Issue No.590
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13 - 19 June 2002 Issue No.590 Region |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Washington's winsome policy
Washington warms up to Khartoum, but a humanitarian catastrophe, in the wake of intensified fighting in southern Sudan, is in the making, writes Gamal Nkrumah
A cataclysmic shift in United States policy towards Sudan is currently underway. Oil has radically changed Washington's Sudan policy. US President George W Bush, whose family business is oil-oriented, has taken a keen interest in the fortunes of Sudan. The US oil industry, inextricably intertwined with the Bush administration, is salivating over Sudan's vast oil wealth.
Last month, the US appointed Jeff Millington as the new chargé d'affaires for its embassy in Khartoum. The US State Department withdrew its US staff from Sudan in 1996 following security concerns and a worsening of relations between the two countries.
Washington's move comes at a time of heavy military engagement in the three provinces of Bahr Al-Ghazal, Equatoria and Upper Nile. The Sudanese government claims that the army and the pro-government Popular Defence Force militias inflicted "huge losses" on the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the country's main armed opposition group.
The recent upsurge in fighting has created a humanitarian catastrophe. Relief workers estimate that between 150,000 and 300,000 people were displaced in the western Upper Nile region alone between January and April this year.
There are four million internally displaced Sudanese, in addition to an estimated five million Sudanese who have fled their country because of the civil war and its ruinous economic ramifications. But, while lamenting the humanitarian disaster, observers discount the military significance of the Sudanese government's campaign. "The Sudanese government traditionally steps up its military pressure on the SPLA, the country's most powerful armed opposition group, in the dry season before the onset of the summer rains," Farouk Abu-Eissa, the head of the Cairo-based Arab Lawyers' Union and official spokesman for the umbrella Sudanese opposition group, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), told Al- Ahram Weekly.
Abu-Eissa said that even though government forces claimed to have captured strategic SPLA-controlled towns, the government had lost Kapoeta, one of the three most important government-held garrison towns in southern Sudan -- the others being Juba and Torit. The SPLA, however, conceded to making a "tactical withdrawal" from Qaysan near the border with Ethiopia in the Blue Nile province, but said it was advancing on the government garrison town of Wau, in the Upper Nile province. The SPLA has consolidated its control over the Upper Nile south of Bentui, where the bulk of Sudan's oil is produced.
Former Senator John Danforth, US President Bush's special envoy to Sudan, warned recently that the war in Sudan "was not winnable". Danforth recommended that the US continue to act as a mediator between the Sudanese government and the SPLA. The US was instrumental in the Sudanese government clinching a deal with the SPLA over the Nuba Mountains and a cease-fire in that war-torn region was signed between the warring parties in January.
Danforth also said that the controversial "self-determination" principle for southern Sudan should be replaced by the right of southerners to live under a democratic government that guaranteed their religious rights and protected their cultural uniqueness. This is seen as a climb down from Washington's former hard-line stance vis-à-vis the Sudanese government over the issue.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration's Sudan policy has come under the increasing scrutiny of powerful lobby groups in the US with various political affiliations, ranging from Christian fundamentalist to African American and civil rights. They are critical of alleged slavery and forced Islamisation in Sudan.
Members of the House International Relations Committee severely criticised the Bush administration last week for blocking legislation aimed at cutting off oil revenues that Sudan allegedly uses to finance the war in the south of the country. "Khartoum is playing the game of peace while conducting a vicious war of annihilation [of southern Sudanese people]," warned Congressman Tom Lantos of California, the committee's top Democrat.
"The only way to get Khartoum's attention is to curtail its oil revenues, the only asset that is keeping it from bankruptcy," said Michael Young, the chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom which advocates political and religious rights for the Christians of southern Sudan.
US Assistant Secretary of State Walter Kansteiner defended the Bush administration's record, and explained that Washington had opposed a key part of the Sudan Peace Act, which was overwhelmingly passed by Congress a year ago, banning investors in oil installations in Sudan from raising capital in the US and from trading their securities on US markets. The Bush administration has expressed strong opposition to a clause in the controversial Sudan sanctions bill -- a policy widely seen as favouring the Sudanese government and the US oil business interests. "It is a precedent for political interference in US capital markets," Kansteiner explained, much to the consternation of Washington's US critics.
But other factors apart from oil are at play, too. "Washington is very concerned about the Chinese influence in Sudan, and especially China's strong economic ties with Sudan," Abu- Eissa told the Weekly. With the withdrawal of US companies from Sudan during the Clinton administration, and the worsening of political ties between the US and Sudan in the mid- 1990s, Chinese companies, including oil firms, stepped in to fill the vacuum. The Chinese, along with the Malaysians and other East Asian countries, were the primary beneficiaries of the US economic pullout from Sudan. "The Chinese are heavily involved with infrastructural development and manufacturing -- especially the rehabilitation of Sudan's once thriving textile industry," Abu-Eissa noted. "Furthermore, Washington is worried that China might use Sudan as a springboard into other African countries."
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