The New York Times today reviews a new book that depicts all too
persuasively American failure to respond to genocide. Of Samantha
Power’s study (“‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of
Genocide”), the Times reviewer writes: “time and again (Power recounts)
although the United States had the knowledge and the means to stop
genocide abroad, it has not acted. Worse, it has made a resolute
commitment to not acting.” In fact, in the case of southern Sudan the
US is less culpable than European nations, Canada, and the rest of the
international community. But as very recent and highly authoritative
reports from the southern oil regions make terribly clear, genocide is
demonstrably occurring, indeed accelerating. There are tens of
thousands of new victims. Without clear and decisive pressure on the
Khartoum regime, and a commitment to forgo oil development pending a
just peace, the genocide will continue.
Eric Reeves [April 17, 2002]
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
413-585-3326
ereeves@smith.edu
The Khartoum regime of the National Islamic Front has decided that the
nascent push for a renewed peace process for Sudan, and the after-glow
of the achievements of the Danforth mission, provide the perfect cover
for an acceleration of racial and ethnic “cleansing” of the oil regions.
Convinced also that the world’s attention is again drifting from
Sudan’s agony, the regime has stepped up attacks like that reported
at Bieh this past February. The UN’s World Food Program reported at the
time that two of Khartoum’s helicopter gunships were involved in the
attack on Bieh, an attack that saw heavy machine-gun fire and
rockets—from extremely close range—directed into thousands of women
and children gathered to receive emergency food aid. Workers for the
World Food Program were eyewitnesses.
Most of the new attacks have not had international witnesses because
Khartoum has dramatically increased the number of areas to which it is
denying all humanitarian relief flights. Dismayed by the outrage and
publicity that burst out briefly following the Bieh attack, Khartoum
decided that the best way to insure that there would be no future
reporting of such incidents was to deny access to the international
relief organizations that might bear witness to future atrocities.
Thus for both March and April, Khartoum’s National Islamic Front regime
has almost doubled the areas to which relief flights are denied access
(see “UN Protests Against Humanitarian Flight Denials,” UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks, April 8, 2002). These denials are
especially concentrated in the oil regions of Western Upper Nile,
including of course Bieh. As a World Food Program press release very
recently noted, this has had the effect of bringing the number of
civilians denied humanitarian relief to 1.7 million (see “Sudanese
Government denies humanitarian access to 1.7 million people in southern
Sudan,” Press Release, [UN] World Food Programme, April 5, 2002). Many of these people are in critical need and will die without humanitarian
intervention.
Just how dire the need is has been made clear in an assessment report
issued last week by Christian Aid (UK) and DanChurchAid. Entitled
“Hiding Between the Streams,” the report is based on a four-day
assessment mission to the center of the oil regions (full report
available upon request). Though dangerous, such assessment is the only
way in which the realities on the ground can be reported with
appropriate authority. The report was issued on April 11, 2002, and
makes abundantly clear just how many human beings are being destroyed, displaced, and put at acute risk because of Khartoum’s oil field
clearances.
In short, the evidence presented offers a compelling picture—in “real
time”—of massive and accelerating human displacement and destruction
directly tied to oil development:
“The Government of Sudan is deliberately targeting civilian
populations, resulting in the displacement of the majority of Rubkona
County—maybe as many as 75,000 people []. The Government is using
the same scorched earth tactics already witnessed in [oil concession]
Blocks 1 and 2, Ruweng County, in the area of the Unity and Heglig
oilfields.”
“All this is done because of the oil. Rubkona County sits on large
reserves of oil that Lundin Oil Company of Sweden has the concession to
exploit. Lundin have been unable to operate in the past months because
the area has been ‘insecure.'”
The Christian Aid/DanChurchAid report was also informed by data and
intelligence from other humanitarian organizations, working both within
and outside of the UN aid consortium Operation Lifeline Sudan. These
reports all comported with one another:
“All reports highlighted that people were on the move because of the
increased Government of Sudan activity and that these attacks had
intensified from the occasional Antonov aerial bombardment to the use of
far more threatening helicopter gunships supporting ground
forces—including horsemen militia. This deliberate targeting of
civilians to clear the area was pervasive over large parts of Rubkona
County especially (also coinciding with what is known as Block 5A oil
concession) and was leading to people fleeing in various directions.”
What are the particular features of the genocidal assault on the
primarily Nuer and Dinka peoples who are being disposed of in order to
“secure” the oil regions for Lundin Petroleum of Sweden, Talisman Energy
of Canada, OMV of Austria, Petronas of Malysia, and China National
Petroleum Corp.? Here are some first-hand observations from aid workers
with immense experience in southern Sudan. They derive from an
assessment mission that took place March 28-31, 2002 in Western Upper
Nile Province, with a particular focus on Rubkona County (this again is
where the Block 5a oil concession lies):
“The majority of displaced gave horrific accounts of bombardments and
gunship attacks. Many interviewed were chased and shot at by the
horsemen. All too many of those interviewed spoke quietly of relatives,
even their own little children, being killed in front of them. There
has been a systematic and wholesale abuse of human rights against its
own civilians by the Government of Sudan despite the many overtures made by government officials to the U.S. Special Envoy, former Senator
Danforth.”
“Many have been killed by high-altitude aerial bombardments. More
pernicious and cruel, as well as terrifying, has been the
intensification of gunship attacks on civilians. These attacks are
usually supported by militia and mounted horsemen. This makes for a
deadly cocktail of destruction. Not only are people terrorised, their
homes are burned to the ground, crops are destroyed and possessions are looted. Women have been abducted, probably raped, and children have been abducted. No one knows if they are dead or alive. Others have died along the long trek to safety.”
Again, this is part of a report based on first-hand information, by
seasoned observers of the humanitarian crisis in southern Sudan:
“It should be said though that the assessment team has significant
experience in Sudan over many years (one of the expatriate team members has over 20 years in the region) and the conservative estimates of numbers below are tempered and based around their knowledge and
understanding of the context garnered over this period of time.”
The authority of their findings is simply beyond dispute, and gives us
an opportunity to hear the voices of those perishing amidst the
genocidal destruction of southern Sudan:
“What follows are the findings of this short assessment trip and
represents the stories from the displaced people themselves. These are
the voices of the newly dispossessed, the latest thousands forcibly
chased from their homes with little or nothing through the ongoing
efforts of the Government of Sudan to enable oil companies to exploit
what has been called the ‘blood oil’ of Sudan.”
To date, the world has refused to hear these voices with clarity, to
hear them with sustained concern. The international community has been
content to offer what humanitarian assistance is possible, but without
resolving to end the war that makes this assistance so imperative.
Given the compelling geographical account of the Christian
Aid/DanChurchAid report, and the many other human rights reports
reaching the same conclusions, it is no longer possible to believe that
this callousness can be separated from the promise of oil development
and the lure of Khartoum’s increasingly abundant petrodollars.
Certainly if we look beyond the roster of corporations and countries
directly involved in oil development, there is another and longer roster
of corporations and countries that are eagerly signing lucrative
oil-funded contracts with the National Islamic Front regime, even as
that regime is guilty of genocide in its ongoing destruction of the Nuer
and Dinka peoples of the oil regions.
This roster includes countries like Germany (Siemens), the UK (Weir
Pumps of Glasgow, Rolls Royce), France (Alstom SA, and TotalFinaElf
controls the largest concession area in southern Sudan), Poland (H.
Cegielski S. A. of Poznan), Russia (Tatneft/Slavneft investments in oil
development in northern Sudan, military sales to the National Islamic
Front, including helicopter gunships and MiG-29s), various Arab nations,
Iran, Malaysia (many investments besides the deep complicity of Petronas
in oil production and development), China (again, many large commercial
investments with the Khartoum regime).
The phrases of excuse for commercial and economic relations with the
Khartoum regime—“constructive engagement,” “critical dialogue”—are
empty gestures in the face of the genocidal realities that are occurring
daily in southern Sudan’s oil regions. And these realities are all too
clear: the Nuer, Dinka and other southern peoples are being destroyed
because of who they are: non-Arab, non-Islamicized human obstacles to
further oil development.
Until the international community, including the United States,
responds with an urgency fully commensurate with these genocidal
realities, yet again so fully and recently documented, then we will not
be able to say that we have made real progress in dealing with this
“problem from hell.”