DARFUR SUDAN RESOURCE WAR

vast subterranean puddles that stretch west into Chad, and south to Nigeria and Uganda; not the technology; just the simple fact of the oil.
This is a resource war, fought by surrogates, involving great powers whose economies are predicated on growth, contending for a finite pool of resources
if it were not also an invisible war.
Invisible because it is happening in Africa. Invisible because our mainstream media are subsidized by the petroleum industry.
The real driving force behind the North-South conflict became clear after Chevron discovered oil in southern Sudan in 1978.
Oil pipelines, pumping stations, well-heads, and other key infrastructure became targets
John Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), declared these installations to be legitimate targets of war. For a time, the oil companies fled from the conflict, but in the 1990s they began to return. Chinese and Indian companies were particularly aggressive,

It was a Chinese pipeline to the Red Sea that first brought Sudanese oil to the international market.
Under a power-sharing agreement, SPLA commander John Garang would be installed as vice president of Sudan, alongside President Omar al-Bashir.
Darfur, to the west, was left out of this treaty.
the size of France, sparsely populated but oil rich.
With the signing of the treaty last January
new seismographic studies were undertaken by foreign oil companies
doubling Sudan's estimated oil reserves
to at least 563 million barrels
Khartoum claims
5 billion barrels
a pittance compared to the 674 billion barrels of proven
six Persian Gulf countries
The very modesty of Sudan's reserves speaks volumes to the desperation with which industrial nations are grasping for alternative sources of oil.
Oil revenues to Khartoum have been about $1 million a day, exactly the amount which the government funnels into arms

"As Chinese and Indian companies venture into countries like Sudan, where risk-aversive multinationals have hesitated to enter, questions are being raised in the industry about whether state-owned companies are accurately judging the risks to their own investments, or whether they are just more willing to gamble with taxpayers' money than multinationals are willing to gamble with shareholders' investments."

Three weeks later, Garang was killed in a helicopter crash. When word of his death emerged, angry riots broke out

DARFUR

What might be called the liberal position on Darfur can be stated as follows:
"The people of Darfur have suffered unspeakable violence, and America has called these atrocities what they are -- genocide.
The Security Council has approved a resolution that would transform the African Union force into a blue-helmeted force
The liberal position is hardly distinguishable from
(a) the Bush administration's position on Darfur, and
(b) the Clinton administration's position on Kosovo.
In both cases the cry of genocide and "humanitarian" intervention is used to cover the USG's imperial machinations to reduce a state (respectively Sudan and Serbia) that was unreliable from the US/Israeli POV.
For Bush, "the United Nations must act" (with NATO providing logistics and "other support") -- and the wretched situation in Darfur will probably get worse, but Sudan, an oil-producing state (much of its production goes to China) will be put under increasing pressure.

Of major media, only the BBC has said at all clearly that Khartoum's resistance to "peacekeepers" was based on "well-founded fears of the designs of Western governments on Sudan." Meanwhile self-styled US peace groups and the Israeli lobby urge "Out of Iraq and into Darfur!"
listen to the calm common sense of Alex de Waal, a fellow of the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard, an advisor to the African Union, and author of "Darfur: A Short History of a Long War":
"I don't believe there is a military solution. It will not defeat the holdout rebel groups. What it will do is, it will kill more people,
the solution to Darfur is a political solution.
The solution has to come through political negotiation."
But by mobilizing the cover story of humanitarian intervention, the Bush administration should be able to introduce a military solution to its real problem:
how to attack another country on the Neocon hit list,

another country (like Serbia) on the concentric circle around the cynosure of US foreign policy, Middle East energy resources.
the official hero of Kosovo, Wesley Clark: "As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001,
This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan."

CHAD BACKGROUND

For three years, the world has been ignoring or refusing to confront some of the originators of the war in Darfur, namely General Idriss Deby Itno of Chad and part of his Zaghawa tribe. Everybody knows that he is behind the rebel groups fighting in Darfur. Everybody knows that he is funding them and providing all the material, military and logistical support to factions like the Justice and Equality Movement lead by Dr. Khalil Ibrahim or the Sudan Liberation Movement via his older brother Daoussa Deby Itno and General Mahamat Ali Abdallah Nassour. Why this silent complicity with the Chadian regime? Does it come down to oil again? It’s time for the world not only to confront General Al-Bashir but also get tough on General Deby who is a big chunk on the problem.

As Minni Minnawi Arkou, one of the leaders of the Darfur rebellion who signed the Abuja agreement, now advisor to President Al-Bashir said during a meeting with President Bush a few months ago, ”as long as General Idriss Deby Itno of Chad will remain in power, there will be no peace neither in the Darfur nor in Chad.” This is exactly what is happening today. General Idriss Deby Itno is now arming and paying Arab tribes on the border with Sudan to go on a rampage killing Chadian civilians from other ethnic groups in order to blame the Sudanese government and its Janjaweed militias.

WINNERS WRITE HISTORY

.

...and losers rewrite history continually as bills come due, consequences surface, newly revealed errors and shortcomings must be excused, and heavier blame must be shifted onto backs sturdy enough to bear it.

It looks like a bunch of bills are coming due.

Case in point: Michael Abramowitz's insider-propelled backgrounder in the Washington Post, U.S. Promises on Darfur Don't Match Actions tries to explain why, despite its brave talk, the Bush administration isn't getting anything done on Darfur.

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I became interested in Darfur when I became aware of the fact of an "obviously engineered" "Save Darfur" bandwagon. A bandwagon engineered by the "humanitarian interventionist" division of the US War Party.

The part of the CIA that did this kind of operation was shut down in the '70's by Frank Church, etc and then subsequently outsourced by Ronald Reagan to organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, George Soros' Open Society Institute with the CIA theory and management developed by Robert Helvey and Gene Sharp at the Albert Einstein Institution.

The "giveaway" that it is an "engineered operation" is that there is "no context". Now "no context" is a rule of not only propaganda but also of "humanitarian intervention" operations. If the "no context" rule doesn't work then disinformation is substituted.

Here is some good context from China Matters This isn't all the story or even 100% accurate, but it is an interesting place to start.

One riff in the article that I find interesting is the "I can be your friend or your enemy" ploy.

"The US engineered peace for Darfur, commonly known as Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) is both "fake and unsustainable"...Its prime engineer Mr Robert Zoelick and his arch Experts produced a document...the only other signatory of the DPA was Minni Minnawi and his SLM fraction...Lashing Minnawi to sign the agreement, Mr Zoelick warned him: "I could be a very good friend but could also be a nasty enemy"

The segment concludes with this observation, ...any agreement that is an outcome of bullying cannot guarantee "lasting and sustainable peace".

We encountered this same ploy in Pervez Musharraf's recent book where he explains that he entered into the USA GWOT because of a call from State Dept Richard Armitage who threaten that Pakistan would be bombed back into the Stone Age should the Pakistani leader refuse to join the U.S. fight against al Qaeda.

In John Perkins book, "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption", he explains that his job was to subvert elected officials with a line similar to this, “Look, you know, if you play our game, I can make you and your family very healthy. I can make sure that you get very rich. If you don’t play our game, if you follow your campaign promises, you may go the way of Allende in Chile or Arbenz in Guatemala or Lumumba in the Congo.”

DARFUR -- A HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION

Lenin's Tomb

Kirsty Wark conducted a raised-eyebrow piece on the topic for the BBC's supposedly analytical Newsnight programme on Friday (while wearing a seriously offensive blouse...

The trouble is that no viewer would have understood the slightest thing that was happening.

• One would gather that there was some sort of war on,

• that there had been a peace deal last year, but it failed,

• that there are several groups fighting rather than two,

• that dreadful things have happened including 200,000 deaths and 2 million refugees.

They didn't name a single rebel group,

• interview anyone from them,

• explain their grievances,

• or the basis of the combat.

It was mentioned that this UN force basically has no mandate except to observe,

• which means they can't disarm militias.

Okay, which militias?

• The Justice and Equality Movement?

• The fractious Sudan Liberation Army/Movement?

• The 'Arab' nomads now engaged in fratricidal violence over land?

No explanations here.

The Sudanese ambassador was not asked why his government is happy to have tens of thousands of AU and UN troops stationed about an insurgency hot-spot watching a civil war go on around them like a bunch of lemons.

HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION?

What is to be done in a crisis like the genocide in Rwanda, when the international community seeks to stop the killing? Can nations, acting through the UN Security Council, fulfill a �responsibility to protect� innocent civilians? Or is such a doctrine just a Trojan horse for great power abuse and more mendacity?

When nations send their military forces into other nations� territory, it is rarely (if ever) for �humanitarian� purposes. They are typically pursuing their narrow national interest � grabbing territory, gaining geo-strategic advantage, or seizing control of precious natural resources. Leaders hope to win public support by describing such actions in terms of high moral purposes � bringing peace, justice, democracy and civilization to the affected area. In the era of colonialism, European governments all cynically insisted that they acted to promote such higher commitments � the �white man�s burden,� �la mission civilisatrice,� and the like.

The appeal to higher moral purposes continues to infect the political discourse of the great powers. Today�s �humanitarian intervention� is only the latest in this long tradition of political mendacity. It is perfectly clear in such cases as the US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq (UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has called it a �humanitarian intervention.�) But should intervention (even multilateral intervention, approved by the Security Council) be excluded in all circumstances?

This section looks at the issues and the fierce debate that has arisen within the United Nations about these �new approaches� to sovereignty and collective action.

DARFUR: A FEW QUESTIONS

THE SUDANESE THINKER, a blog

1)

… what about the rebels? Who are their enablers? From where are they getting their financing? Which parties are providing it to them and why?

How can the rebels afford their ongoing war against al-Bashir’s NCP dominated Khartoum government? How can they afford their travel expenses in and out of European countries?

Certain groups are providing them with the financial means to do so. The question is who? Moreover and more importantly what is the agenda of those financiers? They certainly have one. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be financing Darfur’s rebels in the first place. In politics, nothing comes for free.

It’s known that Chad allegedly provides the rebels support. It’s also known that wealthy Darfurian businessmen overseas outside Sudan provide support too. What isn’t well known and focused on in the Western mainstream media however is the agenda of regime change some powerful groups have in mind. He has been fingered as an extremist; before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks Turabi often

Al-Bashir’s worries are not baseless. The United States and Israel did after all support the Southern Sudanese militarily and financially against the Northerners during the long and bloody Southern- Northern Sudanese civil war which raged on for more than 2 decades.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise. It was in their interests to destabalize a hostile regime.

Are Darfurian rebels receiving support from the United States ... directly or indirectly through neighbouring countries like Chad?

Professional journalists and the Western mainstream media should definitely dedicate more time to answering this question.

2)

Many aren’t aware of Dr Hasan al-Turabi's role in the Darfur conflict. The following are excerpts highlighting his involvement:

A charismatic college professor and former speaker of parliament, Turabi has long been one of Bashir’s main political rivals and an influential figure in Sudan. ... More recently, the United Nations and human rights experts have accused Turabi of backing one of Darfur’s key rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement, in which some of his top former students are leaders.

3)

Dr Khalil Ibrahim, (and here) a protege of Islamist hardliner Dr Hasan al-Turabi. Formed in November 2002, JEM is increasingly recognised as being part and parcel of Dr Turabi’s Popular Congress. Time magazine has described JEM as “a fiercely Islamic organisation said to be led by Hassan al-Turabi” and that Turabi’s ultimate goal is “the presidential palace in Khartoum and a stridently Islamic Sudan”.

More from Sudan Watch

MINNI MINNAWI

Minnawi was the only one of three rebel leaders to sign the May 2006 accord with the government of Sudan.

Worse, the most serious violence no longer comes from the Arab janjaweed militias armed by the government of Sudan, which the Bush administration has accused of genocide, but from the rebels themselves, including members of Minnawi's own faction of the Sudan Liberation Army.

Relations between Minnawi's group and African Union peacekeepers are badly strained.

But he blamed much of the insecurity in Darfur on others within the rebel movement, which has split into at least 16 different factions as rival commanders grow disenchanted with prospects for peace.

Those groups say that the 2006 agreement was fatally flawed, offering too little compensation for war victims and no guarantee that the perpetrators of the worst atrocities — the government-backed janjaweed — would be disarmed.

led by then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who were eager for a deal after months of negotiations.

"I think he feels really frustrated," said a Western diplomat who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly. "He's sitting in Khartoum, he's not in control of the political process and he's not in control of his forces on the ground."

As a member of the minority Zaghawa ethnic group, Minnawi is regarded with deep skepticism by the larger Fur group.

the international community has failed to pressure Sudan to implement its terms, including providing money to rebuild Darfur.

DARFUR REBELS FOR TALKS IN TANZANIA

ARUSHA, Tanzania (Reuters) - Darfur rebel factions began arriving in Tanzania on Friday for African Union-United Nations sponsored negotiations aimed at reconciling their differences ahead of peace talks with the Sudanese government.


The talks to end the four-year conflict in western Sudan have taken on a new importance since the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday approved the deployment of 26,000 peacekeeping troops and police to stem the bloodshed in Darfur.


The major factions have loose alliances and are in constant negotiations to form new coalitions.

Here are the major players:

* SLA - Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur - Nur has few troops left based in western Jabel Marra. But from Darfur's largest Fur tribe, he commands huge popular support especially in the camps housing more than 2 million people driven from their homes during the fighting. Nur refuses to attend the Arusha talks.

* JEM - Khalil Ibrahim - Dogged by splits and with claims by JEM's military leadership that it has overthrown Ibrahim, which he denies, observers say JEM is not a significant power on the ground but is included to avoid the group acting as a spoiler. Ibrahim has been sanctioned by the United States for hindering the peace process. His group will be represented at Arusha.

* Jar el-Neby and Suleiman Marajan - Based in North Darfur, these two are important figures with many troops in Darfur. They had wanted a commanders' unity conference before Arusha but have decided to attend the meeting.

* SLA-Unity - Abdallah Yehia. Commanders include Ahmed Kubur in Darfur. SLA-Unity loosely encompasses other prominent SLA rebels including Sherif Harir. Yehia says Unity field commanders will not attend Arusha unless SLA Humanitarian Coordinator Suleiman Jamous is released.

* United Front for Liberation and Development - Sherif Harir. SLA figure Khamis Abdallah and three other smaller factions formed a new umbrella group in Eritrea last month. Each faction alone counts for little on the ground, analysts say, but by virtue of the unification have earned a seat at talks.

* Suleiman Jamous - The elderly Jamous has been virtually imprisoned in a U.N. hospital in Kordofan, a region neighbouring Kordofan, for 13 months. All agree he is influential and respected among Darfuris and all rebel factions. Khartoum says if he leaves the U.N. building he will be arrested. This week 11 prominent activists including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to request his release. Jamous, the SLA humanitarian coordinator, was the liaison between rebels and the world's largest aid operation in Darfur until the United Nations airlifted him to Kordofan for medical treatment last year.

What Imperialists Don't Say: Oil is Behind Struggle in Darfur

June 4, 2006 9:07 | by G. Dunkel

Chad, which was once a French colony and still is occupied by French troops, is accusing Sudan of supporting and encouraging an April 14 raid on its capital, Ndjamena. It is threatening to expel 200,000 Sudanese living in Chad who get their support from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Sudan-which at one time was a British colony, but has since been using its oil to develop an independent economy-charges that Chad has been supporting rebellion in Darfur. Sudan wants the UNHCR to financially support the 15,000 Chadians who have fled to Sudan recently to escape heavy fighting in eastern Chad.

The fierce fighting in eastern Chad at the end of March resulted in the combat death of Chadian Army commander Brig. Gen. Abakar Youssouf Mahamat Itno, underlining the army's decline.

China Plays A Different Role

Darfur is known to have major yet untapped oil reserves, ... While France and the US are the ... with significant military forces in Africa, Britain still plays a major diplomatic and political role there, generally in coordination with Washington.

China plays a different role. The Western imperialists see China as their growing competitor for Sudan's oil. China has actually helped Sudan's economic development while serving its own needs for oil.

According to a Dec. 23, 2004, report in the Washington Post, China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), owned by the Chinese government, invested $300 million in an expansion of Sudan's largest refinery, doubling its output. The refinery now supplies most of Sudan's petroleum needs.

The CNPC also began trial production of oil at a field in southern Darfur in 2004 and has a 41-percent share of the oil from a field in the Melut Basin. Another Chinese firm, Sinopec Corp., built a 1,000-mile pipeline from that complex to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where China's Petroleum Engineering Construction Group has built a tanker terminal. All in all, China buys about two-thirds of Sudan's oil.

US Policy: Divide and Rule
Beginning in the 1970s Sudan began moving in a radical Islamic direction, rejecting the neocolonial relations that the United States and other European powers wanted to impose.

A well-organized and well-financed rebellion in southern Sudan began soon after. The United States supported the south financially, politically and militarily ... By tightening an economic embargo on the Sudanese government, the US could also exert economic pressure.

... military attacks, like the cruise missile strike in 1998 that blew up the only pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. ... A delegation led by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark of the International Action Centre visited the ruins of the plant and confirmed that it had simply been making medicines.

In 2005, the central government and the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement-the group which led the struggle in the south-ratified an agreement. The settlement granted the south substantial autonomy, a 50-50 split of oil revenues and a referendum on full independence within six years. China was instrumental in the negotiations for this peace agreement. Once the Sudanese settled this conflict, the imperialists needed another one to keep up the threats and pressure on Sudan.

Washington Foments Division

Drought and the subsequent encroachment of the desert have led to fighting over grazing and water rights in Darfur, which escalated in 2003 into a major conflict. The fighting has grown so intense that tens of thousands of people are reported to have died and 200,000 to have fled across the border into Chad. Two competing armed movements-the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Movement for Justice and Equality-won some early victories against the Sudanese Army. These two armed movements maintained their logistic and training bases in the eastern part of Chad, near the border with Darfur.

Once the rebellion in Darfur began, the Sudanese government set up counter-militias, called Jinjaweed, recruited from nomadic ethnic groups in Darfur who mainly speak Arabic. The Sudanese Liberation Army and the Movement for Justice and Equality recruited from ethnic groups in Darfur who don't use Arabic. The US government, among others, is trying to exacerbate these differences by defining this conflict as between "Arab vs. black." Washington has accused Sudan of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing." However, Paul Moorcraft, a British expert on Sudan, points out, "Darfur's Arabs are black, indigenous African Muslims-just like Darfur's non-Arabs."

The African Union has 7,000 troops in Darfur trying to keep the peace. But the imperialist powers want more direct control by replacing the African Union forces with either NATO or UN troops in order to further imperialist interests in the region and to deny the Sudanese control over their own territory.

Propaganda for NATO Intervention

The New York Times, whose right-wing columnist Nicholas D. Kristof just won a Pulitzer prize for demanding US intervention in Darfur, supplies the liberal cover for imperialist troop deployment. Two Zionist groups, the American Jewish World Service and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, have taken a very active role in building a national rally set for April 30 whose main demand is direct US intervention in Darfur to "stop the genocide." The AJWS is pushing to replace the African Union soldiers in Darfur with 20,000 UN or NATO troops.

But that would require the approval of the UN Security Council. China is very likely to veto any such resolution. So the US and Britain are stepping up their propaganda against Sudan and against China's significant support and investment there. France, the main competing imperialist power in Africa, is concerned about Sudan. But its real worry is Chad and its oil, which is currently being extracted by a consortium led by ExxonMobil. France is concerned that a key part of its sphere of influence in Africa is shrinking.

The World Bank has forced a deal on Chad that restricts how that country can spend its oil revenue and that limits its oil income per barrel to $10 to $15 less than world market prices. (Jeune Afrique, April 16-22) Opposition to the World Bank oil deal is growing in Chad. And many Chadians also resent the fact that French soldiers are still guarding government buildings 45 years after independence.

The US want to get President Déby out and a new president in who relies on it, not France. The very day of the attack on Ndjamena, US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick called on Chad to adopt a "different political process" and to reach a "satisfactory arrangement" with the political opposition. Under-secretary of State for African Affairs Donald Yamamoto began a two-day visit there on April 24.

Report of information trip to Chad and Cameroon - January 16th to 26th, 2007

Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development of the German Bundestag


Oilfields in Chad and the Sudan. The Chad-Cameroon Pipeline runs from Doba to Kribi (left) and the Sudanese Pipeline to Port Soudan (right). (Source: www.rfi.fr)

CHAD CONFLICT ZONE

map of conflict zones
1. Chad says Sudan government-backed militias are attacking villagers in Chad. Some 200,000 Darfur refugees are also in Chad
2. Sudan accuses Chad of backing the Darfur rebels
3. Chad says it will send troops to help CAR fight the rebels
4. CAR says Sudan backs rebels who have seized towns in CAR

DARFUR/OIL/CHINA

... Whether it’s the 400,000 claimed by some or the 70,000 suggested by the UN in March, the human toll combined with rapes, burned villages and destroyed lives has torn a gaping hole in the fabric of humanity.

genocide, (or) “crimes against humanity”

In its outrage, the world community has offered various remedies:

• intervention,

• sanctions against the Bashir regime,

• and UN peacekeeping forces.

In the U.S., community and religious organizations ...

• targeting China, a large purchaser of oil and seller of arms to the Sudanese government.

• divestment campaign aimed at U.S. finance companies that own stock in China’s oil industry.

• actions directed at China’s hosting of the 2008 Olympics, suggesting boycotts and protests at the games themselves.

...many observers suggest that Sudan’s huge oil reserves are a key factor motivating U.S. government and corporate interest. Writing in the UK Guardian, recently, commentator Mandy Turner attributed U.S. interest ... “West Africa already supplies about 12 percent of U.S. crude oil imports, and America’s National Intelligence Council predicts that this share will rise to 25 percent by 2015.”

On the other hand, China too has a large stake in and need for African oil. ... It imports 25 percent of its crude oil from Africa.”

U.S. oil companies, it should be remembered, have been prohibited from operating in the Sudan since the 1997 embargo.

...the new emphasis on China seems a bit curious. ... Beijing’s recent abstention in the Security Council on bringing the janjaweed ringleaders of the massacres to justice smacks strongly of this posture. ... it’s also true that in recent months China has undertaken a wide range of mutually beneficial trade agreements with several African countries, widely hailed on the continent.

The Sudanese left, ... argues that China’s investment only benefits the bank accounts of the Bashir clique ... Beijing, they claim, utilizes no Sudanese labor, preferring instead to import Chinese workers.

U.S. solidarity ... In the past such concern swelled the ranks of civil rights and anti-apartheid movements. It would do well to draw on the experience of past solidarity in support of African liberation, ...

CORP WATCH: SUDAN REBELS

by Nima Elbagir, Reuters
April 19th, 2005

• Sudan on Tuesday said its ABCO corporation -- in which Swiss company Cliveden owns 37 percent -- had begun drilling for oil in Darfur, where preliminary studies showed there were "abundant" quantities of oil.

• "The Sudanese people have never benefited from these (oil) discoveries," said Ahmed Hussein, the London-based spokesman for the Justice and Equality Movement. "The oil must wait until a final peace deal is signed."

LONDON, April 19 (Reuters) -

Sudan's main oilfields are in the south and disputes over oil prolonged negotiations to end 20 years of civil war.

Mohamed Siddig, a spokesman for Sudan's Ministry of Energy and Mining, told Reuters by phone on Monday: "The drilling (in Darfur) was undertaken on the basis of the geological studies and surveys which proved the presence of oil in abundant quantities."

Sudan Liberation Movement spokesman Adam Ali Shogar told Reuters from the Chadian capital N'Djamena that the drilling for oil was a waste of time...

... without a just distribution of wealth and a resolution to the conflict it is pointless."

Sudan began exporting oil in 1998 and exports around 300,000 barrels per day, which is set to rise to 500,000 bpd by August. Work on the first Darfur oil well, southwest of El-Fasher in North Darfur State, is under way.

... the rebels at the start of the rebellion, they were asking for 80 percent of Darfur's oil wealth," Mohamed Issam, a Sudanese political analyst, told Reuters from Khartoum.

"Now they know for a fact the oil is there. ...

CORPWATCH "DARFUR" KEYWORD SEARCH

AFRICAN OIL

Empire of Oil: Capitalist Dispossession and the Scramble for Africa
by Michael Watts

...a central plank of U.S. foreign policy since President Roosevelt met King Saud of Saudi Arabia and cobbled together their “special relationship” aboard the USS Quincy in February 1945—is in a total shambles. The pillars of that policy—Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf oil states, and Venezuela—are hardly supplicant sheep within the U.S. imperial fold.

So-called supply risks in Iran, Venezuela, and Nigeria coupled with the speculative impulses of the oil traders have driven up the price of oil to around $70 a barrel,

Although Africa is not as well endowed in hydrocarbons (both oil and gas) as the Gulf states, the continent “is all set to balance power,” and as a consequence it is “the subject of fierce competition by energy companies.”

A new scramble is in the making. The battleground consists of the rich African oilfields (see map).

Energy security is the name of the game.

The strategic interests of the United States certainly include not only access to cheap and reliable low-sulphur oil imports, but also keeping the Chinese (for example in Sudan) and South Koreans (for example in Nigeria)—aggressive new actors in the African oil business—and Islamic terror at bay. Africa is, according to the intelligence community, the “new frontier” in the fight against revolutionary Islam. Energy security, it turns out, is a terrifying hybrid of the old and the new: primitive accumulation and American militarism coupled to the war on terror.

The real crisis of Africa is that after twenty-five years of brutal neoliberal reform, and savage World Bank structural adjustment and IMF stabilization, African development has failed catastrophically.

It was Africa after all that was the testing ground for the Hayekian counter-revolution that swept through development economics in the 1970s

This was the first systematic attempt to take the Chicago Boys experience in post-Allende Chile and impose it on an entire continent. The ideas of Elliot Berg and his fellow travelers marked the triumph of a long march by the likes of Peter Bauer, H. G. Johnson, and Deepak Lal (ably supported by the monetarist think tanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Mont Pelerin Society, and the astonishing rise to power from the early presence of Leo Strauss and Fredrich Hayek of the “Chicago School”)

DARFUR

The United States, acting through surrogate allies in Chad and neighboring states has trained and armed the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army, headed until his death in July 2005 by John Garang, trained at the US Special Forces school at Fort Benning, Georgia

Eritrea hosts and supports the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the umbrella National Democratic Alliance (NDA) opposition group, and the Eastern Front and Darfur rebels.

There are two rebel groups fighting in Sudan's Darfur region against the Khartoum central government of President Omar al-Bashir - the Justice for Equality Movement and the larger Sudan Liberation Army (SLA).

In February 2003, the SLA launched attacks on Sudan government positions in the Darfur region. SLA secretary-general Minni Arkou Minnawi called for armed struggle, accusing the government of ignoring Darfur. "The objective of the SLA is to create a united democratic Sudan." In other words, regime change in Sudan.

ALSO

*War and Thievery in The Guise of Humanitarianism*

ALSO

Tue, Jun. 5th, 2007, 07:36 pm
Mahmood Mamdani on Darfur: "The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency"

Who are Sudan's Darfur rebels?
By Martin Plaut
BBC Africa analyst

AFRICAN OIL

• But what has most made Sudan a violent place has been the discovery of oil.

• The Khartoum government has already lost control of the south, where most of its reserves lie.

• The China National Petroleum Corporation bought the rights to Block 6, the largest oil and gas concession field still controlled by Khartoum, which lies mostly in Darfur.

• Production costs are believed to be a bargain 22 cents (less than 12p) a barrel,

• and with Rolls-Royce Marine reportedly supplying tens of millions of dollars worth of pumping equipment this summer Block 6 production is alleged to have risen from 10,000 to 40,000 barrels a day.

• To the east lies Somalia, where the descent into war is portrayed as historical enmity ...

• The real reason is likely to be that the Ogaden region, which borders Somalia, sits on a not yet exploited gas field.

• The Malaysian oil giant Petronas has bought three concession blocks there. Addis Ababa fears a resurgent Somalia will seek to annex Ogaden.

• The likely coming war there is in part gas-powered.

Ogaden (pronounced and often spelled Ogadēn, Somali: Ogaadeen) is a part of the Somali Region in Ethiopia. Sometimes known as "Abyssinian Somaliland," some locals refer to it as Ogadenia (Somali: Ogaadeeniya). The inhabitants are predominantly ethnic Somali and Muslim. The fact that some Somalis call the entire Somali region of Ethiopia "Ogadenia" is a cause of much friction in the region, because there are significant other clans in the Ogaden, such as the Sheikhal, Hawiye and Marehan.[citation needed] For this reason the titles "Somali Galbeed", which means "Western Somalia," is often preferred by supporters of the concept of Greater Somalia.

DARFUR? --- CHEVRON PIPELINE FROM CHAD -- CHINESE PIPELINE FROM DARFUR SUDAN