[Peace-discuss] Darfur: Forget genocide, there's oil
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at uiuc.edu
Tue May 29 06:01:07 CDT 2007
Darfur: Forget genocide, there's oil
By F William Engdahl
To paraphrase the famous quip during the 1992 US presidential debates,
when an unknown William Jefferson Clinton told then-president George
Herbert Walker Bush, "It's the economy, stupid," the present concern of
the current Washington administration over Darfur in southern Sudan is
not, if we look closely, genuine concern over genocide against the
peoples in that poorest of poor part of a forsaken section of Africa.
No. "It's the oil, stupid."
The case of Darfur, a forbidding piece of sun-parched real estate in the
southern part of Sudan, illustrates the new Cold War over oil, where the
dramatic rise in China's oil demand to fuel its booming growth has led
Beijing to embark on an aggressive policy of - ironically - dollar
diplomacy. With its more than US$1.2 trillion in mainly US dollar
reserves at the Peoples' National Bank of China, Beijing is engaging in
active petroleum geopolitics. Africa is a major focus, and in Africa,
the central region between Sudan and Chad is a priority.
This is defining a major new front in what, since the US invasion of
Iraq in 2003, is a new Cold War between Washington and Beijing over
control of major oil sources. So far Beijing has played its cards a bit
more cleverly than Washington. Darfur is a major battleground in this
high-stakes contest for oil control.
CHINA OIL DIPLOMACY
In recent months, Beijing has embarked on a series of initiatives
designed to secure long-term raw materials sources in one of the
planet's most endowed regions - Sub-Saharan Africa. No raw material has
higher priority in Beijing at present than oil.
Today China draws an estimated 30% of its crude oil from Africa. That
explains an extraordinary series of diplomatic initiatives which have
left Washington furious. China is using no-strings-attached dollar
credits to gain access to Africa's vast raw material wealth, leaving
Washington's typical control game via the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund (IMF) out in the cold. Who needs the painful medicine of
the IMF when China gives easy terms and builds roads and schools to boot?
In November last year Beijing hosted an extraordinary summit of 40
African heads of state. They literally rolled out the red carpet for the
leaders of, among others, Algeria, Nigeria, Mali, Angola, Central
African Republic, Zambia and South Africa.
China has just done an oil deal that links it with two of the
continent's largest nations, Nigeria and South Africa. China National
Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) will lift oil in Nigeria, via a
consortium that also includes South African Petroleum Co, giving China
access to what could be 175,000 barrels a day by 2008. It's a $2.27
billion deal that gives state-controlled CNOOC a 45% stake in a large
off-shore oil field in Nigeria. Previously, Nigeria had been considered
in Washington to be an asset of the Anglo-American oil majors,
ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron.
China has been generous in dispensing its soft loans, with no interest
or as outright grants, to some of the poorest debtor states of Africa.
The loans have gone into infrastructure, including highways, hospitals,
and schools, a stark contrast to the brutal austerity demands of the IMF
and World Bank. In 2006 China committed more than $8 billion to Nigeria,
Angola and Mozambique, versus $2.3 billion to all sub-Saharan Africa
from the World Bank. Ghana is negotiating a $1.2 billion Chinese
electrification loan. Unlike the World Bank, a de facto arm of US
foreign economic policy, China shrewdly attaches no strings to its loans.
This oil-related Chinese diplomacy has led to the bizarre accusation
from Washington that Beijing is trying to "secure oil at the sources",
something Washington foreign policy has itself been preoccupied with for
at least a century. No source of oil has been more the focus of China-US
oil conflict of late than Sudan, home of Darfur.
SUDAN'S OIL RICHES
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. The 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.
CNPC built an oil pipeline from southern Sudan to a new terminal at Port
Sudan on the Red Sea, where the oil is loaded on tankers bound for
China. Eight percent of China's oil now comes from southern Sudan. China
takes 65-80% of Sudan's 500,000 barrels/day production. Sudan last year
was China's fourth-largest foreign oil source.
In 2006 China passed Japan to become the world's second-largest importer
of oil after the United States, importing 6.5 million barrels a day of
the black gold. With its oil demand growing by an estimated 30% a year,
China will pass the US in oil import demand in a few years. That reality
is the motor driving Beijing foreign policy in Africa.
A look at the southern Sudan oil concessions shows that China's CNPC
holds rights to bloc 6, which straddles Darfur, near the border with
Chad and the Central African Republic. In April 2005, Sudan's government
announced that it had found oil in Southern Darfur, which is estimated
to be able to pump 500,000 barrels per day when developed. The world
press forgot to report that vital fact in discussing the Darfur conflict.
MOVE TO MILITARIZE SUDAN'S OIL REGION
Genocide was the preferred theme, and Washington was the orchestra
conductor. Curiously, while all observers acknowledge that Darfur has
seen a large human displacement and human misery, with tens of thousands
or even as many as 300,000 deaths in the last several years, only
Washington and the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) close to it use
the charged term "genocide" to describe Darfur. If they are able to get
popular acceptance of the charge of genocide, it opens the possibility
of drastic "regime change" intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) - read Washington - in Sudan's sovereign affairs.
The genocide theme is being used, with full-scale Hollywood backing from
the likes of stars like George Clooney, to orchestrate the case for de
facto NATO occupation of the region. 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. US Assistant Secretary of State Ellen
Sauerbrey, head of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration,
said during a USINFO online interview last November 17, "The ongoing
genocide in Darfur, Sudan - a gross violation of human rights - is among
the top international issues of concern to the United States." The Bush
administration keeps insisting that genocide has been going on in Darfur
since 2003, despite the fact that a five-person UN mission led by
Italian Judge Antonio Cassese reported in 2004 that genocide had not
been committed in Darfur but grave human rights abuses were committed.
They called for war crime trials.
MERCHANTS OF DEATH
The United States, acting through surrogate allies in Chad and
neighboring states has trained and armed the Sudan Peoples' Liberation
Army, headed until his death in July 2005 by John Garang, trained at the
US Special Forces school at Fort Benning, Georgia.
By pouring arms into first southeastern Sudan and since discovery of oil
in Darfur into that region as well, Washington fueled the conflict that
led to tens of thousands dying and several million driven to flee their
homes. Eritrea hosts and supports the Sudan People's Liberation Army
(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 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 NATO
troops in Darfur, as well as a stronger UN peacekeeping force with a
robust mandate. A month later, President George W Bush also called for
additional NATO forces in Darfur. Genocide? Or oil?
The Pentagon has been busy training African military officers in the US,
much as it has trained Latin American officers for decades. Its
International Military Education and Training program has provided
training to military officers from Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Cameroon and
the Central African Republic.
Much of the arms that have fueled the killing in Darfur and the south
have been brought in via murky, protected private "merchants of death"
such as the notorious former KGB operative, now with offices in the US,
Victor Bout, who has been cited repeatedly in recent years for selling
weapons across Africa. US government officials strangely leave his
operations in Texas and Florida untouched despite the fact he is on the
Interpol wanted list for money laundering.
US development aid for all Sub-Saharan 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 Chad border 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's head of state, broke with the Soviets
and invited Chevron to develop the country's oil industry. 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 the target of repeated attacks and
killings and it 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
Condoleezza Rice's Chevron is in neighboring Chad, together with the
other US oil giant, ExxonMobil. They've just built a $3.7 billion oil
pipeline carrying 160,000 barrels per day from Doba in central Chad,
near Darfur, 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. He used
members of his elite Presidential Guard, who come from the province,
providing them with all-terrain vehicles, arms and anti-aircraft guns to
aid Darfur rebels fighting the Khartoum government in southwestern
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 oil fields of
Darfur and southern 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 oil pipeline began to flow. The US now had a base in Chad
to go after Darfur oil and, potentially, co-opt China's new oil sources.
US military objectives in Darfur - and the Horn of Africa more widely -
are being served at present by US and NATO backing for African Union
(AU) troops in Darfur. There NATO provides ground and air support for AU
troops who are categorized as "neutral" and "peacekeepers". Sudan is at
war on three fronts, against Uganda, Chad, and Ethiopia, each with a
significant US military presence and ongoing US military programs. The
war in Sudan involves both US covert operations and US trained "rebel"
factions coming in from south Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia and Uganda.
CHAD'S DEBY LOOKS TO CHINA TOO
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 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, the new World Bank
president - and 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
and Malaysia's Petronas for not paying taxes owed, and demanded 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. 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 Cameroon among other African
states. In 2008, 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".
The Chinese economic presence in Chad, ironically, may be more effective
in calming the fighting and displacement in Darfur than any AU or UN
troop presence ever could. That would not be welcome for some people in
Washington and at Chevron headquarters, as they would not secure the oil.
Chad and Darfur are but part of the vast China effort to secure "oil at
the source" across Africa. Oil is also the prime factor in US Africa
policy today. George W Bush's interest in Africa includes a new US base
in Sao Tome/Principe, 124 miles off the Gulf of Guinea, from which it
can control Gulf of Guinea oil fields from Angola in the south to the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and
Nigeria. That just happens to be the very same areas where recent
Chinese diplomatic and investment activity has focused.
"West Africa's oil has become of national strategic interest to us,"
stated US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter Kansteiner back
in 2002. Darfur and Chad are but an extension of the US Iraq policy
"with other means" - control of oil everywhere. China is challenging
that control "everywhere", especially in Africa. It amounts to a new
undeclared Cold War over oil.
F William Engdahl is author of the book, A Century of War:
Anglo-American Oil Politics, Pluto Press Ltd. His next book, Seeds of
Destruction: The Dark Side of Genetic engineering (Global Research
Publishing) will be released this June. He may be contacted via his
website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd.)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/IE25Cb04.html
*(FUC! You can't make this SHT up... --CGE)
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