The U.S. role in Darfur, Sudan

[Michel Collon <michel.collon at skynet.be>]

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The U.S. role in Darfur, Sudan

By Sara Flounders

What is fueling the campaign now sweeping the U.S. to "Stop Genocide in
Darfur"? Campus organizations have suddenly begun organizing petitions,
meetings and calls for divestment. A demonstration was held April 30 on the
Mall in Washington, D.C., to "Save Darfur."

Again and again it is said that "something" must be done. "Humanitarian
forces" and "U.S. peacekeepers" must be deployed immediately to stop
"ethnic cleansing." UN troops or NATO forces must be used to stop
"genocide." The U.S. government has a "moral responsibility to prevent
another Holocaust."

Outrage is provoked by media stories of mass rapes and photos of desperate
refugees. The charge is that tens of thousands of African people are being
killed by Arab militias backed by the Sudanese government. Sudan is labeled
as both a "terrorist state" and a "failed state." Even at anti-war rallies,
signs have been distributed proclaiming "Out of Iraq--Into Darfur."
Full-page ads in the New York Times have repeated the call.

Who is behind the campaign and what actions are they calling for?

Even a cursory look at the supporters of the campaign shows the prominent
role of right-wing evangelical Christians and major Zionist groups to "Save
Darfur."

A Jerusalem Post article of April 27 headlined "U.S. Jews Leading Darfur
Rally Planning" described the role of prominent Zionist organizations in
organizing the April 30 rally. A full-page ad for the rally in the New York
Times was signed by a number of Jewish organizations, including the
UJA--Federation of NY and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

But it wasn't just Zionist groups that called it. The rally was sponsored
by a coalition of 164 organizations that included the National Association
of Evangelicals, the World Evangelical Alliance and other religious groups
that have been the strongest supporters of the Bush administration's
invasion of Iraq. The Kansas-based evangelical group Sudan Sunrise helped
arrange buses and speakers, did extensive fund raising and co-hosted a
600-person dinner.

This was hardly an anti-war or social justice rally. The organizers had a
personal meeting with President George W. Bush just before the rally. He
told them: "I welcome your participation. And I want to thank the
organizers for being here."

Originally the demonstration was projected to draw a turnout of more than
100,000. Media coverage generously reported "several thousands," ranging
from 5,000 to 7,000. The rally was overwhelming white. Despite sparse
numbers, it got wide media coverage, focusing on celebrity speakers like
Academy Award winner George Clooney. Top Democrats and Republicans gave it
their blessing, including U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), House minority
leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Assistant Secretary of State for African
Affairs Jendayi Frazer and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. Corzine, by the
way, spent $62 million of his own money to get elected.

The corporate media gave this rally more prominence than either the
anti-war rally of 300,000 in New York City on the day before or the
millionfold demonstrations across the country for immigrant rights on the
day after.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, former Secretary of State Gen. Colin
Powell, Secretary of State Condo leezza Rice, Gen. Wesley Clark and British
Prime Minister Tony Blair have all argued in favor of intervention in Sudan.

These leading architects of imperialist policy often refer to another model
when they call for this intervention: the successful "humanitarian" war on
Yugoslavia that established a U.S./NATO administration over Kosovo after a
massive bombing campaign.

The Holocaust Museum in Washington issued a "genocide alert"--the first
such alert ever issued--and 35 evangelical Chris tian leaders signed a
letter urging President Bush to send U.S. troops to stop genocide in
Darfur. A special national curriculum for students was established to
generate grassroots support for U.S. intervention.

Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) funded by the National Endowment
for Democracy (NED) have embraced the campaign. Liberal voices such as Amy
Goodman of Democracy Now, Rabbi Michael Lerner of TIKKUN and Human Rights
Watch have also pushed the campaign to "Save Darfur."

Diversion from Iraq debacle

The criminal invasion and massive bombing of Iraq, the destruction of its
infrastructure that left the people without water or basic electricity, and
the horrible photos of the U.S. military's use of torture at Abu Ghraib
prison created a world outcry. At its height, in September 2004, then
Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell went to Sudan and announced to the
world that the crime of the century--"a genocide"--was taking place there.
The U.S. solution was to demand the United Nations impose sanctions on one
of the poorest countries on earth and that U.S. troops be sent there as
"peacekeepers."

But the rest of the UN Security Council was unwilling to accept this view,
the U.S. "evidence" or the proposed action.

The campaign against Sudan increased even as evidence was being brought
forward that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was based on a total lie. The same
media that had given credibility to the U.S. government's claim that it was
justified in invading Iraq because that country had "weapons of mass
destruction" switched gears to report on "war crimes" by Arab forces in
Sudan.

This Darfur campaign accomplishes several goals of U.S. imperialist policy.
It further demonizes Arab and Muslim people. It diverts attention from the
human rights catastrophe caused by the brutal U.S. war and occupation of
Iraq, which has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

It is also an attempt to deflect attention from the U.S. financing and
support of Israel's war on the Palestinian people.

Most important, it opens a new front in the determination of U.S. corporate
power to control the entire region.

U.S. interest in Sudan

Sudan is the largest country in Africa in area. It is strategically located
on the Red Sea, immediately south of Egypt, and borders on seven other
African countries. It is about the size of Western Europe but has a
population of only 35 million people.

Darfur is the western region of Sudan. It is the size of France, with a
population of just 6 million.

Newly discovered resources have made Sudan of great interest to U.S.
corporations. It is believed to have oil reserves rivaling those of Saudi
Arabia. It has large deposits of natural gas. In addition, it has one of
the three largest deposits of high-purity uranium in the world, along with
the fourth-largest deposits of copper.

Unlike Saudi Arabia, however, the Sudanese government has retained its
independence of Washington. Unable to control Sudan's oil policy, the U.S.
imperialist government has made every effort to stop its development of
this valuable resource. China, on the other hand, has worked with Sudan in
providing the technology for exploration, drilling, pumping and the
building of a pipeline and buys much of Sudan's oil.

U.S. policy revolves around shutting down the export of oil through
sanctions and inflaming national and regional antagonisms. For over two
decades U.S. imperialism supported a separatist movement in the south of
Sudan, where oil was originally found. This long civil war drained the
central government's resources. When a peace agreement was finally
negotiated, U.S. attention immediately switched to Darfur in western Sudan.

Recently, a similar agreement between the Sudanese government and rebel
groups in Darfur was rejected by one of the groups, so the fighting
continues. The U.S. poses as a neutral mediator and keeps pressing Khartoum
for more concessions but "through its closest African allies helped train
the SLA and JEM Darfuri rebels that initiated Khartoum's violent reaction."
(www.afrol.com)

Sudan has one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the world. Over
400 ethnic groups have their own languages or dialects. Arabic is the one
common language. Greater Khartoum, the largest city in the country, has a
population of about 6 million. Some 85 percent of the Sudanese population
is involved in subsistence agriculture or raising livestock.

The U.S. corporate media is unanimous in simplistically describing the
crisis in Darfur as atrocities committed by the Jan jawid militias,
supported by the central government in Khartoum. This is described as an
"Arab" assault on "African" people.

This is a total distortion of reality. As the Black Commentator, Oct. 27,
2004, points out: "All parties involved in the Darfur conflict--whether
they are referred to as 'Arab' or as 'African,' are equally indigenous and
equally Black. All are Muslim and all are local." The whole population of
Darfur speaks Arabic, along with many local dialects. All are Sunni Muslim.

Drought, famine and sanctions

The crisis in Darfur is rooted in intertribal fighting. A desperate
struggle has developed over increasingly scarce water and grazing rights in
a vast area of Northern Africa that has been hit hard by years of drought
and growing famine.

Darfur has over 35 tribes and ethnic groups. About half the people are
small subsistence farmers, the other half nomadic herders. For hundreds of
years the nomadic population grazed their herds of cattle and camels over
hundreds of miles of grassy lowlands. Farmers and herders shared wells. For
over 5,000 years, this fertile land sustained civilizations in both western
Dar fur and to the east, all along the Nile River.

Now, due to the drought and the encroaching great Sahara Desert, there
isn't enough grazing land or enough farmland in what could be the
breadbasket of Africa. Irrigation and development of Sudan's rich resources
could solve many of these problems. U.S. sanctions and military
intervention will solve none of them.

Many people, especially children, have died in Sudan of totally preventable
and treatable diseases because of a U.S. cruise missile attack, ordered by
President Bill Clinton on Aug. 20, 1998, on the El Shifa pharmaceutical
plant in Khartoum. This plant, which had produced cheap medications for
treating malaria and tuberculosis, provided 60 percent of the available
medicine in Sudan.

The U.S. claimed Sudan was operating a VX poison gas facility there. It
produced no evidence to back up the charge. This simple medical facility,
totally destroyed by the 19 missiles, was not rebuilt nor did Sudan receive
a penny of compensation.

UN/NATO role in Sudan

Presently 7,000 African Union troops are in Darfur. Their logistical and
technical back-up is provided by U.S. and NATO forces. In addition,
thousands of UN personnel are overseeing refugee camps for hundreds of
thousands dislocated by the drought, famine and war. All of these outside
forces do more than hand out needed food. They are a source of instability.
As capitalist would-be conquerors have done for hundreds of years, they
consciously play one group off against another.

U.S. imperialism is heavily involved in the entire region. Chad, which is
directly west of Darfur, last year participated in a U.S.-organized
international military exer cise that, according to the U.S. Defense Depart
ment, was the largest in Africa since World War II. Chad is a former French
colony, and both French and U.S. forces are heavily involved in funding,
training and equipping the army of its military ruler, Idriss Deby, who has
supported rebel groups in Darfur.

For more than half a century, Britain ruled Sudan, encountering widespread
resis tance. British colonial policy was rooted in divide-and-conquer
tactics and in keeping its colonies underdeveloped and isolated in order to
plunder their resources.

U.S. imperialism, which has replaced the European colonial powers in many
parts of the world, in recent years has been sabotaging the economic
independence of countries trying to emerge from colonial underdevelopment.
Its main economic weapons have been sanctions combined with "structural
adjustment" demands made by the International Monetary Fund, which it
controls. In return for loans, the target governments must cut their
budgets for development of infrastructure.

How can demands from organizations in the West for sanctions, leading to
further underdevelopment and isolation, solve any of these problems?

Washington has often used its tremendous power in the UN Security Council
to get resolutions endorsing its plans to send U.S. troops into other
countries. None were on humanitarian missions.

U.S. troops carrying the UN flag invaded Korea in 1950 in a war that
resulted in more than 4 million deaths. Still flying that flag, they have
occupied and divided the Korean peninsula for over 50 years.

At the urging of the U.S., UN troops in 1961 were deployed to the Congo,
where they played a role in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the
country's first prime minister.

The U.S. was able to get a UN mandate in 1991 for its massive bombing of
the entire Iraqi civilian infrastructure, including water purification
plants, irrigation and food processing plants--and for the 13 years of
starvation sanctions that resulted in the deaths of over 1.5 million Iraqis.

UN troops in Yugoslavia and in Haiti have been a cover for U.S. and
European intervention and occupation--not peace or reconciliation.

The U.S. and European imperialist powers are responsible for the genocidal
slave trade that decimated Africa, the genocide of the Indigenous
population of the Americas, the colonial wars and occupations that looted
three-quarters of the globe. It was German imperialism that was responsible
for the genocide of Jewish people. To call for military intervention by
these same powers as the answer to conflicts among the people of Darfur is
to ignore 500 years of history.

Sara Flounders went to Sudan just after the bombing of the El Shifa
pharmaceutical plant in 1998 with John Parker as part of an International
Action Center fact-finding delegation led by Ramsey Clark

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