Invisible War Of The Future

A war of the future is being waged right now in the sprawling desert regionof northeastern Africa known as Sudan. The weapons themselves are notfuturistic. None of the ray-guns, force-fields, or robotic storm troopers thatare the stuff of science fiction; nor, for that matter, the satellite-guidedPredator drones or other high-tech weapon systems at the cutting edge of today'sarsenal.

No, this war is being fought with Kalashnikovs, clubs and knives. In thewestern region of Sudan known as Darfur, the preferred tactics are burning andpillaging, castration and rape -- carried out by Arab militias riding on camelsand horses. The most sophisticated technologies deployed are, on the one hand,the helicopters used by the Sudanese government to support the militias whenthey attack black African villages, and on the other hand, quite a differentweapon: the seismographs used by foreign oil companies to map oil depositshundreds of feet below the surface.

This is what makes it a war of the future: not the slick PowerPointpresentations you can imagine in boardrooms in Dallas and Beijing showing provenreserves in one color, estimated reserves in another, vast subterranean puddlesthat stretch west into Chad, and south to Nigeria and Uganda; not thetechnology; just the simple fact of the oil.

This is a resource war, fought by surrogates, involving great powers whoseeconomies are predicated on growth, contending for a finite pool of resources.It is a war straight out of the pages of Michael Klare's book, Bloodand Oil; and it would be a glaring example of the consequences of ouraddiction to oil, if it were not also an invisible war.

Invisible?

Invisible because it is happening in Africa. Invisible because our mainstreammedia are subsidized by the petroleum industry. Think of all the car ads you seeon television, in newspapers and magazines. Think of the narcissism implicit inour automobile culture, our suburban sprawl, our obsessive focus on the rich andfamous, the giddy assumption that all this can continue indefinitely when weknow it can't -- and you see why Darfur slips into darkness. And Darfur is onlythe tip of the sprawling, scarred state known as Sudan. Nicholas Kristof pointedout in a NewYork Times column that ABC News had a total of 18 minutes of Darfur coveragein its nightly newscasts all last year, and that was to the credit of PeterJennings; NBC had only 5 minutes, CBS only 3 minutes. This is, of course, amicro-fraction of the time devoted to Michael Jackson.

Why is it, I wonder, that when a genocide takes place in Africa, ourattention is always riveted on some black American miscreant superstar? Duringthe genocide in Rwanda ten years ago, when 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered in100 days, it was the trial of O.J. Simpson that had our attention.

Yes, racism enters into our refusal to even try to understand Africa, letalone value African lives. And yes, surely we're witnessing the kind of denialthat Samantha Power documents in AProblem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide; the sheer difficulty wehave acknowledging genocide. Once we acknowledge it, she observes, we paylip-service to humanitarian ideals, but stand idly by. And yes, turmoil inAfrica may evoke our experience in Somalia, with its graphic images of Americansoldiers being dragged through the streets by their heels. But all of this istrumped, I believe, by something just as deep: an unwritten conspiracy ofsilence that prevents the media from making the connections that would threatenour petroleum-dependent lifestyle, that would lead us to acknowledge the factthat the industrial world's addiction to oil is laying waste to Africa.

When Darfur does occasionally make the news -- photographs of burnedvillages, charred corpses, malnourished children -- it is presented withoutcontext. In truth, Darfur is part of a broader oil-driven crisis in northernAfrica. An estimated 300 to 400 Darfurians are dying every day. Yet the messagefrom our media is that we Americans are "helpless" to prevent thishumanitarian tragedy, even as we gas up our SUVs with these people's lives.

Even Kristof -- whoseefforts as a mainstream journalist to keep Darfur in the spotlight areworthy of a Pulitzer -- fails to make the connection to oil; and yet oil was thedriving force behind Sudan's civil war. Oil is driving the genocide in Darfur.Oil drives the Bush administration's policy toward Sudan and the rest of Africa.And oil is likely to topple Sudan and its neighbors into chaos.

The Context for Genocide

I will support these assertions with fact. But first, let's give Sudanesegovernment officials in Khartoum their due. They prefer to explain the slaughterin Darfur as an ancient rivalry between nomadic herding tribes in the north andblack African farmers in the south. They deny responsibility for the militiasand claim they can't control them, even as they continue to train the militias,arm them, and pay them. They play down their Islamistideology, which supported Osama bin Laden and seeks to impose Islamicfundamentalism in Sudan and elsewhere. Instead, they portray themselves aspragmatists struggling to hold together an impoverished and backwards country;all they need is more economic aid from the West, and an end to the tradesanctions imposed by the U.S. in 1997, when President Clinton added Sudan to thelist of states sponsoring terrorism. Darfur, from their perspective, is aninconvenient anomaly that will go away, in time.

It is true that ethnic rivalries and racism play a part in today's conflictin Darfur. Seen in the larger context of Sudan's civil war, however, Darfur isnot an anomaly; it is an extension of that conflict. The real driving forcebehind the North-South conflict became clear after Chevron discovered oil insouthern Sudan in 1978. The traditional competition for water at the fringes ofthe Sahara was transformed into quite a different struggle. The Arab-dominatedgovernment in Khartoum redrew Sudan's jurisdictional boundaries to exclude theoil reserves from southern jurisdiction. Thus began Sudan's 21-year-oldNorth-South civil war. The conflict then moved south, deep into Sudan, intowetter lands that form the headwaters of the Nile and lie far from thehistorical competition for water.

Oil pipelines, pumping stations, well-heads, and other key infrastructurebecame targets for the rebels from the South, who wanted a share in thecountry's new mineral wealth, much of which was on lands they had long occupied.John Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), declaredthese installations to be legitimate targets of war. For a time, the oilcompanies fled from the conflict, but in the 1990s they began to return. Chineseand Indian companies were particularly aggressive, doing much of their drillingbehind perimeters of bermed earth guarded by troops to protect against rebelattacks. It was a Chinese pipeline to the Red Sea that first brought Sudaneseoil to the international market.

Prior to the discovery of oil, this dusty terrain had little to offer in theway of exports. Most of the arable land was given over to subsistence farming:sorghum and food staples; cattle and camels. Some cotton was grown for export.Sudan, sometimes still called The Sudan, is the largest country in Africa andone of the poorest. Nearly a million square miles in area, roughly the size ofthe United States east of the Mississippi, it is more region than nation.Embracing some 570 distinct peoples and dozens of languages and historicallyungovernable, its boundaries had been drawn for the convenience of colonialpowers. Its nominal leaders in the north, living in urban Khartoum, were eagerto join the global economy -- and oil was to become their country's firsthigh-value export.

South Sudan is overwhelmingly rural and black. Less accessible from thenorth, marginalized under the reign of the Ottoman Turks in the nineteenthcentury, again under the British overlords during much of the twentieth, and nowby Khartoum in the north, South Sudan today is almost devoid of schools,hospitals, and modern infrastructure.

Racism figures heavily in all this. Arabs refer to darker Africans as "abeed,"a word that means something close to "slave." During the civil war,African boys were kidnapped from the south and enslaved; many were pressed intomilitary service by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. Racism continuesto find expression in the brutal rapes now taking place in Darfur. Khartoumrecruits the militias, called Janjaweed -- itself a derogatory term --from the poorest and least educated members of nomadic Arab society.

In short, the Islamist regime has manipulated ethnic, racial, and economictensions, as part of a strategic drive to commandeer the country's oil wealth.The war has claimed about two million lives, mostly in the south -- many bystarvation, when government forces prevented humanitarian agencies from gainingaccess to camps. Another four million Sudanese remain homeless. The regimeoriginally sought to impose shariah, or Islamic, law on the predominantlyChristian and animist South. Khartoum dropped this demand, however, under termsof the Comprehensive Peace Treaty signed last January. The South was to beallowed to operate under its own civil law, which included rights for women; andin six years, southerners could choose by plebiscite whether to separate orremain part of a unified Sudan. The all-important oil revenues would be dividedbetween Khartoum and the SPLA-held territory. 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. In a sense, the treaty --brokered with the help of the U.S. -- was signed at the expense of Darfur, aparched area the size of France, sparsely populated but oil rich. It has anancient history of separate existence as a kingdom lapping into Chad, separatefrom the area known today as Sudan. Darfur's population is proportionately moreMuslim and less Christian than southern Sudan's, but is mostly black African,and identifies itself by tribe, such as the Fur. (Darfur, in fact, means"land of the Fur.") The Darfurian practice of Islam was too lax tosuit the Islamists who control Khartoum. And so Darfurian villages have beenburned to clear the way for drilling and pipelines, and to remove any possiblesanctuaries for rebels. Some of the land seized from black farmers is reportedlybeing given to Arabs brought in from neighboring Chad.

Oil and Turmoil

With the signing of the treaty last January, and the prospect of stabilityfor most of war-torn Sudan, new seismographic studies were undertaken by foreignoil companies in April. These studies had the effect of doubling Sudan'sestimated oil reserves, bringing them to at least 563 million barrels. Theycould yield substantially more. Khartoum claims the amount could total as muchas 5 billion barrels. That's still a pittance compared to the 674 billionbarrels of proven oil reserves possessed by the six Persian Gulf countries --Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iran, and Qatar. The verymodesty of Sudan's reserves speaks volumes to the desperation with whichindustrial nations are grasping for alternative sources of oil.

The rush for oil is wreaking havoc on Sudan. Oil revenues to Khartoum havebeen about $1 million a day, exactly the amount which the government funnelsinto arms -- helicopters and bombers from Russia, tanks from Poland and China,missiles from Iran. Thus, oil is fueling the genocide in Darfur at every level.This is the context in which Darfur must be understood -- and, with it, thewhole of Africa. The same Africa whose vast tapestry of indigenous cultures,wealth of forests and savannas was torn apart by three centuries of theft byEuropean colonial powers -- seeking slaves, ivory, gold, and diamonds -- isbeing devastated anew by the 21st century quest for oil.

Sudan is now the seventhbiggest oil producer in Africa after Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Angola, Egypt,and Equatorial Guinea.

Oil has brought corruption and turmoil in its wake virtually wherever it hasbeen discovered in the developing world. Second only perhaps to the armsindustry, its lack of transparency and concentration of wealth invites kickbacksand bribery, as well as distortions to regional economies.

"There is no other commodity that produces such great profit," saidTerry Karlin an interview with Miren Gutierrez, for the International Press Service,"and this is generally in the context of highly concentrated power, veryweak bureaucracies, and weak rule of law." Karl is co-author of a CatholicRelief Services report on the impact of oil in Africa, entitled Bottomof the Barrel. He cites the examples of Gabon, Angola and Nigeria, whichbegan exploiting oil several decades ago and suffer from intense corruption. InNigeria, as in Angola, an overvalued exchange rate has destroyed the non-oileconomy. Local revolts over control of oil revenues also have triggered sweepingmilitary repression in the Niger delta.

Oil companies and exploration companies like Halliburton wield political andsometimes military power. In Sudan, roads and bridges built by oil firms havebeen used to attack otherwise remote villages. Canada's largest oil company,Talisman, is now in court for allegedly aiding Sudan government forces inblowing up a church and killing church leaders, in order to clear the land forpipelines and drilling. Under public pressure in Canada, Talisman has sold itsholdings in Sudan. Lundin Oil AB, a Swedish company, withdrew under similarpressure from human rights groups.

Michael Klare suggests that oil production is intrinsically destabilizing: 

"When countries with few other resources of national wealth exploit their petroleum reserves, the ruling elites typically monopolize the distribution of oil revenues, enriching themselves and their cronies while leaving the rest of the population mired in poverty -- and the well-equipped and often privileged security forces of these 'petro-states' can be counted on to support them."

Compound these antidemocratic tendencies with the ravenous thirst of therapidly growing Chinese and Indian economies, and you have a recipe fordestabilization in Africa. China's oil imports climbed by 33% in 2004, India'sby 11%. The International Energy Agency expects them to use 11.3 million barrelsa day by 2010, which will be more than one-fifth of global demand.

Keith Bradsher, in a New York Times article, 2Big Appetites Take Seats at the Oil Table, observes: 

"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."

The geopolitical implications of this tolerance for instability are borne outin Sudan, where Chinese state-owned companies exploited oil in the thick offighting. As China and India seek strategic access to oil -- much as Britain,Japan, and the United States jockeyed for access to oil fields in the yearsleading up to World War II -- the likelihood of destabilizing countries likeSudan rises exponentially.

Last June, following the new seismographic exploration in Sudan and with thenew power-sharing peace treaty about to be implemented, Khartoum and the SPLAsigned a flurry of oildeals with Chinese, Indian, British, Malaysian, and other oil companies.

Desolate Sudan, Desolate World

This feeding frenzy may help explain the Bush administration's schizophrenicstance toward Sudan. On the one hand, Secretary of State Colin Powell declaredin September 2004 that his government had determined that what was happening inDarfur was "genocide" -- which appears to have been a pre-election sopto conservative Christians, many with missions in Africa. On the other hand, notonly did the President fall silent on Darfur after the election, but hisadministration has lobbied quietly against the Darfur Peace and AccountabilityAct in Congress.

That bill, how in committee, calls for beefing up the African Unionpeacekeeping force and imposing new sanctions on Khartoum, including referringindividual officials to the International Criminal Court (much hated by theadministration). The White House, undercutting Congressional efforts to stop thegenocide, is seeking closer relations with Khartoum on grounds that the regimewas "cooperating in the war on terror."

Nothing could end the slaughter faster than the President of the UnitedStates standing up for Darfur and making a strong case before the UnitedNations. Ours is the only country with such clout. This is unimaginable, ofcourse, for various reasons. It seems clear that Bush, and the oil companiesthat contributed so heavily to his 2000 presidential campaign, would like to seethe existing trade sanctions on Sudan removed, so U.S. companies can get a pieceof the action.