What Imperialists Don't Say:
Oil Is Behind Struggle in Darfur
By G. Dunkel
The mass media in the U.S., France and Britain are writing a great deal about
the suffering in the Darfur region of western Sudan and the tensions between
the Sudanese government and neighboring Chad. Not surprisingly, they write very
little about the economic interests these three imperialist countries have in
the oil recently discovered in this part of Africa.
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, representing a vast
amount of potential wealth at a time when crude oil has risen to nearly $75 a
barrel. While France and the U.S. are the only two imperialist countries 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
Petro leum 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.
U.S. Policy: Divide and Rule
After Sudan achieved its formal independence from Britain in 1956, the country
went through a period of internal struggles. 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 in order to divide and conquer. By tightening an economic embargo on
the Sudanese government, the U.S. could also exert economic pressure.
Washington even went so far as military attacks, like the cruise missile strike
in 1998 that blew up the only pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. No proof was ever
offered to back up the imperialist pretext that the plant manufactured chemical
weapons, or that Sudan was somehow connected to terrorist bombings in Kenya and
Tanzania. A delegation led by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark of the
International Action Center 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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, U.S. 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. Undersecretary of State for African Affairs Donald Yamamoto began a
two-day visit there on April 24.
=========
The Underlying Problem
Water: The Real Reason Behind Israeli Occupations
By Kathryn Casa
There is a conspicuous silence in the craggy wadi above Jericho these days.
During any normal winter, an insistent roar frames the quiet of that place, as
water cascades from the mountains into Wadi Saqr and rushes past St. George's
Monastery, built as a hospice for Christians on their pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Today, those pilgrims would find little solace in the and alcove, which now
echoes only with the steady crescendo of fighter jets as they streak across the
skies of Palestine. In wadis and riverbeds throughout the country this dry
year, the silence is deafening to regional water experts, who understand that
the current battle cry for oil may one day be drowned by a battle cry for an
even more basic need-water.
Long before massive Soviet Jewish immigration increased Israel's already
considerable thirst, the country was facing a water deficit of up to 500
million cubic meters annually by 1990. The deficit projection is now put at a
staggering 2.2 billion cubic meters annually by the year 2000.
Israeli water experts were painfully aware by 1979 that all the water resources
available within the country's 1948 borders had been exploited. By the early
1980s, Israel was getting half of its water from Arab sources located outside
the pre- 1967 boundaries ' resources which are now over-exploited by more than
10 percent.
"Mortal Dangers"
Israel's Ministry of Agriculture has admitted that relinquishing control of the
West Bank would have "an immediate and significantly detrimental effect on the
Israeli water supply. " In a full-page advertisement in the Aug. 18, 1990
international edition of the Jerusalem Post, the ministry admits that giving up
Palestinian water would constitute "mortal dangers" for Israel and "would, in a
most tangible way, endanger her continued existence."
The advertisement states: "It is difficult to conceive of any political
solution consistent with Israel's survival that does not involve complete,
continued Israeli control of the water and sewerage systems, and of the
associated infrastructure, including the power supply and road network,
essential to their operation, maintenance and accessibility."
About 85 percent of the water in the large aquifer below the West Bank is
currently used by Israeli settlers or pumped into Israel, while Palestinian
water consumption in the occupied territories has been sharply curtailed.
Average water use per capita among Palestinians is 25 cubic meters per year,
whereas the average Israeli rate is 170 cubic meters annually. In some areas,
Palestinian water use falls below the level determined by the United Nations as
necessary to maintain minimal health standards.
What's more, Palestinians are not allowed to drill new wells or deepen existing
ones, according to the PLO's Economic Development Department in Amman.
But the Israeli siphon goes much farther afield than the West Bank. Israel
takes 100 million cubic meters of water each year from the Yarmouk River, which
originates in the Golan Heights. It diverts all of the Jordan River above Lake
Tiberias, leaving only a polluted trickle downstream. And many international
water experts agree that Israel is now either trucking water or has installed
an underground pipeline to divert the Litani River, which originates in
Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and flows completely within Lebanese territory. Some
observers say this may be a main factor in Israel's occupation of the so-called
"security zone" in south Lebanon.
Yet, even these water sources apparently are not enough. Widespread Arab press
reports are now linking Israel's dealings in Ethiopia with its intention to
gain access to the Nile.
Even if the political implications of this regional water-witching don't result
in yet another Middle East war, as many observers and politicians predict, they
will inevitably reinforce Israeli intransigence in refusing to approach the
negotiating table. Peace for Israel, it seems, would carry a hefty price tag.
A Costly Peace
Thomas Stauffer, writing for the 1984 Arab Research Center symposium on water
held in Amman, concluded that Israel's "only significant alternative to
capturing more water sources is a large-scale desalination program that would
require implausibly large increases in US aid, at between $1.2-1.8 billion per
year. " Stauffer said Israel's cost for replacing only the water it takes from
the occupied territories would be about $2 billion annually. "The price of
peace thus becomes, for Israel, the spoils of war," he wrote, "some $2-3
billion yearly in forsaken war prizes."
Stauffer's figures, now seven years old, were compiled well before Soviet
Jewish immigration upped water demand considerably. They also fail to include
the cost of buying water to replace between 400 and 800 million cubic meters it
is estimated Israel now takes from the Litani.
This year's drought in the region has heightened concern among Israeli
officials about what they can do when the well runs dry. Israeli farmers were
told in March they would have to reduce water consumption by as much as 70
percent.
The implications of a multi-billion dollar price tag for Israel's water needs
are not lost on Washington.
Alternatives such as cloud-seeding and desalination have been floated, but the
price tag in most cases is prohibitive to a government already stretched to
capacity by exorbitant military expenses and a burgeoning population. One
Israeli agricultural official, asked late last year who should foot the bill
for urgently needed water projects, replied matter-of-factly that Japan and the
US should.
The implications of a multi-billion dollar price tag for Israel's water needs
are not lost on Washington, where politicians fully understand the pressure
Israel is able to put on them when the need arises, and the fallout they face
when funds are not forthcoming. Consequently, the high cost of land for peace
may well put mediation efforts in an entirely different light.
The quest for water to supply the Jewish state is rooted in early-1890s Zionist
attempts to include the Jordan and Litani rivers in plans for Palestine, and
the Nile and Euphrates in those for Greater Israel. The borders proposed by
Zionists after World War I began with a point on the Mediterranean north of the
mouth of the Litani, then east to include all sources feeding the Jordan River
(including Lebanon's Hasbani and Syria's Banias rivers), the eastern shore of
Lake Tiberias and all the Yarmouk River tributaries, further east past Dera'a
to Amman, and then south to the Gulf of Aqaba.
Jordan's leaders have been sounding alarm bells about Israel's water appetite
for years. Jordan is particularly vulnerable to Israel's aquatic expansionism,
since Jordan already suffers from a severe shortage. In some villages, water is
available as infrequently as once every 18 days. The chronic shortage can be
credited, in large part, to Israel's claim to 100 percent of the Jordan River.
Compounding the gravity of Jordan's water shortage, said Prime Minister Mudar
Badran last summer, was Israel's successful campaign to sabotage World Bank
funding for the $450 million Al-Wahda dam project on the Yarmouk River, just
south of the Jordan-Syria border. Badran said the project, which would have
supplied the two countries with up to 250 million cubic meters of water
annually, was suspended after Israel convinced the World Bank that it held
water rights to Syria's Yarmouk.
Israeli water experts claim they oppose the project because it was cost
inefficient and that Yarmouk water should be stored in Lake Tiberias.
Also last summer, Tel Aviv revealed its intention to resume plans to build a
controversial Mediterranean-Dead Sea Canal which if completed, could encroach
further on Jordan's vastly insufficient groundwater supplies. The canal project
was the brainchild of early Zionists, but did not get off the ground until
1984, when Israel announce that work on it had begun.
Abdullah Hamadneh, in a paper for Amman's Arab Research Center, predicted
Jordan would be the first country adversely affected by the project because
Jordanian land would be inundated by a rise in the Dead Sea's level. Hamadneh
said a higher water level would cause an eastward movement of the dividing line
between the fresh and salt water on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea,
ultimately depriving Jordan of its underground water reserves in that area.
Israel's "annexation" of the Golan Heights somehow prompts it, at least
publicly, to discount Syria as a factor in the big water picture. Speaking at a
1989 Jerusalem conference on water, Dr. Elisha Kally, an Israeli water
consultant and formerly with the Israeli water agency, Tahal, said Syria should
not be party to any future regional negotiations on water because Israel does
not share any water bodies with Syria.
Kally appeared to ignore the fact that not only does the Jordan River originate
in the Golan Heights, but the headwaters of the Yarmouk (which, during the
conference, Kally repeatedly referred to as a potential water resource for
Israel) are also in Syria.
Although Syria currently is experiencing no water shortage, Turkey's damming of
the Euphrates River to fill its new Ataturk Dam is expected to have
far-reaching implications on Syria's water resources.
Far-Reaching Implications
One water expert, Leslie Schmida, writes: "Israel's water strategy has been at
the heart of its campaign to retain permanent control of the Golan, control
[which] enables Israel to pre-empt any Syrian or multilateral Arab effort to
divert the Upper Jordan back to Arab territory or to develop the Yarmouk."
Control of the Golan also has long been seen as a stepping stone to the Litani.
Initially, Israeli water experts predicted such access would increase their
water supplies by as much as 50 percent. But the sharp new increase in per
capita water consumption in Israel, coupled with its growing population-as many
as 300,000 Soviet Jewish immigrants are expected in 1991 alone-has dispelled
the old notion of the Litani as the panacea for Israel's water woes.
According to a May 1990 report in the Lebanese daily, AI-Liwa, Israel's thirst
for Lebanese water has surpassed even what the Litani can provide. The paper
reported that Israeli officers and water experts recently had inspected the
Hasbani River in the south, after installing large water pumps on the river's
banks and storage tanks on hilltops near the river.
A British Middle East expert, Dr. Uri Davis, pointed out six years ago that,
given Israeli policy and the structure of its economy-including Israel's
post-1967 settlement policy-and given the average increase of Israel's water
consumption by one percent annually, "Nothing short of harnessing a proportion
of the major rivers of the Middle East-the Nile, the Euphrates and the
Tigris-can meet the long-term requirements of the pattern of water consumption
in Israel."
The Nile
Arab observers now claim that is exactly Israel's intention in its relationship
with Ethiopia. The link between Tel Aviv and Addis Ababa has been seen by the
West primarily as an arms-for-immigrants trade-off, in which Ethiopia gets arms
for its fight against Eritrean separatists and Tigrean insurgents. In exchange,
Addis Ababa has reportedly agreed to allow an estimated 15,000 Jews remaining
in Ethiopia to emigrate to Israel.
But according to widespread reports in the Arab press, the real reason behind
Israel's involvement in Ethiopia is to establish a foothold in its decades-old
push for access to the Nile.
Salem Nassar wrote in the July 1990 issue of the Paris-based Ab Dawliyeh
International that Israel has supplied Ethiopia with technology and expertise
for plans to dam the Blue Nile, a major tributary to the Nile.
In another story, Said Shahat writes in the Cyprus-based Al-Shahed magazine
that Israel has convinced the Mengistu government that it was sold short in a
1902 pact between Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda and Egypt, for water rights to the
Nile. Shahat claims Israel plans to help pay for up to 26 dams on the Blue Nile
which, according to a 1964 US government feasibility study, could produce a
total of 5.4 billion cubic meters of water.
A Political Stepping Stone
Although political analysts doubt Israel could or would divert a substantial
amount of the water, they believe the Jewish state could use control of the
water as a political stepping stone in the region.
The prospect of such a scheme makes Egypt understandably uneasy, since almost
all its water comes from the Nile. Also, because Egypt's population is
increasing by one million people each year, the government has determined it
must reclaim at least twice as much land as the amount that available or
potentially available water would allow. In addition, local food production in
Egypt is incapable of catching up with the continuous increase in consumption,
creating a risky dependence on imports.
An Egyptian journalist, EI-Sayyid Zohra, said these facts mean Egypt not only
is in need of every drop of water it now has, but that gaining extensive new
water resources is vital in the near future. Otherwise, Zohra predicts, the
country will undergo a severe crisis having a direct impact on the daily life
of Egyptians. "The facts indicate that any drop of water that goes to Israel
will be at the expense of the actual needs of the Egyptian people," Zohra
writes.
That scenario prompted Egyptian Foreign Minister Butros Ghali to predict, like
so many of his counterparts, that the next war in the Middle East would be not
for political reasons, but over the Nile.
Dr. Elias Salameh, head of Jordan University's water resources department, put
it in simple terms last summer when he said: "Look, if you deplete a country of
its water resources, you are depriving the people of eating and drinking and
making a living. That leads to domestic unrest, which can result in a
regional-and ultimately international-conflict."
Kathryn Casa is managing editor of The Return, a monthly Palestinian magazine.
=======================
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"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"
Groupe de communication Mulindwas
"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"
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