For the past several years the US and British governments have been asserting that the Sudanese government is perpetrating genocide in the western province of Darfur. In 2002 the US Congress passed the “Sudan Peace Act” which formally allowed for US intervention in “areas of Sudan not controlled by the Government of Sudan.” Hostilities in Darfur erupted soon after, in the year 2003. Since then western media, which for all practical purposes is “global” media, has been propagating the official genocide line faithfully. Is the civil war in Sudan really genocide? According to the UN, WHO and the French NGO Medicins sans Frontieres the fighting in Darfur is not genocide. The Sudanese government vehemently denies charges of genocide. Why then is the US-British coalition so vociferously pursuing the “genocide” line? What is the Darfur problem and why is the US so keenly interested in it, the same US which has, according to a recent survey, killed over 1.2 million Iraqis since 2003, wounding another one million and rendering about four million homeless? This is in addition to one and a half million Iraqis, including 500,000 children, killed between the first Gulf War and 2003 as a result of US backed embargo on medicine and other items.

Sudan is Africa’s largest country area wise. It has an area of 9,67,500 square miles which is 3.2 times the size of Pakistan. However Sudan has a population of only 35 million, just under a fifth of Pakistan’s population. Seventy percent of Sudanese are Muslims, 25 percent animist and five percent Christians. The Darfur region is located in the West of Sudan bordering Chad. The Darfur province is about a fifth of Sudan’s total area, approximately the size of France, but has a population estimated variously between 6 to 7 million only.

The people of Darfur are ethnically the same as the bulk of Sudanese population. They speak Arabic and, like the mainstream Sudanese population, are Sunni Muslims. A Congressional Research Service brief (updated September 2004) prepared for the US Congress by Ted Dagne states “Darfur is home to an estimated 7 million people and has more than 30 ethnic groups, although these groups fall into two major categories: African and Arab. Both communities are Muslim and years of intermarriage has made racial distinction impossible”. This lack of racial distinction, acknowledged in an official US document, is sufficient to destroy the argument of genocide in Darfur. The South of Sudan on the other hand is populated by tribes that are predominantly Christian or animistic in their beliefs. Many of these do not speak Arabic.

Sudan is rich in natural resources. It has rich oil and gas reserves. Sudan has huge uranium deposits and the fourth largest deposits of copper in the world. It was found some years ago that the Darfur region has enormous untapped oil reserves that are comparable to those of Saudi Arabia if not more. Excluding the Darfur reserves, Saudi Arabia possesses 25% of the known global oil deposits. In a world that is heading fast towards oil depletion this is news of the highest importance. And the world’s largest consumer of oil is, by far, the United States of America. It is therefore no surprise that the US is so keenly interested in Darfur. To quote John Bart Gerald “If the nations of the world agreed that a verifiable genocide were occurring, it would allow US to occupy Sudan and gain its assets. There is profit for the US in deciding that Sudan’s government has committed genocide.”

Darfur and the entire region has had a serious water problem that has, for generations, been a source of unending conflict among various sections of the Darfur population. In particular the settled and nomadic tribes have fought over water for a long time. In November 2004 Brian Smith wrote “Water is strategically important, given that the blue Nile and white Nile meet in Sudan and constitute the lifeline of Egypt immediately north.

Recent pressure from Anglo-American interests led Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to question the old Nile treaties with Egypt, which has extensive interests in Sudan.” The discovery this year of a mega-lake under northern Darfur has made the Darfur region even more valuable. A “1000 wells for Darfur” initiative was recently agreed upon between President al-Bashir and Egyptian born remote sensing expert Farouk El-Baz who works in Boston University. However it remains to be seen how this project develops, if at all, and how the US will exploit this find.

Oil was discovered in Sudan in 1978. In 1983 rebellion in Southern Sudan broke out. The rebellion was led by John Garang who, to quote Jay Janson, received “military training at the infamous Fort Benning, Georgia”, also known as “School of Assassins”. According to the Federation of American Scientists, “The US government decided, in 1996, to send nearly 20 million dollars of military equipment through the front-line states of Ethiopia, Eriteria and Uganda to help the Sudanese opposition overthrow the Khartoum regime”. John Garang led a so called Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) and while the US continuously decried the abuse of human rights by the Khartoum regime, it kept mum about the abuses committed by John Garang in the areas that he controlled. According to a BBC report “John Garang did not tolerate dissent and anyone who disagreed him was either imprisoned or killed.” John Garang was involved in training the rebels of Darfur.

In June 2006 Sarah Flounders wrote “US imperialism is heavily involved in the entire region. Chad, which is directly west of Darfur, last year participated in a US-organized military exercise that, according to US Defense Department, was the largest in Africa since World War II. Chad is a former French colony and both French and US forces are heavily involved in funding, training and equipping the army of its military ruler, Idriss Deby, who has supported rebel groups in Darfur”.

According to a Jerusalem Post report of April 27, 2006 US Jews are actively involved in planning rallies on the Darfur issue. A host of other organizations allied with Zioinsts, particulary those related to Evangelical Christians, are also involved. The prominent coverage given by US media to a rally (held April 30, 2006) that involved only 5000-7000 people contrasts with the meager coverage given by the same media to anti-war rallies involving hundreds of thousands of US citizens. This in itself indicates backing of the US establishment in mobilizing public opinion against the Khartoum regime. In fact in November 1999 President Clinton signed a Bill authorizing funds to John Garang’s army. Israel’s Mossad has also been involved in supplying arms to rebels. Apart from oil Israel has an interest in using the waters of Nile to quench its thirst, of course at the expense of Africans and Muslims. Sudan stands in the way.

In 2005, hemmed in from three sides by proxies encouraged, trained and funded by US, the Khartoum regime signed a peace deal with the South allowing the US proxy John Garang to become first Vice President of Sudan. Garang died soon afterwards in a plane crash. This agreement gave concessions to the South allowing it to reclaim land and sell oil from that land. It is therefore clear that the conflict with the South had nothing to do with religion – it had to do with oil. This is equally true of the Darfur conflict.

Currently China has agreements with Sudan and is the major importer of Sudanese oil. The US companies are essentially unable to do oil business with Sudan due to sanctions imposed by the US government. The US has been relentlessly pressuring Sudan for accepting a UN force. However the Sudanese government is well aware that the UN will just be a cover for landing US and British troops on Sudanese soil with the object of overthrowing the Khartoum regime. It has therefore resisted. In fact when US and UK forced a resolution through the UN Security Council in 2006 allowing for UN troops in Sudan, the Khartoum regime openly declared that it will attack any forces that attempted to land in Sudan. Instead the Sudanese government has allowed the African Union forces to be stationed there.

John Bart Gerald states “Over four million Sudanese became displaced according to a 1999 estimate and the subsequent diminished figures suggest the accounts are juggled. In the South of Sudan alone two million have died from war and starvation brought about by a rebellion and guerilla war.” This immense tragedy has been brought about by corporate US. As Michael Ruppert puts it the CIA “will find those parts of a culture or society which inspire distrust and conflict and they will take a pinhole and widen it into an eight-lane highway which is constantly maintained and improved”. He also points out that the relocation of US and NATO forces has occurred in regions which are rich in oil and gas or which lie along routes from where oil and gas has to pass to reach the West. By capturing all major oil and gas fields in the world the US will not only fulfill its energy requirements, it will, by denying these to its imagined enemies, cripple them completely. Therein lies the significance of the Darfur problem, the Afghan and Iraq wars and the expected Iran war.

The author is a former Dean Faculty of Science, University of the Punjab

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