It is a startling
coincidence that just when ONGC and Reliance are considering massive
investments in Sudan’s oil, the images beamed at us by western networks are of
“armed horsemen” looting and killing in the country’s Darfur
province.
Words like “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” are being
commonly used. President Bush, who once did not know the name of India’s
prime minister, is today pronouncing “Janjaweed” with
expert ease. The word actually means “an armed devil on a horse”, though most
images are of armed men on camels.
Are global leaders filled with the milk of human kindness or
is some higher national interest involved? Oil, for instance. This must not
detract from the fact that there is a huge humanitarian crisis in the province
bordering Chad.
But the crisis has been simmering for over a year. Altruism has taken hold of
the international community more recently.
Every global catastrophe has a context. Sudan
is no exception.
When the colonial powers carved up Africa
at Berlin, 1884, a huge swathe,
closest to the Mediterranean, was Arab. When Muammar Gadhafi, disgusted with Gulf Arabs, turned to Africa a
decade ago, he told this reporter: “Two-thirds of the Arab world is in Africa;
Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Sudan. The farther
away from the Mediterranean you go, skins get darker
until Arabs and Africans are indistinguishable. At certain points, as on the
Sudan-Chad border, to separate Arab from African is like separating white from
black in a Mulatto!”
Sudan
has borders with Egypt,
Libya, Chad,
Congo, Uganda,
Kenya, Ethiopia
and Eritrea and
as many problems. Each country has had an umbilical cord, snapped or restored,
with former colonial masters. Of the country’s 34 million
population, nearly seven million are Christians, mostly concentrated in
the south bordering Uganda.
Here the picture gets complex. Joseph Kony, a
fundamentalist Christian, has been waging the “Lord” resistance against Musaveni of Uganda from Sudan.
The Ugandan is helping the Sudan People Liberation Army under John Garang to keep Khartoum
militarily engaged.
US pressure and African Union intervention brought about a
ceasefire two years ago. But arms and moral support to rebels in the Darfur province continued. The ceasefire was
in the south, not the province bordering Chad.
That is, ceasefire in the south occasioned the spare fighting capacity to help
separatism in the western province. Many factors came together here.
Continuous droughts, the advancing Sahara
caused farmers, herdsmen to fight for dwindling resources. There are some 500
tribes in Sudan,
of which 85 have their kin in Darfur.
The dominant tribe is the Zagawa, on both sides of
the Chad-Sudan border. To complicate matters, Idris Debey, president of Chad,
is a Zagawa. These tribes are all Muslim but some are
in the grey area of Arab and African identities, enmeshed and difficult to
separate.
The ceasefire in the south has strengthened John Garang. He is being tipped as one of the two vice
presidents in Khartoum. But Khartoum
believes he wants more — a partitioned Sudan
or a more dominant role in Khartoum.
Khartoum is
vulnerable as the Islamic movement that brought Ahmad and Bashir
to power in 1989 split in 1998. The 1989 coup was the brainchild of a very respected intellectual in the Muslim world, Sorbourne trained lawyer Hasan Turabi. Reared in the era of national liberation movements,
he found himself flat footed after the collapse of the USSR.
Bashir became the western favourite
and Turabi was placed in jail. Military officers
supporting Turabi received help from southern rebels.
The combination in Darfur
began to challenge government militia. A lakh people
are in the crossfire. Sheer banditry, intra-tribal rivalry, fed on the
political power struggle in Khartoum.
Two days ago Turabi went on hunger strike, demanding
quick trial.
All this is happening against the backdrop of more oil being
found in Sudan,
now the third largest deposits after Saudi
Arabia and Iraq.
New Delhi was quick to respond and
has a 25 per cent stake in the Greater Nile Operating Company; China
and Malaysia
are other participants. Recently Mukesh Ambani met Oil Minister Awid Ahamad Aljaz in Goa, seeking participation in the oil and
telecom sectors.
The humanitarian crisis is being controlled but the worry in
Khartoum is the extraordinary media
interest. Are cameras going to be switched off in Iraq
and Afghanistan
and focused on the spectacular calamity in Sudan
by way of a diversion? Is the Arab-African divide being widened to strike a
chord with black American voters in November?
All these seem minor considerations, compared with those oil
reserves at a time when a barrel of oil is $43. ONGC is drilling in Sudan
and our troops are keeping the peace between Ethiopia
and Eritrea,
bordering Sudan.
So we have our sources. Let us also have the information.
July 30, 2004
Source: The Indian Express
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