Darfur Crisis, Causes and Possible Solution

Earlier this month the European Parliament undertook a discussion on the Darfur crisis. Among those invited to participate in the discussions were Desmond Tutu and Jody Williams, both Nobel Peace Prize winners in 1984 and 1997 respectively. Williams had also headed a UN high-level mission to Darfur in February and March, 2007.

Written by

VASEEM KHAN

Published on

June 17, 2022

Earlier this month the European Parliament undertook a discussion on the Darfur crisis. Among those invited to participate in the discussions were Desmond Tutu and Jody Williams, both Nobel Peace Prize winners in 1984 and 1997 respectively. Williams had also headed a UN high-level mission to Darfur in February and March, 2007.
These two very prominent international figures have, since that discussion, co-authored an article on the subject, and which was also published in UAE’s leading daily, the Gulf News. They have written at length about the sufferings of the people of Darfur, on how to protect them, and on ways to bring the government of Sudan to the negotiating table and make it accountable for its actions. They have gone even to the extent of suggesting that Sudan be treated like apartheid South Africa and be isolated politically and economically. They have also advised Governments and corporations investing in business in Sudan to divest their holdings. They have called for the full deployment of UN ‘hybrid force’, and, until that is done, for African Union forces to be fully equipped and clearly mandated to defend the Darfurian civilians. And, without identifying the background, they have asked the international community to put pressure on China to take forceful action to bring Khartoum to its senses or risk tarnishing the upcoming Beijing Olympics.
If we were to look closely, the present concern of the West, including the current Washington administration, over Darfur in southern Sudan is not a genuine concern over genocide against the peoples in that poorest part of Africa. No. “It’s the oil”.
The Washington administration has shown no regard for its own genocide in Iraq when its control over major oil reserves is involved. What’s at stake in the battle for Darfur? Control over oil, lots and lots of oil. The case of Darfur is a major focus, and the central region between Sudan and Chad is priority. Darfur is a major battleground in this high-stakes contest for oil control.

SUDAN OIL RICHES
Sudan’s oil fields are concentrated in the south, site of a long-simmering civil war, partly financed covertly by the United States, to break the south from the Islamic Khartoum-centered north.
In April 2005 Sudan’s government announced it had found oil in South Darfur which is estimated to be able, when developed, to pump 500,000 barrels/day. The world press forgot to report that vital fact in discussing the Darfur conflict.
Genocide has been the preferred theme for Washington. Curiously, while all observers acknowledge that Darfur has seen a large human displacement and human misery and tens of thousands or even as much as 300,000 deaths in the last several years, only Washington and the NGOs close to it use the charged term “genocide” to describe Darfur. If they are able to get a popular acceptance of the charge genocide, it opens the possibility for drastic “regime change” intervention by NATO and de facto by Washington into Sudan’s sovereign affairs. So far the Sudan government has vehemently refused, not surprisingly.
The US government repeatedly uses “genocide” to refer to Darfur. It is the only government to do so. The Bush administration keeps insisting that genocide has been going on in Darfur since 2003, despite the fact that a five-man panel UN mission led by Italian Judge Antonio Cassese reported in 2004 that genocide had not been committed in Darfur, rather that grave human rights abuses were committed.
The United States, acting through allies in Chad and neighbouring states has trained and armed the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army, headed until his death in July 2005, by John Garang, trained at US Special Forces school at Fort Benning, Georgia.
By pouring arms into first southern Sudan in the eastern part and since discovery of oil in Darfur, to that region as well, Washington fuelled the conflict that led to tens of thousands dying and several million driven to flee their homes. Eritrea hosts and supports the SPLA, the umbrella NDA opposition group, and the Eastern Front and Darfur rebels.
There are two rebel groups fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region against the Khartoum central government of President Omar al-Bashir – the Justice for Equality Movement (JEM) and the larger Sudan Liberation Army (SLA).
In February 2003 the SLA launched attacks on Sudan government positions in the Darfur region. SLA Secretary-General Minni Arkou Minnawi called for armed struggle, accusing the government of ignoring Darfur. “The objective of the SLA is to create a united democratic Sudan.” In other words, regime change in Sudan.
The US Senate adopted a resolution in February 2006 that requested North Atlantic Treaty Organisation troops in Darfur, as well as a stronger U.N. peacekeeping force with a robust mandate. A month later, President Bush also called for additional NATO forces in Darfur.
The Pentagon has been busy training African military officers in the US, much as it has for Latin American officers for decades. Its International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme has provided training for military officers from Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, in effect every country on Sudan’s border.
US development aid for all Sub-Sahara Africa including Chad, has been cut sharply in recent years while its military aid has risen. Oil and the scramble for strategic raw materials is the clear reason. The region of southern Sudan from the Upper Nile to the borders of Chad is rich in oil. Washington knew that long before the Sudanese government.

CHEVRON’S 1974 OIL PROJECT
US oil majors have known about Sudan’s oil wealth since the early 1970s. In 1979, Jafaar Nimeiry, Sudan head of State, broke with the Soviets and invited Chevron to develop oil in Sudan. That was perhaps a fatal mistake. UN Ambassador George H.W. Bush had personally told Nimeiry of satellite photos indicating oil in Sudan. Nimeiry took the bait. Wars over oil have been the consequence ever since.
Chevron found big oil reserves in southern Sudan. It spent $1.2 billion finding and testing them. That oil triggered what is called Sudan’s second civil war in 1983. Chevron was target of repeated attacks and killings and suspended the project in 1984. In 1992, it sold its Sudanese oil concessions. Then China began to develop the abandoned Chevron fields in 1999 with notable results. But Chevron is not far from Darfur today.

CHAD OIL AND PIPELINE POLITICS
Chevron is in neighbouring Chad, together with the other US oil giant, ExxonMobil. They’ve built a $3.7 billion oil pipeline carrying 160,000 barrels/day of oil from Doba in central Chad near Darfur Sudan, via Cameroon to Kribi on the Atlantic Ocean, destined for US refineries.
To do it, they worked with Chad “President for life,” Idriss Deby, a corrupt despot who has been accused of feeding US-supplied arms to the Darfur rebels. Deby joined Washington’s Pan Sahel Initiative run by the Pentagon’s US-European Command, to train his troops to fight “Islamic terrorism.”
Supplied with US military aid, training and weapons, in 2004 Deby launched the initial strike that set off the conflict in Darfur, using members of his elite Presidential Guard who originate from the province, providing the men with all terrain vehicles, arms and anti-aircraft guns to Darfur rebels fighting the Khartoum government in the southwest Sudan. The US military support to Deby in fact had been the trigger for the Darfur bloodbath. Khartoum reacted and the ensuing debacle was unleashed in full tragic force.
Washington-backed NGOs and the US Government claim unproven genocide as a pretext to ultimately bring UN/NATO troops into the oilfields of Darfur and south Sudan. Oil, not human misery, is behind Washington’s new interest in Darfur.
The “Darfur genocide” campaign began in 2003, the same time the Chad-Cameroon pipeline oil began to flow. The US now had a base in Chad to go after Darfur oil. Darfur is strategic, straddling Chad, Central African Republic, Egypt and Libya.
US military objectives in Darfur – and the Horn of Africa more widely – are being served at present by the US and NATO backing of the African Union troops in Darfur. There NATO provides ground and air support for AU troops who are categorised as ‘neutral’ and ‘peacekeepers’. Sudan is at war with three countries – Uganda, Chad, and Ethiopia – all with a significant US military presence and ongoing US military programmes. The war in Sudan involves both US covert operations and US trained “rebel” factions coming in from South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia and Uganda.

CHINA’S ENTRY AND A CHANGED SCENARIO
The completion of the US and World Bank-financed oil pipeline from Chad to the Cameroon coast was designed as one part of a far grander Washington scheme to control the oil riches of central Africa from Sudan to the entire Gulf of Guinea.
But Washington’s erstwhile pal, Chad’s President for Life, Idriss Deby, began to get unhappy with his small share of the US-controlled oil profits. When he and the Chad Parliament decided in early 2006 to take more of the oil revenues to finance military operations and beef up its army, new World Bank President, Iraq war architect, Paul Wolfowitz, moved to suspend loans to the country. Then that August, after Deby had won re-election, he created Chad’s own oil company, SHT, and threatened to expel Chevron for not paying taxes owed, and demanding a 60% share of the Chad oil pipeline. In the end he came to terms with the oil companies, but winds of change were blowing.
Deby also faces growing internal opposition from a Chad rebel group, United Front for Change, known under its French name as FUC, which he claims is being covertly funded by Sudan. This region is a very complex part of the world of war. The FUC has based itself in Darfur.
Into this unstable situation, Beijing has shown up in Chad with a full coffer of aid money in hand. In late January, Chinese President Hu Jintao made a state visit to Sudan and to Cameroon among other African states. In 2006, China’s leaders visited no less than 48 African states. In August 2006 Beijing hosted Chad’s Foreign Minister for talks and resumption of formal diplomatic ties cut in 1997. China has begun to import oil from Chad as well as Sudan. Not that much oil, but if Beijing has its way, that will soon change. This April, Chad’s Foreign Minister announced that talks with China over greater China participation in Chad’s oil development were “progressing well.” He referred to the terms the Chinese seek for oil development, calling them, “much more equal partnerships than those we are used to having.”
Already Beijing’s China National Petroleum Company, CNPC, is Sudan’s largest foreign investor, with some $5 billion in oil field development. Since 1999 China has invested at least $15 billion in Sudan. It owns 50% of an oil refinery near Khartoum with the Sudan government.
CNPC built an oil pipeline from its concession blocs 1, 2 and 4 in southern Sudan, to a new terminal at Port Sudan on the Red Sea where oil is loaded on tankers for China. Eight per cent of China’s oil now comes from southern Sudan. China takes up to 65% to 80% of Sudan’s 500,000 barrels/day of oil production. Sudan last year was China’s fourth largest foreign oil source. A look at the southern Sudan oil concessions shows that China’s CNPC holds rights to bloc 6 which straddles Darfur, near the border to Chad and the Central African Republic.
The Chinese economic presence in Sudan and Chad, ironically, may be more effective in calming the fighting and displacement in Darfur than any African Union or UN troop presence ever could. That would not be welcome for some people in Washington and at Chevron headquarters as they would not want oil to fall into the hands of the Chinese. The pressure being put on the Chinese vis-à-vis the current situation in Darfur is now understandable. But if China can succeed in gaining greater access to the oil resources in that region then that could leave Washington’s typical control game out in the cold, thereby letting the people there live at peace with one other.