Some notes concerning Darfur, Sudan:
1) Our government's interest over Darfur is not a concern for the genocide against the people in Darfur. It's concern is over Sudan's oil and minerals.
2) While the US invades and drops bombs on a country in an attempt to control that country's resources, China engages in quiet diplomacy with those countries. The US and China are in competition. China gives loans to countries in Africa with NO INTEREST. (Unlike the "strings attached" loans from American controlled IMF and World Bank).
3) Beijing's China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) is Sudan's largest foreign investor. The Chinese controlled oil fields are concentrated in the south. "China's CNPC holds rights to bloc 6, which straddles Darfur, near the border with Chad and the Central African Republic. In April 2005, Sudan's government announced that it had found oil in Southern Darfur, which is estimated to be able to pump 500,000 barrels per day when developed." (1)
4) This area has endured a civil war which started in Feb 2003. The opposing sides for this civil war are:
Rebel groups Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. These groups are mainly from the non-Arab Muslims.
The other side is composed mainly of the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed, a Sudanese militia group.
5) "The United States, acting through surrogate allies in Chad and neighboring states has trained and armed the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army... trained at the US special Forces school at Fort Benning, Georgia. By pouring arms into first southeastern Sudan and since discovery of oil in Darfur into that region as well, Washington fueled the conflict that led to tens of thousands dying and several million driven to flee their homes." (1)
6) "Much of the arms that have fueled the killing in Darfur and the south have been brought in via murky, protected private "merchants of death" such as the notorious former KGB operative, now with offices in the US, Victor Bout, who has been cited repeatedly in recent years for selling weapons across Africa. US government officials strangely leave his operations in Texas and Florida untouched despite the fact he is on the Interpol wanted list for money laundering. US development aid for all Sub-Saharan Africa, including Chad, has been cut sharply in recent years while its military aid has risen. Oil and the scramble for strategic raw materials is the clear reason. The region of southern Sudan from the Upper Nile to the Chad border is rich in oil." (1)
7) Condoleezza Rice's Chevron is in neighboring Chad, together with the other US oil giant, ExxonMobil. They've just built a $3.7 billion oil pipeline carrying 160,000 barrels per day from Doba in central Chad, near Darfur. To do it, they worked with Chad "President for life" Idriss Deby, a corrupt despot who has been accused of feeding US-supplied arms to the Darfur rebels. Deby joined Washington's Pan Sahel Initiative run by the Pentagon's US-European Command, to train his troops to fight "Islamic terrorism". Supplied with US military aid, training and weapons, in 2004, Deby launched the initial strike that set off the conflict in Darfur….The US military support to Deby in fact had been the trigger for the Darfur bloodbath." (1)
8) "Washington-backed NGOs and the US government claim unproven genocide as a pretext to ultimately bring UN/NATO troops into the oil fields of Darfur and southern Sudan. Oil, not human misery, is behind Washington's new interest in Darfur. The "Darfur genocide" campaign began in 2003, the same time the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline began to flow. The US now had a base in Chad to go after Darfur oil and, potentially, co-opt China's new oil sources. US military objectives in Darfur - and the Horn of Africa more widely - are being served at present by US and NATO backing for African Union (AU) troops in Darfur. There NATO provides ground and air support for AU troops who are categorized as "neutral" and "peacekeepers". Sudan is at war on three fronts, against Uganda, Chad, and Ethiopia, each with a significant US military presence and ongoing US military programs. The war in Sudan involves both US covert operations and US trained "rebel" factions coming in from south Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia and Uganda." (1)
Read more at:
(1) Darfur: Forget Genocide, There's OIL - (May 25, 2007)
Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia? - (Feb 7, 2007)
Sudan Civil war
Sudan's civil war has been between Khartoum's Islamist government and the country's animist and Christian south. "The most recent phase of that war, from 1983 until 2005, killed an estimated 2 million civilians—more than six times the number thought to have been killed in Darfur over the past six years. Now, as U.S. attention wanders, it's coming back, and it will be worse than ever."
Sudan's civil war is even worse than Darfur - (Newsweek Oct 8, 2009)
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