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Black/Red View by John Alan
News & Letters, July 2001
Sudan and oil
For over 18 years a brutal civil war has been fought in Sudan
between the ruling Arabic speaking Muslims of the north and the
indigenous Black Sudanese living in the south. The most recent
economic reason for this conflict was the unilateral decision,
of the ruling northern Sudanese government in Khartoum to sell
concessions to Western and Asian oil corporations to drill for
oil in Sudan.
Nature had placed Sudan's rich crude petroleum areas in southern
Sudan. To validate its agreement with multinational oil
corporations, the Khartoum regime sent in troops to clear and
protect those areas from any opposition by southern Sudanese.
According to a recent Amnesty International report, the Arabic
Khartoum regime has used ground attacks, helicopter gunships and
indiscriminate high-altitude bombardment to clear the local
population from oil rich areas.
This massive displacement of the local population was followed
in the last decade by the deployment of additional weaponry and
forces, specifically drafted to protect the oil fields. The
military tactics of the government's security force destroyed
harvests and looted livestock as it occupied the area to prevent
the return of the displaced population. This scorched earth
policy has caused the death of more than 2 million people and
has uprooted another 4.4 million, many of whom may die from
famine.
There is a long list of multinational oil corporations now
holding oil drilling concessions in Sudan. Among the major ones
we find the Great Nile Petroleum and Oil Corporation (GNPOC)
with a concession to drill for oil in two areas. GNPOC's main
partner is the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC),
owned by the People's Republic of China. The CNPC owns a 40%
share in this project. Other major shareholders are the
Malaysian state-owned Petronas which has a 30% stake in Canada's
Talisman Energy, and Sudapet, the national petroleum company of
Sudan, which has a 5% stake.
The above is only a small list of corporations now benefiting
from drilling for oil in Sudan. More information about their
interlocking share holdings and the selling of their stock on
Wall Street can be found in Amnesty International On-Line Report
(June 23, 2001.)
It is also public knowledge that Khartoum's take from oil
concessions is $500 million annually. This will climb steeply,
once the oil corporations have recovered their risk. This will
undoubtedly tip the war in the favor of the Khartoum government.
It has given that government the ability to garrison the main
roads and the oil fields armed to the teeth with tanks and
helicopters to fight the People's Liberation Army in Southern
Sudan.
Another appalling thing about Sudan's war, is its racist
dimension. This can't be ignored. On one side is Arab
authoritarian power and on the other side are sub-Saharan
African masses fighting for freedom.
Eric Reeves, in an article for the June issue of THE NATION, put
this race division on the table when he wrote: "The
National Islamic Front looks to the Islamic and Arabic world for
culture and racial identity. Moreover its view of the Nilotic
and Equatorian peoples of the south is animated by a vicious
racism. The most common term of designation in Arabic is ABID,
which translates almost exactly as 'n----r.' Such attitudes do
much to explain why Khartoum has actively abetted a modern slave
trade, directed against racially 'African' people of the
South."
The above depiction of Arabs in Sudan as racist in no way means
that Arabs are inherently racist, but, like the racist European,
they become racist in the process of exploitation of African
labor and natural resources. What Sudan tells us today is that
the inherent drive of capitalism to accumulate an infinite
amount of capital, if left unchecked, can lead to genocide. In
other words, racism is a manifestation of the utter
subordination and the alienation of labor in the process of
capital accumulation.
Sudan also tells us, as Raya Dunayevskaya wrote in 1973,
"that political independence does not mean economic
dependence has ended, but on the contrary, the ugly head of
neo-imperialism then first appears. Yet equally crucial were the
new divisions that arose between the leaders and the led once
national independence was achieved. At the same time new
divisions also arose between Arab leadership and the 'uneducated
masses.' Whether we look at Zanzibar, which did succeed in
overthrowing its Arab rulers, or to the southern Sudan, which
had not, the need remained the same: a second revolution."
Today, oil and more oil is the "ugly head" of
neo-imperialism. To get new sources of oil animates a large part
of the planning and the politics of the George W. Bush
administration. Overcoming that retrogression is the task for
revolutionaries in this country as we confront our own
unfinished revolution and new forms of exploitation and racism.
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