 Sudanese women protesting in Khartoum after U.S. cruise missile attacks in 1998. Photo: Richard Becker |
The drumbeats of U.S. intervention are sounding again. Today’s target is the oil-rich African nation of Sudan.
The charges against the Sudanese government would make any justice-loving person’s blood run cold. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. Mass rape. They should also make opponents of U.S. intervention take notice: these are the types of charges that have preceded starvation-causing economic sanctions, bombings, and invasions in Yugoslavia and Iraq.
The current crisis in Sudan is centered in Darfur, in the western part of the country. According to the version of events circulated both by the U.S. government and supposedly non-partisan human rights groups, “Arab” militias known as Janjaweed, backed by the Sudanese government, are unleashing a wave of terror against “African” civilians. Thousands have been killed, and the UN claims that over one million people have fled the region to escape the civil war.
In July, both houses of the U.S. Congress adopted a resolution charging that “the atrocities unfolding in Darfur, Sudan are genocide.” On July 30, the United Nations Security Council passed a U.S.-sponsored resolution threatening the Sudanese government with sanctions in 30 days.
And Africa Action leader Salih Booker, writing in the Aug. 5 issue of the liberal Foreign Policy in Focus, calls for outright U.S. intervention: “This is a moment when the United States can use its political and military might for good, to save millions of lives.” Foreign Policy in Focus is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies, a member of the anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice.
Supporters of self-determination—especially self-determination for African people, who have witnessed the most brutal and racist imperialist plunder and colonization—need to guard against this war hysteria. U.S. intervention in Sudan will not only mean greater exploitation of the Sudanese people. It would set the stage for far greater carnage and war in years to come.
Sudan is not a new target of U.S. aggression. The Pentagon bombed a Sudanese pharmaceuticals factory in August 1998, under the Clinton administration. The plant, which produced 50 percent of the medicine for one of the world’s poorest countries, was completely destroyed, causing untold tens of thousands of deaths from diseases like malaria and tuberculosis in the following years.
The U.S. government funded a low-intensity separatist movement in southern Sudan for decades. But the pitch of saber-rattling, both in the big-business press and in the United Nations, has raised the specter of far greater aggression against the country’s 39 million people.
HERDERS AND FARMERS
The situation in Darfur has its origins in the economic realities of Sudan, in the U.S. desire to destabilize the Sudanese government, and in the context of inter-imperialist rivalries in Africa.
The region has around 3 million inhabitants organized into dozens of tribal groups. Widespread intermarriage between the groupings has created broad similarities between the groups, both physically and culturally. For example, the vast majority of both “Arab” and “African” tribes are Black; nearly all are Muslim. The main cultural distinction between tribes is language: the “Arab” tribes speak a dialect of Arabic, while the “African” tribes speak a variety of local African languages.
The main distinction between the groups is economic, not physical or cultural. The “African” tribes like the Fur and the Masalit are primarily peasant farmers. The “Arabic” tribes like the Rezegeit and the Habbaniya are primarily nomadic people, earning their living by herding camels and cattle.
These two groups have been in competition for land and water for decades, especially since the droughts in the 1980s forced the nomadic herders from the northern desert region into the more fertile southern Darfur. In the mid-1980s, the Sudanese government provided arms to some of the herder tribes, not to fight against their farmer rivals but against the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, the rebel force based in the predominately Christian tribes in southern Sudan. This is the base of the so-called Janjaweed—literally, “armed horsemen.” (The SPLA has since declared a cease-fire with the Khartoum government in an agreement brokered by the U.S. government. A power-sharing arrangement in the south is being discussed.)
On the other hand, farming tribes received arms from rebels in neighboring Chad—many of whom had relatives fighting across the porous borders. These groups form the base of the two rebel groups now fighting against the Khartoum government.
In this way, the Darfur crisis is rooted in tribal conflicts with deep economic roots. But these conflicts do not explain how struggles for land and water could mushroom into civil war. That was possible only with the intervention of the U.S. and other imperialist countries.
U.S. TARGETS SUDANESE SOVEREIGNTY
Why is the U.S. so interested in destabilizing the Sudanese government, led by President Omar el-Bashir? A large part of that can be explained by el-Bashir’s independent, nationalist stance.
The Sudanese government refused to support the United States wars against Iraq, either in 1991 or in 2003. The Clinton administration declared Sudan a “terrorist state” in 1993, based on Khartoum’s support for Palestinian liberation movements.
Perhaps most to the displeasure of the U.S. are the close ties Khartoum is developing with China. Over half of Sudan’s exports go to China. One-fifth of Sudan’s imports come from China, making it by far Sudan’s largest trading partner. In Sudan’s growing oil industry, China is the largest investor, with the China National Petroleum Corporation helping to build refineries and pipelines.
The prospect of a rival world power like China having such influence in a country with major oil supplies in Africa flies in the face of the U.S. goal of outright control of the world’s major oil reserves.
These geopolitical motivations drive U.S. foreign policy far more than the crocodile tears over the killing of Africans.
 The Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant above produced anti-malaria and other drugs and was destroyed in the 1998 U.S. attack. Photo: Richard Becker |
INTER-IMPERIALIST RIVALRY
The third major factor driving U.S. policy in Sudan is the fierce and growing inter-imperialist rivalry between France and the United States. France is a historic colonial power in Africa, a fact still evident in the “franc zone,” the 14 countries in western and central Africa which rely on the French-backed CFA franc as currency.
The United States is a relative newcomer as a power in Africa, but has largely filled the void left by Britain’s decline as a colonial power. With its economic domination of Nigeria, Africa’s major oil producer, and its political supporters in the Rwandan and Ugandan governments, the U.S. has staked a major claim to the continent’s resources.
Sudan is literally trapped between the two powers. On the west, Chad—an African Financial Community (CFA) country—houses 1,000 French troops, and the French are sending 200 more. On the east, there are 1,600 U.S. troops in Djibouti.
Inter-imperialist rivalry does not always take military form. The French government is in no position to directly challenge the U.S. militarily at this moment, preferring instead to position itself politically.
So, for example, while France joined the U.S. in voting for the UN Security Council resolution threatening Sudan, Foreign Minister Michel Barnier was careful to place demands on both the Sudanese government and on the Darfur rebel groups. “Peace in Sudan cannot be achieved against Sudan’s will,” he wrote. (Financial Times of London, Aug. 13)
And a European Union fact-finding mission issued an Aug. 9 report that flies in the face of U.S. propaganda: “There is no evidence whatsoever that the Sudanese government has given instructions to Janjaweed militias to punish the rebels and launch an ethnic cleansing.” EU team leader Pieter Feith was categorical: “We are not in a situation of genocide there.” Germany and France are the main EU powers.
This diplomatic posturing masks the inherent drive of capitalism toward expansion and war. A fundamental lesson of the 20th Century is that the struggle to re-divide the spoils of the countries oppressed by imperialist powers is the motor driving relations between the major capitalist powers.
Washington’s expressions of concern for this or that group in Sudan need to be seen in this light. The U.S. quest to dominate Africa’s great wealth—including Sudan’s vast newly-discovered oil reserves—is driven as much by frantic competition with its European rivals as it is by its insatiable lust for profits.
It would be the greatest error to mistake Washington’s “humanitarian” propaganda for its true goals in the region.
A HISTORY OF STRUGGLE
The biggest obstacle to U.S. goals in the region is the Sudanese people’s tremendous tradition of anti-imperialist struggle. During the period leading up to independence from British colonial rule in 1956, Sudanese communists led one of the largest trade union movements in Africa. Throughout the 1960s, communist-led organizations were the main vehicle for struggle both for workers’ rights in Sudan and against imperialism. These organizations were among the only truly national organizations in Sudan, with participation from every region of the divided country.
The Sudanese left suffered a heavy blow in 1971, when the military government of Jafar Numieri unleashed a brutal wave of repression against the Communist Party, unions, and other mass organizations, much to the delight of Washington. The CP has never really recovered from that blow, although it still exists as a small group—mostly through its alliance with bourgeois, ethnically-based opposition groups.
Nevertheless, the current nationalist government of President el-Bashir has responded to the U.S.-orchestrated threats by mobilizing mass anti-imperialist sentiment. Up to 100,000 people came out in Khartoum on Aug. 4 to defy the imperialist pressure, chanting “Down with America” and “Down with Britain.” Banners read, “No to foreign intervention” and “Darfur is the graveyard of the U.S.”
Hundreds of women demonstrated in Khartoum on July 28 against foreign intervention. The demonstrators rejected the “political manipulation of the purity and dignity of Sudanese women.”
The Sudanese government insists that it is trying to resolve the crisis in Darfur, and has accepted some assistance from African Union troops. But it warns against any foreign intervention. “The government will appropriately deal with any soldier who sets foot on Sudanese territory,” warned Agriculture Minister Majzub al-Khalifa on July 28.
Anti-war and anti-intervention activists need to be vigilant for any further provocations, especially as the UN-imposed deadline of Aug. 29 approaches, and to oppose any U.S./UN military intervention or sanctions against Sudan.
