Sudan and oil

Editor's note: As John Alan is ill we are reprinting his column on "Sudan and oil" from July 2001, which discusses the deep roots of the tragedy of Darfur still ongoing (see War is reality in this issue).

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 shareholdings 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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