A good transition from the troubles of Africa into China and
the global economy is the influence of China on Sudan, specifically the case
around oil supply lines.
While the stage will be better set to discuss China in the
next blog post, clearly of critical importance to China is access to natural
resources and in particular is oil, often placing China at odds with both US
foreign policy and additionally UN foreign policy. It appears no where (other
than Venezuela and Iran) does the confluence of arms dealing, oil, and local
tensions come to a boiling point as much as it does in the Sudan.
Following is a quote from China Shakes the World
http://www.amazon.com/China-Shakes-World-James-Kynge/dp/0297852299/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/102-0395680-9265728?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183580269&sr=8-3
“Elsewhere, the issue is not that China may impinge on US
supply lines, but that in its alacrity to shore up supplies, it is forging ties
with countries that Washington has made a policy of isolating. Sudan is a case
in point. In 1997, when the predominantly Muslim government in Khartoum was
engaged in a gruesome war against Christian rebels in the south, Washington
imposed a ban on US companies from doing business in the East African country.
This gave the Chinese a clear run at tapping into its oil reserves. In the years
since, Sudan has become China’s largest overseas oil project and China has
turned into Sudan’s biggest supplier of arms. Chinese-made tanks, fighter
planes, bombers, helicopters, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades have
added new impetus to the civil war between the north and south of the country
which has already lasted for two decades. The money to buy those weapons,
meanwhile, has come from oil revenues generated largely by the activities of
the state-run China National Petroleum Corporation.
China National Petroleum owns 40 percent, the largest stake,
of the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co., a consortium that dominates
Sudan’s oilfields. Another Chinese firm, Sinopec, is erecting a pipeline over
hundreds of miles to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where China’s Petroleum
Engineering Construction Group is building a tanker terminal. The total
investment runs into billions of US dollars and as production increases, Sudan
has come to furnish China with 10 percent of its total oil imports. But the benefit
derived from this has to be weighed against the cost to Beijing’s reputation.
Not only has China become the chief supported of a government that has
perpetrated repeated instances of genocide but, according to human rights
groups and locals quoted by Peter Goodman, a reporter for the Washington Post,
the construction of Chinese oil rigs has also led directly to the slaughter of
Sudanese people.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21143-2004Dec22.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002131515_chinaoil27.html
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/natres/oil/sudan/2002/0122arms.htm
Note: not only does this oil for arms appear trade appear to
be with China but Russia also. In addition the wider results of Sudan’s policies
are clearly identifiable in the larger region.
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4352&l=1
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=1230&l=1
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/sdn-background-eng
The US-funded Civilian protection Monitoring Team, a
non-governmental organization, has asserted that government troops have sought
to clear a cordon sanitaire around oil installations by moving out the mostly
ethnic Nuer and Dinka tribes who lived there. On 26 February 2002, the Buer
town of Nhialdiu was wiped out during one such operation to make way for a
Chinese well that now functions in the nearby town of Leal. Mortar shells
landed at dawn, followed by helicopter gunships directing fire at the huts
where people lived. Antonov aeroplanes dropped bombs and roughtly 7,000
government troops with pro-government militieas then swept through the area
with rifles and more than twenty tanks, according to Goodman’s report, which
was based on numerous local sources. ‘The Chinese want to drill for oil, that
is why we were pushed out,’ Goodman quoted a local, Rusthal Yackok, as saying.
Yackok added that his wife and six children were killed in the operation. The
chief of Leal, Tanguar Kuiyguong, who lost three of his ten children on that
day, told Goodman that around 3,000 of the town’s 10,000 inhabitants died and
every house was burned to the ground.
http://www.epwijnants-lectures.com/rpref.html
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/sudan/2005/0325pkprs.htm
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/jan-june05/sudan_3-17.html
http://www.dpado.org/news.php?Begin_Date=2005-06-01&End_Date=2005-08-31
There is no evidence, however, that the Chinese government
or its largest oil company had any advance notice of the Sudanese government’s
scorched-earth strategy at Leal. Beijing also bruses off any suggestion that it
is complicit in Sudan’s genocide. As Zhou Wenzhong, a Deputy Foreign Minister,
said in 2004 ‘Business is business. We try to separate politics from business.
I think the internal situation in Sudan is an internal affair, and we are not
in a position to impose upon them.’ A few months later, though, Chinese
diplomats successfully diluted the impact of a United Nations resolution
condemning Khartoum, thereby undermining Washington’s efforts to threaten
sanction against Sudan’s oil industry in protest at other waves of genocide
against Sudan’s oil industry in protest at other waves of genocide in the
Darfur region of the country. Having watered the resolution down, however, Wang
Guangy, the ambassador to the United Nations denied that his actions had
anything to do with a desire to protect Chinese state oil interests in the
country.
++++
The lessons learned from this reinforces the point made in
my previous blog about the effect of arms trade in the conflicts in Africa.
While in east Africa it appears that blood diamonds are less of a currency,
perhaps arms and oil are. Obviously layered on to of this conflict are
religious hatreds as well.
But beyond this it call into consideration the ability of
the UN and specifically the UN security council to make objective decisions
about the use of peacekeeping forces and/or PMC’s in these conflict when (as
pointed out in Lord of War) a number of the permanent security counsel seats
are occupied by parties who have very divergent strategic objectives in the
region and at least some (China and Russia) seem clearly willing to turn a
blind eye to atrocities in order to look after their own security concerns.
It is my personal opinion that in a world where
nationalistic greed (strategic importance) out weighs the value of peace and
human life / suffering the current administration’s tactics are probably
worthless. If Iran, Venezuela, and Sudan are fully prepared to sell oil to
China (which is obvious the more powerful point is that China is prepared to
purchase it), it seems that sanctions are borderline pointless. I have long
been dubious of sanctions as an effective tool unless there is unilateral
agreement (North Korea as an example) to support them. It seems the more
important things are:
- Trying
to inject just influence over the populace (hard to do when you are cut
off from them)
- Culture
can actually be a weapon (a dubious one admittedly, but I always joked
that Japan should have given Kim Jong’ II son a tour of Disneyland in
Tokyo rather than kicking him out.
- Providing
western companies access to the oil in these nations rather than simply
giving over these oil fields to the Chinese doesn’t seem like a strategic
win.
- For
the populace of the country the current stalemate is a disaster as (a) the
economics of arms flow is benefiting the side that is actually causing the
genocide and (b) there is no resolution in sight and the UN is crippled in
doing anything to help innocent bystanders. (Put another way – the people
on the receiving end of this genocide are receiving NO help from useless
sanctions that make them poor and provide guns funded by oil that is going
to China to be used against them).
- Well
armed forces in this war would be much harder for PMC’s fight against.