[Marxism] Re: Sudan

[Tony Abdo]

Fill Full the Mouth of Famine
26th July 2004
John Laughland

Perhaps the most striking thing about the news reports that Britain is 
thinking of sending troops to Darfur in Sudan is the silence on the matter 
which has emanated from the usual antiwar campaigners. Although the Guardian 
report on 22nd July said that a “humanitarian intervention” in Sudan would 
help retrieve Tony Blair’s reputation for moral action after the Iraq 
debacle—as if the solution to a bad war was a good one—the usual suspects 
have not piped up. And even though the US Congress formally decided on 22nd 
July that “genocide” was occurring in Darfur—“genocide” being an 
international crime, this is the legal trigger for intervention—no one has 
so far pointed out that the same genocide was invoked to justify Nato’s 
aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999.

The silence is all the more odd, given that Darfur is a region which is rich 
in oil and through which pipelines are to be constructed. Moreover, the main 
investor in the Sudanese oil industry is the China National Petroleum 
Company, and China is Sudan’s biggest trading partner overall.[2] It has 
been alleged that there are Chinese soldiers in Sudan protecting Chinese oil 
interests there, and that these troops have engaged in skirmishes with the 
rebels.[3] Moreover, while there are numerous foreign oil companies present 
in Sudan, it is precisely in Southern Darfur that the Chinese National 
Petroleum Company has its concessions. USAID, the American humanitarian 
agency, has helpfully provided a map of Sudan showing precisely where the 
oil concessions are. See  
http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/sudan/map_oil.pdf)

http://www.sandersresearch.com/Sanders/NewsManager/ShowNewsGen.aspx?NewsID=703

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