in media reports. Darfur itself was an independent state for over 300 years before finally being incorporated into colonial Sudan in 1916. During the 1920s the British colonial government suppressed the liberation struggles in Darfur, and other parts of Sudan, by exactly the same methods as it is claimed are now being used by the militias and the government in Khartoum in the same region. The continuing instability is also a consequence of continuing foreign interference by the US and the other big powers in Sudan’s internal affairs.

            The crisis in Darfur has been accompanied by a whole campaign of disinformation, much of it centred on the notion of a conflict between Africans and “Arabs” in Sudan. It fact all of the population of Sudan can be considered African and as the Sudan Liberation Movement, one of the groups fighting against Sudan’s government in Darfur expresses it, the source of Darfur’s “stability, prosperity and strength” has always been based on “the peaceful coexistence” established “between the sedentary populations and the nomadic ones and between emigrants from its eastern and western neighbours and indigenous groups”.

            In the propaganda of the British and US governments much is made of the role of the government of the Sudan and the militia, the Janjaweed, in the current crisis, to the extent that the monopoly-controlled media portray this propaganda as objective fact. There has been talk of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”, which has led many commentators, in the Middle East in particular, to wonder why similar concern is not expressed regarding the illegal actions of the Israeli Zionists, who for decades have savagely oppressed the Palestinian people with the aid and support of the US government, their staunchest ally, as well as Britain and the other big powers.

            The apparent zeal of the US government for intervention in Sudan cannot be divorced from the existing political relationship between the two countries. It must be remembered that the US has imposed sanctions on Sudan since 1997, and in 1998 bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum in retaliation for attacks on US embassies elsewhere in Africa. The US has continued to put pressure on the government in Khartoum as part of its “war against terrorism”, and has also provided funding for organisations opposed to Sudan’s government.

            Sudan, the largest country in Africa by landmass, is also of major strategic and economic importance. It has an expanding oil industry and oil is one of Darfur’s major resources, something that is apparently overlooked in most reports, even though the struggle for control of oil has played a major part in the recent conflicts in Sudan. US sanctions have prevented its oil monopolies and those of other western governments from competing to control Sudan’s expanding oil industry, which is being developed largely with capital from countries in Asia, with China now the biggest foreign investor. The contention over Sudan’s oil as well as other mineral resources is another major factor underlying the “humanitarian concern” of the big powers.

            The US, Britain and the other big powers speak much of their “humanitarian” concern over the present crisis in Sudan, but the fact remains that those who create the world’s problems cannot solve them. The contention between the big powers for spheres of influence and control of resources as well as the colonial legacy which they have left in Africa has created all the conditions for the present crisis in Darfur.

            The working class and people must reject the disinformation by US imperialism, the British government and others that the situation in Darfur demands military intervention. On the contrary, the peoples of Sudan and of the African continent will strengthen their unity and their national projects if free of the ill-intentioned and self-serving interference and intervention of the big powers and their global system of neo-liberal exploitation, annexation and domination. In addition, humanitarian relief and reparations must be provided where that is the demand of the Sudanese government and people.

04/08/2004

Reports from the Sudan that many internally displaced persons had returned to their villages in Darfur because security had improved were contradicted by statements received from humanitarian workers and internally displaced persons, Francis Deng, the Secretary-General’s Representative on Internally Displaced Persons, said today as he briefed correspondents on his visit to the country.

                He said that, while internally displaced persons (IDPs) generally felt safe in their camps, they were afraid to venture outside.  The humanitarian situation in the camps had much improved, although it was feared that access to the camps was still impeded by the general security situation.

                During his visit, Mr. Deng had stressed his dual identity as the Secretary-General’s representative and a Sudanese.  He said that he had had “candid and intimate” discussions with Sudanese at all levels enabling him to explore the truth.  He had been accompanied by the Commissioner-General of the Sudanese Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC), but his initial concern that the Commissioner-General’s presence would be intimidating had not been borne out.  On the contrary, the Commissioner-General had had a chance “to learn something from the field”.

                In dealing with the Janjaweed, the Government faced the dilemma of branding as criminals those who had been supported by the Government in fighting the rebels.  However, he had found the Government to be quite receptive in cooperating with the international community under the umbrella of the African Union.  It was happy to have the African Union monitors and the force to protect the aid workers, and might even be receptive to have their mandate extended to protection of the civilian population.  That cooperation could give the Government cover to deal with the Janjaweed.  However, the Government also feared that dealing with the Janjaweed might create a power imbalance with regard to the rebels.  Serious negotiations with the rebels were needed to establish a sustainable ceasefire.

                Although the problems in Darfur preoccupied the international community, they should be seen in the broader context of the situation in the Sudan, Mr. Deng said.  The experiences in the south had to be taken into account, including the positive fact that a settlement had been brokered with the strong support of the international community, in particular the “troika” of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway.

                He said that the crises going on in the Sudan were symptoms of a country in search of itself.  Simplistically, the problems had been described as a conflict between the Christian and animist south, and the Arab, Muslim north.  Now, elements in the north, specifically non-Arab Muslims, were identifying themselves differently and rebelling to marginalisation, similar to what had been going on in the south.  The choice for the Sudanese was either to resist that, which was non-sustainable, or to work with it constructively to help the nation “redefine a framework where every Sudanese, irrespective of race, ethnicity or culture, can feel a belonging and enjoy the unity in pluralism”, he said.  “These crises, painful as they are, are indicative of a process of nation-building that promises to foster the unity of the country.”

                International pressure had prompted a positive response in the Government to work more closely with the international community in a more transparent way, he said, in answer to a correspondent’s question.  Progress had been made in the south.  The agreement reached there foresaw the possibility of extending some of its principles to Darfur.  One had to look at the problem holistically.

                Referring to a statement by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Sudan that any foreign forces coming into the country would be attacked, a correspondent asked if the Minister was a “loose canon”, or spoke for the Government.  In answer, Mr. Deng said that the Sudanese made a distinction between the forces under the African Union umbrella and international use of force, such as could be brought under the United Nations Charter.  The latter situation would be resisted and might attract foreign Islamist, extremist elements.  The situation had to be handled carefully and constructively, in order to avoid complicating the situation in the country as a whole.

                The Government of the Sudan welcomed the involvement of the African Union, he said.  If an international process would include an element of police training, the credibility of the national police would increase.  The mere presence of the forces would increase protection.  The fact that the African Union had stated that Darfur was an African problem to be solved by Africa had given the Government of the Sudan a cover, making the African Union more appealing to them, compared to the alternatives.  As a result, there was a good prospect for close cooperation with the Government.  The international community could do a lot to strengthen the African Union’s mandate, without being seen as intervening directly in a military sense.  The presence must be a “symbol of cooperation rather than intrusion”.

                A correspondent asked if the situation in Iraq had made it more difficult for the international community to intervene in the Sudan.  Mr. Deng said involvement in Darfur should reinforce other efforts that were going on in the country as a whole.  The United States had played a leading role in fostering peace in the south.  It would be difficult to see how countries that were working for peace in one part of the country could be confrontational in another part and expect to continue to play a constructive role in the peace process.  If Darfur was seen as an isolated case, the picture could be complicated and do harm in the country in the long run.

                Asked if a “humanitarian catastrophe” had been avoided, he said it was difficult for him to comment on the humanitarian situation in areas he had not visited, but that complaints by internally displaced people and international aid workers indicated that the crisis was still quite severe.  The camps were congested and people used plastic sheets as shelter.  Those were not conditions under which one would voluntarily live.

By John Laughland*, Monday August 2, 2004, The Guardian

If proof were needed that Tony Blair is off the hook over Iraq, it came not during the Commons debate on the Butler report on July 21, but rather at his monthly press conference the following morning. Asked about the crisis in Sudan, Mr Blair replied: "I believe we have a moral responsibility to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that we can." This last phrase means that troops might be sent – as General Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the general staff, immediately confirmed – and yet the reaction from the usual anti-war campaigners was silence.

            Mr Blair has invoked moral necessity for every one of the five wars he has fought in this, surely one of the most bellicose premierships in history. The bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998, the 74-day bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999, the intervention in Sierra Leone in the spring of 2000, the attack on Afghanistan in October 2001, and the Iraq war last March were all justified with the bright certainties which shone from the prime minister's eyes. Blair even defended Bill Clinton's attack on the al-Shifa pharmaceuticals factory in Sudan in August 1998, on the entirely bogus grounds that it was really manufacturing anthrax instead of aspirin.

            Although in each case the pretext for war has been proved false or the war aims have been unfulfilled, a stubborn belief persists in the morality and the effectiveness of attacking other countries. The Milosevic trial has shown that genocide never occurred in Kosovo – although Blair told us that the events there were worse than anything that had happened since the second world war, even the political activists who staff the prosecutor's office at the international criminal tribunal in The Hague never included genocide in their Kosovo indictment. And two years of prosecution have failed to produce one single witness to testify that the former Yugoslav president ordered any attacks on Albanian civilians in the province. Indeed, army documents produced from Belgrade show the contrary.

            Like the Kosovo genocide, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as we now know, existed only in the fevered imaginings of spooks and politicians in London and Washington. But Downing Street was also recently forced to admit that even Blair's claims about mass graves in Iraq were false. The prime minister has repeatedly said that 300,000 or 400,000 bodies have been found there, but the truth is that almost no bodies have been exhumed in Iraq, and consequently the total number of such bodies, still less the cause of their deaths, is simply unknown.

            In 2001, we attacked Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden and to prevent the Taleban from allegedly flooding the world with heroin. Yet Bin Laden remains free, while the heroin ban imposed by the Taleban has been replaced by its very opposite, a surge in opium production, fostered by the warlords who rule the country. As for Sierra Leone, the United Nations human development report for 2004, published on July 15, which measures overall living standards around the world, puts that beneficiary of western intervention in 177th place out of 177, an august position it has continued to occupy ever since our boys went in: Sierra Leone is literally the most miserable place on earth. So much for Blair's promise of a "new era for Africa".

            The absence of anti-war scepticism about the prospect of sending troops into Sudan is especially odd in view of the fact that Darfur has oil. For two years, campaigners have chanted that there should be "no blood for oil" in Iraq, yet they seem not to have noticed that there are huge untapped reserves in both southern Sudan and southern Darfur. As oil pipelines continue to be blown up in Iraq, the west not only has a clear motive for establishing control over alternative sources of energy, it has also officially adopted the policy that our armies should be used to do precisely this. Oddly enough, the oil concession in southern Darfur is currently in the hands of the China National Petroleum Company. China is Sudan's biggest foreign investor.

            We ought, therefore, to treat with scepticism the US Congress declaration of genocide in the region. No one, not even the government of Sudan, questions that there is a civil war in Darfur, or that it has caused an immense number of refugees. Even the government admits that nearly a million people have left for camps outside Darfur's main towns to escape marauding paramilitary groups. The country is awash with guns, thanks to the various wars going on in Sudan's neighbouring countries. Tensions have risen between nomads and herders, as the former are forced south in search of new pastures by the expansion of the Sahara desert. Paramilitary groups have practised widespread highway robbery, and each tribe has its own private army. That is why the government of Sudan imposed a state of emergency in 1999.

            But our media have taken this complex picture and projected on to it a simple morality tale of ethnic cleansing and genocide. They gloss over the fact that the Janjaweed militia come from the same ethnic group and religion as the people they are allegedly persecuting – everyone in Darfur is black, African, Arabic-speaking and Muslim. Campaigners for intervention have accused the Sudanese government of supporting this group, without mentioning that the Sudanese defence minister condemned the Janjaweed as "bandits" in a speech to the country's parliament in March. On July 19, moreover, a court in Khartoum sentenced six Janjaweed soldiers to horrible punishments, including the amputation of their hands and legs. And why do we never hear about the rebel groups which the Janjaweed are fighting, or about any atrocities that they may have committed?

            It is far from clear that the sudden media attention devoted to Sudan has been provoked by any real escalation of the crisis – a peace agreement was signed with the rebels in April, and it is holding. The pictures on our TV screens could have been shown last year. And we should treat with scepticism the claims made for the numbers of deaths – 30,000 or 50,000 are the figures being bandied about – when we know that similar statistics proved very wrong in Kosovo and Iraq. The Sudanese government says that the death toll in Darfur, since the beginning of the conflict in 2003, is not greater than 1,200 on all sides. And why is such attention devoted to Sudan when, in neighbouring Congo, the death rate from the war there is estimated to be some 2 or 3 million, a tragedy equalled only by the silence with which it is treated in our media?

            We are shown starving babies now, but no TV station will show the limbless or the dead that we cause if we attack Sudan. Humanitarian aid should be what the Red Cross always said it must be – politically neutral. Anything else is just an old-fashioned colonial war – the reality of killing, and the escalation of violence, disguised with the hypocritical mask of altruism. If Iraq has not taught us that, then we are incapable of ever learning anything.

*· John Laughland is an associate of Sanders Research Associates

Published July 27, 2004, by the website German Foreign Policy: http://www.german-foreign-policy.com//en/news/article/1090879200.php

The foreign ministers of the European Union demand, under threat of sanctions in case of refusal, that Sudan disarm Arab militias. With that the EU follows the demands by the German government, which seeks to increase German influence in Sudan with its Darfur policy. In the meantime, the designated autonomous South Sudanese government which is backed by Berlin's anti-Khartoum policy, has awarded the contract for a railroad line worth billions to the German company (Thormaehlen Schweisstechnik – Welding Engineering). A representative of the company confirmed to the editors that the project, carried out by the Germans, serves the development of huge, newly discovered natural resources in the South of Sudan, and is considered a nucleus of a future East African free trade zone. This will cause conflict with the oil interests of the Chinese People's Republic.

Taking the Initiative

Berlin succeeded with its efforts in the Darfur crisis to expand German influence in Sudan vis-à-vis the Anglo-American powers. The peace negotiations between the central government in Khartoum and the Southern Sudanese rebel organisation SPLM/A (Sudanese People's Liberation Movement/Army), which have been taking place since June 2002 in Kenya, had initially been influenced by the United States and the former colonial power Great Britain. The German government demands decisive action against Khartoum and has dominated the direction of the international debate in the Darfur crisis for months. Critics noted that Kerstin Mueller, of the Foreign Office, openly considered action by German military forces in Sudan in late December of 2003. Shortly afterwards, at the beginning of 2004, Thormaehlen Schweisstechnik began to negotiate the construction of the railroad line between the Southern Sudanese city of Juba and the Kenyan port city Mombassa.

Against China

With the award of the rail road project, the German company prevailed over a Chinese one which also had applied for the construction of this transportation link.¹⁾ The People's Republic of China has, for quite some time, sought to secure its growing need for energy with independent development of natural oil resources. Presently, Chinese companies are participating in the exploration of Sudanese oil fields and had taken part in the construction of a pipeline to the northern Sudanese Port Sudan, which is now being threatened with a bypass. The German foreign minister negotiated intensively with the Chinese government about the Darfur crisis during his recent visit to the Chinese capital. However, Beijing still refuses to agree to sanctions against Khartoum in the UN Security Council.

Connection

During a conversation with this editor [German Foreign Policy], the representative of Thormaehlen explained that in the region of the South Sudanese civil war immense oil resources were discovered during the past five years along with extensive minerals (gold, diamonds) which, because of the fighting, could not be developed. According to most recent estimates it could be the second largest deposit in the world. “For two and one half years" a transport connection from Sudan's South to Kenya for the removal of raw materials, in order to avoid crossing “Arab-Islamic territory" in the north of Sudan is under discussion. The representative of the company confirms that the recently awarded railroad line Juba-Mombassa shall establish the “connection with the western oriented world". The German company states that in addition “there will surely be the continuation of a pipeline into the South".

Becoming Indispensable

In the meantime the plans for the railroad advance. The project is not only to open up oil fields but also to connect Southern Sudan with Kenya and Uganda, thus serving the creation of a western oriented economic region in East Africa. Thormaehlen Schweisstechnik explains to this editor that the plans – which began originally with 2,500 kilometres of tracks – now include 4,100 kilometres and “that this is only the beginning." Numerous additional projects (shipping on the Nile, telecommunication, etc.) are planned. “Most of those assume that North and South Sudan will separate" according to the company which is in direct negotiations with the Kenyan government and the leadership of SPLM/A. Thus, South Sudan, Kenya and Uganda plan a “free trade zone based on the European model". The German company plays a central role in this case: “Nothing can be accomplished without the railroad" according to Thormaehlen. The Kenyan press writes that this project lends itself “to changing the political and geographical landscape of the continent".

1) German Consortium to Build Sh230b Railway; The East African Standard, 19.07.2004