The Bush administration has offered a disturbingly inadequate account of oil development in Sudan and US policy options on this issue. During his present visit to Nairobi, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter Kansteiner has declared that the administration is opposed to US capital market sanctions against oil companies sustaining and exacerbating Sudan’s unspeakably destructive civil war. Mr. Kansteiner, who gave no real indication of US policy, or how that policy might respond to the terrible consequences of oil development in Sudan, offered instead an inaccurate and morally obtuse rendering of the argument for capital market sanctions. This does not augur well for Bush administration policy on oil development in Sudan.
Eric Reeves [July 11, 2001]
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
413-585-3326
ereeves@smith.edu
The new administration has rightly expected that it be given time to formulate a Sudan policy. But half a year has been time enough. Unfortunately, Assistant Secretary Kansteiner has still not outlined what this policy will be. According to today’s Associated Press (see excerpts below) he did indicate that the policy would entail the appointment of a Special Envoy, a greater presence in the US embassy in Khartoum, and a generally greater commitment to becoming involved with all parties in the conflict. Nothing unexpected in this, and both a Special Envoy (if an appropriate individual) and greater US involvement are encouraging. But this is hardly an articulated Sudan policy.
Indeed, Mr. Kansteiner offered nothing that indicates a clear policy for addressing the root causes of the conflict; nothing that would invigorate a moribund IGAD peace process (or suggest how it might be integrated with the “Libyan/Egyptian Initiative”); nothing that puts significant pressure on the Khartoum regime to negotiate in good faith on key issues (southern self-determination and separation of religion and state); and most strikingly, nothing that addresses that role of oil development in sustaining and exacerbating Sudan’s civil war.
Mr. Kansteiner gave no clear indication that he is aware of how well documented scorched-earth warfare is in the oil regions of southern Sudan. He gave no evidence of understanding how powerful a disincentive oil revenues are for the Khartoum regime to engage in meaningful peace negotiations. And he certainly gave no indication that he represents an administration willing to do anything to halt unconscionable corporate complicity in the appalling consequences of oil development.
Addressing the provision for US capital markets against oil companies operating in Sudan (contained within the House version of the Sudan Peace Act, passed by a vote of 422 to 2 on June 13), Mr. Kansteiner offered only the fatuous remark that:
“Capital market sanctions … where we, the government, would start putting filters on who and who couldn’t use the New York Stock
Exchange and NASDAQ, that is unacceptable.”
But Mr. Kansteiner deliberately confuses the issue here. As he certainly well knows, those who argue for US capital market sanctions against oil companies operating in Sudan are not advocating the wholesale or promiscuous use of such a potent sanctions regime. They are arguing for such sanctions in the context of corporate complicity that is sustaining the longest and most destructive civil war in Africa. They are arguing for such sanctions to bring pressure to bear on a regime that the US House of Representatives has declared is engaged in genocidal destruction in southern Sudan (HR 75, June 15, 1999; passed 415 to 1). They are arguing for such sanctions in the very specific context that is oil development in southern Sudan, with all revenues flowing to Khartoum—one party in the civil war.
To suggest that there is here a broad campaign to “start putting filters on who and who couldn’t” have access to US capital markets is simply disingenuous—a politically expedient way of trying to take the real issue off the table. The real issue takes the form of a question: “Are there no circumstances sufficiently egregious, in which corporate complicity in genocidal destruction is so great, that both morally and politically we are obliged to restrict US capital market access?” That is the question, and Mr. Kansteiner has simply failed to address it
Mr. Kansteiner owes more than disingenuous political expediency to Americans determined to end the role of oil development in sustaining Sudan’s civil war. And he owes much, much more to the people of southern Sudan who bear the brunt of savage and ongoing scorched-earth warfare that is chronicled on an ongoing basis by the world’s finest humanitarian and human rights organizations, by the UN Special Rapporteurs for Sudan, and by constant news reports from the oil regions of the south.
Almost as if to emphasize the crudity of his thinking about oil development in Sudan, Mr. Kansteiner declares further that: “Hostilities were alive and well before oil was being pumped, so I think we can find ways to look for the ending (of the war) or early cessation of hostilities.” But this is a bizarrely illogical line of thinking, and one that ignores a reality acknowledged by all who have assessed honestly the most basic consequence of oil development in Sudan: all Sudanese oil revenues accrue directly to the extremist National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum.
This regime is the recalcitrant party in peace negotiations—the party that refuses to negotiate either southern self-determination or separation of religion and state (despite their commitment to do so under the auspices of the IGAD peace process). This is the regime that has openly and repeatedly boasted of its military ambitions for oil revenues. This is the regime that has more than doubled its acknowledged military expenditures in the time that oil has been flowing. This is the regime that feels itself economically, and finally diplomatically, insulated because of oil revenues. And this is the regime that attacks civilians on a daily basis in the oil regions to create a cordon sanitaire for future oil development.
Moreover, it must be asked, by what very peculiar logic can Mr. Kansteiner blithely observe that because fighting preceded oil production, we may then somehow conclude that, “we can finds ways to look for the ending (of the war) or early cessation of hostilities.” This is an utter non sequitur—the sort that typically emerges when a politician or bureaucrat makes the unfortunate decision to keep moving his mouth without engaging his mental faculties.
Simply because Mr. Kansteiner believes oil development was not at issue before 1999 production began does not mean it’s not a critical issue now. And of course his assumption about when oil became an issue in Sudan is already thoroughly problematic, and perhaps revealing of an unfortunate ignorance of Sudanese history: oil was a factor as early as Chevron’s discovery of commercial oil deposits in the Bentiu area in 1981. And the patterns of scorched-earth warfare in the south go well back in the 1990s.
We may hope that Mr. Kansteiner is better informed and better equipped to think about oil development in Sudan than the Associated Press suggests. At the same time, the quotations as attributed indicate very considerable cause for concern.
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[from The Associated Press, July 11, 2001]
“Senior U.S. official meets Sudanese rebel leader”
By ANDREW ENGLAND Associated Press Writer
NAIROBI, Kenya, July 11, 2001 (AP) A senior U.S. official has held talks with the leader of the main Sudanese rebel group at a
time when the United States is preparing to take a more active role in ending the 18-year civil war in Sudan.
Walter Kansteiner, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, said Wednesday he had a “get-to-know-you meeting” with John Garang, head of Sudan People’s Liberation Army, during which he outlined the policy towards Sudan of President George W. Bush’s administration.
“It was good meeting … we went through some of the issues that he has got on his plate and explained a lot of what we wanted to do, and there seemed to some receptivity there,” Kansteiner told reporters in
Nairobi.
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Kansteiner said the policy review had been completed and the conclusion reached that the United States needed to become more
involved.
“It (the United States) needs to be engaged to pursue peace,” he said. “We are going to have to talk to all belligerents as well as the
neighbors.”
Bush will appoint a special envoy to Sudan in the “not too distant future,” he added.
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Asked whether the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum would be reopened, Kansteiner said, “there will be a presence, at what level remains to be seen.”
A U.S. charge d’affaires currently shuttles between Khartoum and Nairobi.
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Kansteiner also said the Bush administration would oppose a bill passed by a 422-2 vote in the House of Representatives that would forbid oil companies doing business in Sudan from selling shares or other securities in the United States.
“Capital market sanctions … where we, the government, would start putting filters on who and who couldn’t use the New York Stock
Exchange and NASDAQ, that is unacceptable,” he said.
If passed by the Senate and signed into law, the bill would affect the Canadian company Talisman, which has a 25-percent stake in an oil consortium pumping 220,000 barrels of oil a day in southern Sudan.
The rebels and international human rights groups accuse the Sudanese government of forcing tens of thousands of villagers to flee the oil region and of using oil revenue to pursue the war.
Garang has said there can be no cease-fire unless oil production, which began in August 1999, is halted. But Kansteiner said a cease-fire should not be conditioned on oil production.
“Hostilities were alive and well before oil was being pumped, so I think we can find ways to look for the ending (of the war) or early
cessation of hostilities,” he said. “The oil dimension complicates the situation, but it also perhaps offers an opportunity, too. It’s a double-edged sword, those oil revenues can be shared.”
Kansteiner, who is on his first trip to Africa since he was sworn in on June 4, was to meet Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi Thursday before leaving for South Africa.