Talisman Energy has recently issued a “corporate social responsibility
report,” a document that purports to inform Talisman investors about the
realities of oil development in southern Sudan. It does nothing of the
sort, but rather continues Talisman’s shameless and self-interested
obscuring of the terrible human realities directly related to their
operations in Sudan. These realities have been consistently and
authoritatively reported in various human rights assessments for years.
Despite overwhelming evidence of massive human destruction and
displacement occasioned by Talisman’s presence, and despite clear
evidence that oil revenues are now directly sustaining the Khartoum
regime’s war on civilians, Talisman continues to speak of “constructive
engagement.” Herewith an anatomy of various of Talisman’s lies and
distortions.
Eric Reeves [April 19, 2002]
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
413-585-3326
ereeves@smith.edu
Talisman’s slick, voluble, and well-padded document has again been
“audited” by PriceWaterhouseCooper’s (PWC) in a feeble attempt to
bolster Talisman’s credibility. This is so despite PWC’s admission that
many statements in Talisman’s report were “not auditable,” and that the
fundamental issue of the human rights situation in Sudan was “outside
the scope of our audit work.” In other words, PWC simply offered a
high-priced seal of approval that means nothing.
It’s all too easy to find examples of how Talisman’s disingenuousness
eludes whatever “scrutiny” PWC might bring. For example, Talisman
claims that they “facilitated three separate trips for independent
[human rights] observers, including Gerhart Baum, UN Special Rapporteur
on the Situation of Human Rights in Sudan.” What Talisman does not
mention is that Gerhart Baum, echoing the findings of his two
distinguished predecessors, has declared that “the exploitation of oil
reserves had led to a worsening of the conflict, which has also turned
into a war for oil”
(UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, November 14, 2001).
These findings are fully amplified in Baum’s very recent report to the
UN, a report never cited in Talisman’s Corporate Social Responsibility
Report (CSR):
“oil exploitation continued to cause widespread displacement and access
to the area remains extremely difficult since access to most of the
airstrips is denied [by Khartoum]” (Executive Summary, “Situation of
human rights in the Sudan,” Report of the Special Rapporteur, Gerhart
Baum, 23 January, 2002)
“the Special Rapporteur has continued to focus on the human
rights-related, economic, political and strategic implications of oil
exploitation in oil-rich Unity State, supporting the views of those who
believe that oil has seriously exacerbated the conflict while
deteriorating the overall situation of human rights.” (Paragraph 50)
“the Special Rapporteur continued to receive information whereby oil
exploitation is continuing to cause widespread displacement.” (Paragraph
51)
These damning findings are why Talisman never finds the honesty to cite
the reports of the UN Special Rapporteurs, even as they claim credit for
facilitating his mission. For the same reasons, Talisman never cites
the entirely similar findings of Amnesty International, Human Rights
Watch, the report of a mission for the Canadian Foreign Ministry (the
Harker Report), Christian Aid, the extremely detailed and authoritative
Gagnon/Ryle report (October 2001), and many others.
These reports all find compelling evidence of staggering human
displacement and destruction where Talisman sees none. Report after
report cites massive evidence of scorched-earth warfare in the oil
concessions. Talisman refuses to acknowledge any of this, focusing
instead on the $500,000. it has paid to several hundred individuals who
were removed for the building of pipeline running northward.
In a similarly disingenuous vein, Talisman acknowledges in its new CSR
that its concession airstrips are being used by the military forces of
the Khartoum regime (the National Islamic Front, which has repeatedly
declared a “jihad” against the people of the south). But the CSR claims
that the company has “advocated” to the regime that the airstrips
“should not be used for offensive purposes.”
But, as Talisman well knows, there is definitive evidence that despite
these supposed “advocacy” efforts, their airstrips are indeed being used
for offensive military missions, in particular helicopter gunships
attacks like that at Bieh. There, in the very heart of the Block 5a oil
concession, Khartoum’s helicopter gunships directed heavy machine-gun
fire and rockets into desperate women and children gathered at a UN
World Food Program distribution center (February 2002). Such attacks
are commonplace throughout the oil concessions, including all three of
Talisman’s concession blocks.
The Harker Report (January 2000) found abundant evidence of such
barbaric use of helicopter gunship attacks. It declared that these
fearsome weapons of destruction “armed and refueled at Heglig [nerve
center of Talisman’s operations] and from there attacked civilians.
This is totally incontrovertible” (p. 65).
A report by two distinguished human rights reporters, Georgette Gagnon
of Canada (a member of the original Harker mission) and John Ryle of
Great Britain also found, on the basis of meticulous research that
formed the basis for their October 2001 report, that:
“there was an increase in the number of recorded helicopter gunship
attacks on settlements in or near [the oil development] area. Some of
these gunships have operated from facilities built, maintained and used
by the oil consortium [Talisman Energy, China National Petroleum Corp.,
Malaysia’s Petronas, and Sudan’s Sudapet]. The attacks are part of what
appears to be a renewed Government of Sudan strategy to displace
indigenous non-Arab inhabitants from specific rural areas of the oil
region in order to clear and secure territory for oil development.”
These findings are echoed by the report of Canada’s political officer
in Khartoum and by Christian Aid, a relief agency with almost thirty
years of working experience in Sudan.
To all this, Talisman merely mouths a vague and indirect reply in their
CSR: “we have expressed our support for the protection of human rights
in Sudan.” Talisman never speaks to the basic contradiction in their
posture. The company insists on security (“For Talisman, safety of
employees is our first priority”), even as that “security” consists in
the most brutal of military methods, directed relentlessly against
civilians.
The Harker Report details much of this brutality in its account of the
terrible Ruweng County offensive of 1999 (Ruweng County includes much of Talisman’s concession areas). Where Talisman declares in its CSR that
there has been no forced displacement from their concession areas, the
Harker Report finds just the opposite:
“On 9 May 1999, a [government of Sudan] offensive was launched from the
Nuba Mountains and Pariang. Antonovs and helicopter gunships supported
troops using armoured personnel carriers. Roads built by the oil
companies enabled these to reach their destinations more easily than
before. The offensive was characterized by bombing runs and helicopter
gunships flying low enough to kill people, and stop cultivation [].
From April to July 1999, the decline in population in Ruweng County
seems to have been in the order of 50%” (pages 48/49).
The Harker Report also supplies some of the specific names many of the
villages and small towns that were destroyed in this massive oil-related
offensive, for which there is compelling evidence that Talisman made a
specific request of the Khartoum regime: Gumriak, Mankwo, Bomadol,
Tajiel, Biem 1, Biem 2, Padit are just some of the places that were
“cleansed” to provide Talisman with its security.
In the end, the Harker Report reaches the same conclusion as Leonardo
Franco, predecessor to Gerhart Baum as UN Special Rapporteur for Sudan:
“It is difficult to avoid Leonardo Franco’s conclusion that a ‘swath of
scorched earth/cleared territory’ is being created around the oilfields.
Over the years, the series of attacks and displacements are leading to a
gradual depopulation, as only a percentage of people who flee return
after each displacement” (page 50).
It is important to realize that these findings are not dated, though
this is hardly of concern to Talisman in putting together its CSR.
These terrible realities continue to be part of oil development in
southern Sudan. Indeed, Gagnon and Ryle report, on the basis of their
assessment mission of mid-2001, that:
“The new [Government of Sudan military] strategy in Western Upper
Nile, this report suggests, is both more violent and more territorially
focused, involving coordinated attacks on civilian settlements in which
aerial bombardment and raids by helicopter gunships are followed by
ground attacks from government-backed militias and government troops.
These ground forces burn villages and crops, loot livestock and kill and
abduct people—mainly women and children.”
This finding is echoed in subsequent human rights assessment missions,
again none of them cited by Talisman. Very recently, Diane de Guzman,
one of the most seasoned reporters from the humanitarian community
serving the people of southern Sudan—and someone intimately familiar
with the situation in the oil regions—reported the following at a
briefing at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC:
[1] The regular forces of the Khartoum regime (not their allied militia
groups) attacked villages in Ruweng county in October to November 2001.
Again, Ruweng County contains a great deal of Talisman’s concession
areas. She notes that these attacks differed from previous attacks in
that they were much more persistent in pursuing people (burning huts,
following fleeing people to swamps and rivers), and that they had laid
land mines around water sources.
[2] Following this offensive, oil drilling began immediately in the
Pakier area. De Guzman makes clear yet again that Khartoum’s intent is
to eliminate the civilian population. She reports that in the Heglig
area 75% of the county is now depopulated and that people have
congregated in swampy areas where they are living in extremely poor
conditions.
[3] In Western Upper Nile, Khartoum’s forces began an offensive in
late January in areas that de Guzman visited. As in Ruweng County, this
campaign was again relentless in its pursuit of civilians who posed an
obstacle to oil development. Baggara horsemen accompanied the army, as soldiers captured and abducted children. There were intensive
high-altitude bombings from Antonovs in the mornings which forced people to remain in their tukuls. Subsequently Khartoum’s ground forces would pursue people to the rivers, with helicopter gunships and horsemen
waiting to shoot civilians hiding in the reeds and water.
But it is not just the realities on the ground that Talisman denies or
obfuscates. In yet another moment of shameless disingenuousness,
Talisman’s CSR speaks of “supporting the establishment of a transparent
process of reporting oil revenue expenditures by the Government of
Sudan.” But Talisman knows full well that the Khartoum regime is using
oil revenues to fund its “jihad” against the south, and doesn’t hesitate
to say as much:
“Sudan will be capable of producing all the weapons and ammunition it
needs by the end of the year thanks to its growing oil industry, the
armed forces spokesman said in remarks published Saturday. [Military
spokesman General Mohamed Osman Yassin declared to Al-Share Al-Syasi newspaper] ‘we will this year reach self-sufficiency in light, medium
and heavy weapons from its local production.'” (Agence France-Presse
July 1, 2000).
Precisely because all oil revenues go to only one party in the civil
war, and the party that has proved intransigent in negotiating a just
peace, these revenues insure the war will continue. The IMF and other
sources have reported that Khartoum’s military expenditures have more
than doubled in the time that Talisman has been in Sudan. Indeed,
Khartoum is convinced that with oil revenues it will be able to prevail
militarily—and again the regime doesn’t hesitate to say as much
publicly. As Khartoum’s Education Minister Zubair Beshir Taha asked
rhetorically, “What prevents us from fighting while we possess the oil
that supports us in this battle, even if it lasts for a century?”
(Agence France-Presse).
******************
This is the true face of war in the oil regions of Sudan. It appears
nowhere in Talisman’s shamelessly disingenuous account of its presence
amidst these horrors. Instead, their CRS speaks of lofty goals that are
unreachable or meaningless in the larger context of ferocious civil war.
The grotesque “idealism” of late 19th-century colonialism finds a
ghastly reprise in Talisman’s absurd celebrations of its small-scale
humanitarian gestures amidst the unfathomable carnage that continues all
around the company’s oil operations.
Talisman’s tawdry ambitions in their CSR are transparent, and they have
nothing to do with rendering an accurate account of the nature and
consequences of their presence in Sudan. In spite of overwhelming
evidence, the company self-interestedly denies the realities of human
displacement from the oil regions. They tout human rights concerns even
as the company knows full well that their oil-field “security” depends
on massive human rights abuses. Company facilities are used
relentlessly by the Khartoum regime for helicopter gunship attacks on
innocent civilians, and Talisman responds with the vaguest twaddle about
its advocacy efforts. And critically, oil revenues supplied by Talisman
now sustain Khartoum’s “jihad.”
Talisman management has long since proved it is beyond shame, beyond
caring about the truth or human life in southern Sudan, beyond all but a
ferocious concern to extract profits from amidst the greatest human
catastrophe in the world today. That this catastrophe is spiraling
downward is of no concern to Talisman—or at least no more concern than
the threat represented to their operations. This moral hollowness is
perfectly reflected in their preposterously labeled “corporate social
responsibility report.”