Oiling Sudan’s killing machine

Date: 17/03/05

Nowhere in the world are so many lives at risk from conflict than in Sudan, Jan Egeland, the United Nations' humanitarian relief co-ordinator declared after a four-day visit to Africa's largest country earlier this month.

Six million people are internally displaced through both fighting in Darfur and the north-south civil war - five times more than were uprooted by the Indian Ocean tsunami. The UN warns that the death toll could be in the millions unless lasting solutions are found.

Despite pledges by the government in Khartoum to end all attacks against civilians, evidence of fresh atrocities continues to mount. Egeland said that he had inspected villages that had been destroyed by the Janjaweed militia in Darfur as recently as January.

Recently declassified papers from the EU's Council of Ministers indicate that last year's Dutch presidency and some other member states argued that the Union's stance towards the Sudanese authorities should be toughened up.

The minutes of a meeting of the Council's Africa working group in December record that the Dutch representative urged that the EU "take a critical look at its own position". It was not clear, diplomats said, that the Khartoum government was "really under pressure" to deliver peace.

The diplomats also warned that other regions of the country could be on the brink of serious violence, especially as the government "seemed to be arming ethnic groups" in eastern Sudan, "feeding the same kind of tensions as in Darfur" in the west. The warning has proven prophetic. Violent clashes between government forces and the Beja tribe, the main ethnic group in the east, have been reported in the past few months.

In February, the Union's foreign ministers threatened to impose targeted sanctions on those responsible for violating ceasefire agreements. Although the nature of such measures was not specified, it is believed that these could include banning named individuals from entering the Union and a possible freezing of their assets.

Some Sudan analysts believe that if the EU is to have proper leverage with the Khartoum government, it should be focusing on the country's oil reserves.

But an oil embargo is unlikely, not least because imposing one would challenge powerful European commercial interests. Franco-Belgian giant Total is the main European company involved in Sudan, holding a 120,000 square kilometre concession in the south.

The Anglo-Dutch group Shell has also sold aviation fuel to the Sudanese airforce and the German multinational Siemens has provided telecoms systems to Sudan's biggest oil producer, Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC).

"France has been lobbying for ten years to stop any sanctions against Sudan," claims Ulrich Delius, an Africa specialist with German campaign group Society for Threatened Peoples. "Because they are interested in oil in southern Sudan, they don't want to put any blame on the Sudanese leadership. We've got the impression that the French have been the most effective representatives of the Sudanese dictatorship in the European Union for a long time."

A spokesman for France's EU embassy says that Paris is "not very enthusiastic" about imposing new sanctions on Sudan. "We are not against sanctions but we feel they should be targeted," he adds. "If they are too general, this could hurt the general population."

Although oil exploration has been stymied by war, Sudan has the potential to be one of the major players in the world energy markets. With proven reserves of 635m barrels, burgeoning Asian economies like China and India are relying increasingly on Sudan for oil supplies. Chinese, Malaysian and Indian firms are the three largest shareholders in the GNPOC.

China's economic interests in Sudan have been cited as one of the reasons why the UN Security Council, on which Beijing has a permanent seat, has not been more forceful in dealing with Khartoum.

Egbert Wesselink from the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan feels that a full-scale EU oil embargo would be unrealistic. Instead, he argues that the oil revenues should go into an international trust fund similar to one already in place in neighbouring Chad.

This could be set up as part of a package linked to debt relief and overseen by bodies like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African regional body, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development.

After the signing of a peace accord between the Khartoum government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement on 9 January, the European Commission moved to resume development aid programmes for the country which had been suspended in response to the civil war in 1990. As a result, Sudan is to have access to €400m in EU funds.

Wesselink feels it is imperative that the EU holds to account both European and Asian companies involved in Sudan if this money is to be spent wisely. "The European Union has a position on corporate social responsibility," he adds. "And the members of the EU have all kinds of positions on the transparency over the use of revenues from primary resources and the human rights responsibilities of companies.

"But I'm not aware of any governments [having rebuked] the Indian government, saying 'Mr India, we're investing hundreds of millions to get peace in the south of Sudan, so what's your game'?

"I don't understand why European governments are spending millions on humanitarian relief and at the same time are unwilling to have any check on private companies."

EU foreign ministers yesterday (16 March) declared that they "underlined the urgent need for the serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law to be condemned on all sides and reaffirmed the importance of putting an immediate end to impunity in Darfur".

Analysis feature on Sudan, European corporate interests in the country's oil resources and the reluctance in EU Member States to impose economic sanctions such as an oil embargo on the regime in Khartoum.