U.S. envoy: Sudan not terror sponsor, time to lift sanctions

By Grace Chung, McClatchy Newspapers, July 31, 2009

WASHINGTON — The U.S. special envoy to Sudan said Thursday that the United States should drop its designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism and "unwind" sanctions that it's maintained since President Bill Clinton applied the label in 1993.

Ambassador Scott Gration, a retired army general, said that maintaining the designation for Sudan would be a "political decision" that was "backed by no evidence" and was hindering U.S. development goals in southern Sudan.

Gration told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that sanctions linked to the designation had held up the delivery of basic supplies essential to providing humanitarian assistance and developing infrastructure.

"At some point, we're going to have to unwind some of these sanctions, so we can do the very things we need to do," Gration said. "The equipment we need to develop the south can't come through because the ports of Khartoum are sanctioned."

He agreed with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who said that "there is no evidence today that Sudan is involved as a state sponsor of terror" and continued sanctions would be akin to "cutting off our nose to spite our face."

Sudan was reported to have formally appealed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month to be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Gration said that Khartoum was cooperating in the U.S. battle against al Qaida, drawing criticism from Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. Feingold, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Khartoum's efforts to fight extremists "overstated."

The sanctions, imposed at a time when Sudan was an eager host of international terrorism groups including Osama bin Laden and the then-fledgling al Qaida, made the country an international pariah. Its reputation sank further after the Khartoum government's assaults against civilians in the Darfur region in 2003, which the Bush administration labeled genocide. Earlier this year, the U.N.-created International Criminal Court issued indictments against Sudanese leader Omar Hassan al Bashir on charges of mass atrocities in Darfur.

Although 2.7 million people remain displaced in Sudan, the level of violence has gone down significantly, and attacks are mostly criminal in nature and don't reflect a coordinated effort, Gration said.

"There are significant differences between what happened in the 2003 genocide and what is happening now," Gration said.

Gration's assessment differed from that of President Barack Obama and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, who've openly called the crisis in Darfur an ongoing genocide.

Under questioning, Gration refused to retract comments last month in which he said that the conflict in Darfur was no longer genocide but at worst "the remnants of genocide."

He called the dispute a "definitial issue" and said that there was "an honest debate" going on in the administration.

"It doesn't really matter what you call it, in my view. What matters is that people are living in dire conditions that must come to an end," he said.

Gration's remarks raised hackles among senators and human rights groups, who worry that the administration might be easing its pressure on Sudan.

"If Ambassador Rice is correct and if there is an ongoing genocide, then clearly the Congress and the U.S. approach to dealing with the government should be different," said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.

"The policy that the administration seems to be adopting has an overemphasis on incentives," Colin Thomas-Jensen, policy adviser for the Enough Project, a human rights advocacy group, told McClatchy. "The fact is, sanctions in the past have been an effective tool to change the behavior of Sudan."

"If sanctions are not used, we'll need to find other measures" to put pressure on Khartoum, Jerry Fowler, the president of the Save Darfur Coalition, told McClatchy.

The Obama administration is in the process of formulating a policy that will help Sudan apply the terms of a 2005 peace agreement that ended the 22-year civil war in Sudan. Gration affirmed that the Obama strategy will include "both incentives and pressures," as well as adequate benchmarks for ensuring compliance.

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The Real Reason:

Gration said U.S. economic sanctions had undermined American efforts to help implement the 2005 accord, barring the delivery of heavy equipment needed for road and rail projects in southern Sudan. He said the provision of such assistance would be vital in ensuring that southerners can establish a viable government if, as expected, they vote to secede from Sudan in a 2011 referendum.

- Colum Lynch, Washington Post, July 31, 2009

Congressional Hearing on Congo & Sudan

Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 2:30 PM

The joint subcommittee hearing on gender-based violence will take place at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 13 in the Dirksen Senate Building, room 419. U.S. legislators will hear testimony about violence against women (particularly rape) in conflict zones, using Sudan and the DRC as case studies. The range of panelists will include: women from the DRC and Sudan, including Chouchou Namegabe Nabintu (journalist, DRC); experts on the issue of gender violence; and government witnesses including Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues at the U.S. Department of State, The Honorable Melanne Verveer.

Following the hearing, there will be a public reception in the Russell Senate Office Building, Hearing Room 332. Speakers will include: Lynn Nottage (winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for her play Ruined and an ESB Institute/Goodman Fellow); Ron Haviv and Marcus Bleasdale (award-winning photojournalists whose work is part of Congo/Women); and Senator Boxer. Actor Quincy Tyler Bernstine will perform a monologue from her role in Lynn Nottage’s Ruined.

Click here to tell Congress to pass The International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA)

Participate in the Break the Silence Speakers Tour and Congo Week II (October 18 - 24, 2009)

email: info@friendsofthecongo.org
phone: 202-584-6512
web: http://www.friendsofthecongo.org

Rebel coalition fights neocolonial regime in Chad

By G. Dunkel, International Action Center, Feb. 14, 2008

Chad, in central Africa, was brutally conquered by France over a century ago and made part of its colonial empire. Today, while nominally independent, it is the fifth poorest country in the world, according to the U.N. However, it has become a significant, though not major, exporter of oil in the past three years.

ExxonMobil, a major U.S. corporation, is currently exploiting this oil, which has also brought billions of dollars to Chad. Most of that money, however, has stayed in the pockets of President Idriss Deby Itno -- a former helicopter pilot trained by the French, who seized power in 1990 -- and his clique, through one stratagem or another. Redistributing this wealth is one of the issues pushing forward a rebellion against Deby’s rule.

This struggle broke out into heavy fighting early in February when a rebel coalition fought for control of Ndjamena, Chad’s capital. An estimated 1,000 people died.

The Deby government claimed that most of the casualties were rebels—it called them mercenaries paid by Sudan—who didn’t know their way around the city, which has no street signs.

That’s not how the insurgents explain why they pulled back. Coalition spokesperson Abderaman Koulamallah said in an interview with Agence France Presse that direct attacks carried out by the French military had caused “enormous civilian casualties.”

Mahamat Nouri, the main military commander of the opposition, charged the French Air Force had “bombarded” its positions for over 13 hours to protect the Deby government.

During the battle for Ndjamena, which began Feb. 2-3, many of Deby’s soldiers reportedly deserted or didn’t follow orders because of ties they have with the rebels. Many of the rebels themselves were formerly in the government army. For example, Nouri himself used to be Deby’s defense minister and took a number of troops with him when he went over to the opposition.

While the French were willing to provide Deby with logistical, intelligence and air support and to defend the Ndjamena airport, they were not willing to put the bodies of French soldiers on the ground in harm’s way.

So Deby issued a call for reinforcements to the Justice and Equality Movement, a rebel group in Sudan fighting the government in the region of Darfur. It is drawn mainly from Deby’s ethnic group, the Zaghawas. However, Zaghawas also play a leading role among the rebel forces. (Le Figaro, Feb. 2)

The JEM troops quickly arrived on the battlefield in Chad. (New York Times, Feb. 8) The only practical way for JEM troops to have gotten from Darfur to Ndjamena, a distance of more than 600 miles, was for the French Air Force to fly them from its base in Abeche, a major city in eastern Chad not far from the border with Sudan.

The Sudanese government has announced that it will allow U.N.-African Union “peacekeepers” to move about freely in Darfur, but the JEM has just announced that it will attack them whenever they enter JEM-controlled areas.

The French press on Feb. 10 reported that the opposition had seized two major towns in the eastern part of the country. It also reported that EUFOR—with some 4,700 soldiers drawn from the armies of the 27 countries in the European Union—had begun setting up an advance base in Ndjamena, called Camp Europa. Full deployment of EUFOR is set to begin Feb. 12.

EUFOR, which stands for European Union Forces, has been used before in Bosnia and the Congo. While its commander and a large proportion of its troops are French, it does have a U.N. mandate to protect Sudanese refugees in Chad and the Central African Republic, distribute humanitarian aid and train Chadian police.

Its real aim is to project and protect Europe’s imperialist interests in the strategic center of Africa, bordering on the hotspot of Darfur.

Dr. Ley-Ngardigal Djimadoum, the leader of Chad’s Action for Unity and Socialism (ACTUS), at the beginning of February released a statement in French on a number of African and European anti-imperialist web sites.

Djimadoum said that, “Almost all the Chadian opposition is very hostile to EUFOR in Chad. The presence of French military bases, under the pretext of defending the territorial integrity of an ‘independent’ state, from independence [1960] to now, leaves a bitter taste. In reality, these occupation troops only defend the economic interests of the multinationals and the geostrategic interests of the imperialists on the African continent.

“A number of mass revolts and rebellions against the dictators imposed on our people by French imperialism have been drowned in blood by the support and the direct participation of French troops besides the army of their puppet government.

“The humanitarian aid proposed by EUFOR is a tree which hides the forest. More competent civilian organizations have been in place for years.”

The budget for EUFOR’s operation is nearly $450 million, close to twice the yearly income of Chad’s 9.3 million people.

The coalition that attacked Ndjamena independently issued a statement condemning France’s role, while avoiding the sharp language Djimadoum used.

Chad is an extremely poor but highly strategic country that has been waging an unrelenting struggle, with many twists and turns, against French neocolonialism for over 40 years. The intervention of European imperialism through EUFOR is going to raise the stakes, but is unlikely to end the drive of the people of Chad for their liberation.

In oil-rich Sudan, U.S. intervention is the worst option

By John Parker, Workers World, July 1, 2007

In spite of the current and historic role that imperialist forces have played in Sudan, the U.S. and European media almost exclusively blame the violence in the region on the government in Khartoum. This ignores the most important fact in its history: it was colonialism and imperialism that created the root cause of the economic crisis facing Sudan today.

The struggle in Sudan is, in fact, a struggle for basic necessities. They have been denied not by the Sudanese people, but by years of competing British, French and U.S. efforts to increase their exploitation of the region.

Instead of trying to solve this crisis, in 1998 President Bill Clinton sent 19 cruise missiles slamming into Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world, and destroyed its sole pharmaceutical plant—that provided over 50 percent of the medicine there.

Ever since Sudan opposed the first U.S.-led war against Iraq in 1991, U.S. policy—from both Democratic and Republican presidents—has been aimed at destabilizing the Sudanese government. In fact, Washington helped finance a secessionist civil war against the Khartoum government and imposed economic sanctions on the country.

The missile attack came soon after Sudan took steps to access a 300-million-barrel reservoir of crude oil in the country’s South. There is a clear relationship between U.S. oil policy and U.S. government hostility toward Sudan. Likewise, there is clear evidence of indirect U.S. arming and funding of the rebel forces in Darfur that initiated the violence back in 2003.

Darfur is known to have major yet untapped oil reserves, representing a vast amount of potential wealth. It is believed to have oil reserves rivaling those of Saudi Arabia. It has large deposits of natural gas. In addition, it has one of the three largest deposits of high-purity uranium in the world, along with the fourth-largest deposits of copper. Unlike Saudi Arabia, however, the Sudanese government has retained its independence of Washington.

Unable to control Sudan’s oil policy, the U.S. imperialist government has made every effort to stop its development of this valuable resource. However, China has helped Sudan, in spite of U.S. efforts, by providing the technology for exploration, drilling, pumping and the building of a pipeline. China buys about two-thirds of Sudan’s oil.

So, as it did in in Somalia, Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq and in the former Yugoslavia, Washington used its dominance over the United Nations to help justify the forced entry of troops across Sudan’s borders, with the false promise of bringing stability and ending bloodshed.

This is what is behind the U.S. calls a month ago for sanctions against Sudan, just four days after the government of Sudan agreed on May 25 to a joint African Union and United Nations (AU/UN) “hybrid peacekeeping force” assigned to Darfur to quell the violence in that region.

In an interview with Gulf News, Sudanese Foreign Minister Dr. Lam Akol Ajawin said: “The message we took from this act by the U.S. is that no matter how much the Sudanese government cooperates, the U.S. is going to go ahead with its plans. The sanctions were strange but it did not surprise us in Khartoum.”

This is not the first time that Sudan’s willingness to negotiate in order to calm U.S. aggression failed.

In July of 2004 the Sudanese government accommodated the U.S. by allowing small teams of U.S. soldiers to pass into the country as part of official visits and even allowed U.S. Special Forces to do weeklong patrols in its Kurush Mountains to look for alleged al Qaeda activity.

During this period Sudan was holding intense negotiations with warring parties in the Darfur region. In spite of these attempts at cooperation and moves towards negotiating a peace, the U.S. rushed through a resolution, adopted on July 30, 2004, imposing a timetable for sanctions-like measures against Sudan. Its U.N. ambassador, Elfatih Erwa, and its ambassador to the African Union, Osman al-Said, separately said Khartoum would comply. “We are not happy with the resolution, but we are going to implement it— we have no other option,” said al-Said.

The situation in Sudan is desperate. The U.N. estimates that 200,000 Sudanese have died from either drought or war-related causes. That war was started in 2003 by the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) over what they considered unjust resource distribution to a region where people depending on the land face scarcity of water, arable land and food.

This problem exists all over the south Sahara region, but it could be fixed through irrigation and the development of Sudan’s rich resources—a task easily achievable with just a portion of the resources squandered in Iraq by the U.S.

How U.S. undercut negotiations

Instead of the U.S. assisting in this way, however, it has been creating obstacles every time the Sudanese government makes efforts to negotiate with the various factions of the rebel forces who attacked them.

This is made clear in an eyewitness account of one of these negotiations by Alex de Waal, who was an adviser to the Organization of African Unity and participated in talks between rebel forces, the U.S. and the Sudanese government. He was quoted in AfricaFocus online (www.africafocus.org) on April 30. Although de Waal is not partisan toward the Sudanese government, his account exposes the U.S. role. He explains:

“Long neglected conflicts first exploded in February 2003, when the newly formed Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) launched guerrilla raids on government garrisons, and the government responded with its well-tested counter-insurgency tool of unleashing militia—in this case the Janjawiid. ... It was three years before a workable peace agreement was tabled. And it very nearly succeeded. Everything hinged on a few weeks this May [2006], when the Darfur Peace Agreement was finalized and signed by the Sudan government and one of the rebel factions. Had the leader of the main part of the Sudan Liberation Movement also signed, the current crisis would not have happened.”

In the late afternoon of May 5, 2006, after a final 20-hour negotiating session, the Sudanese government and the SLM faction led by Minni Arkoy Minawi signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA).

However, de Waal explains that not all of the SLM representatives signed. The founder of the SLM, Abdel Wahid, refused. After a British official worked into the night on the text to meet the objections of Wahid, he still did not sign and instead asked for more concessions.

De Waal asks: “Would those concessions have been enough? It’s not clear. In the early hours of 5 May Abdel Wahid told [U.S. deputy secretary of state] Zoellick and [Nigerian President] Obasanjo: ‘I need a guarantee for implementation like in Bosnia.’ The personal letter he had just received from President Bush wasn’t enough: what he wanted was international military intervention to deliver Darfur from the Khartoum government. ...”

It seems that Wahid had gotten a certain impression from the U.S. government, including President Bush, that he was entitled to much more.

Because Wahid did not sign, other SLM commanders also refused and instead gathered in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, to form the National Redemption Front (NRF) and continue the war with the Sudanese army.

De Waal continues: “As the Abuja negotiations drew to a close, the Congress Party [Sudan President Omar al Bashir’s political party—J.P.] launched an internal discussion on Sudanese-U.S. relations. The central question they asked was: ‘Given that we have made peace with the South and given them everything they asked for; given that we are co-operating in the war on terror; why are the Americans still determined to punish us?’ ...

“The worst fears of Khartoum’s conspiracy theorists had seemed to be justified when Zoellick arrived in Abuja and revised the security arrangements agenda of the DPA text, increasing the number of rebel combatants to be integrated into the army and security forces to 8,000 (80 percent of these positions, he indicated, would go to Minawi’s men [of the SLM]). As Zoellick argued and arm-twisted late into the night on 2 May, agitated Sudanese generals paced up and down in the hotel car park, calling their superiors in Khartoum on satellite phones. They buttonholed mediation team members—by now excluded from the action—to ask: ‘What is America’s real agenda?’”

U.S. intervention has been bloody and brutal

The history of U.S. involvement in Africa is one of brutal terror and colonial and neo-colonial plunder, using the most sophisticated weapons of mass destruction against the poorest of countries—like the bombings of Somalia, Tanzania and Sudan. It includes the murders and assassinations of anti-imperialist independence leaders who, given the chance, could have helped solve the problems Africa faces today.

U.S. involvement in Africa should concern itself solely with the implementation of reparations to that continent. Any other form of involvement, particularly military intervention in any form, always means escalating death and chaos through their “humanitarian” claws. Yes, even more than would have died if not for its interventions.

Maximizing profits is expensive in terms of lives. In Iraq 1.5 million, close to half of them children, have died because of U.S. sanctions and military intervention—so far.

Shame on those who, to this day, still don’t understand this reality and are facilitating a new and real genocide against the people of Africa. It will echo the cries of torture and heartache heard today by the current victims of U.S. imperialism in Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Congo, Palestine, Lebanon and so many other countries.

337 U.S. deaths in Afghanistan, region

AP - As of Friday, June 22, 2007, at least 337 members of the U.S. military have died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures June 16, 2007.

Of those, the military reports 216 were killed by hostile action.

Outside the Afghan region, the Defense Department reports 61 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, two were the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as: Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey and Yemen.

There were also four CIA officer deaths and one military civilian death.
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The latest deaths reported by the military:

• No deaths reported.
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The latest identifications reported by the military:

• Army Sgt. Dustin J. Perrott, 23, Fredericksburg, Va.; died Thursday in Miri of wounds suffered when an explosive detonated near his vehicle; was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.
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On the Net:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/

US's new World Bank pick, Zoellick, threatens Venezuela

Zoellick warns Venezuela is heading for trouble
By Noel Randewich, June 16, 2007

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Robert Zoellick, almost certain to be the next head of the World Bank, on Saturday took aim at Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chavez, warning that his oil-fueled socialist revolution was headed for trouble.

"It's a country where economic problems are mounting, and as we're seeing also on the political and press side it's not moving in a healthy direction," Zoellick told reporters during a visit to Mexico.

President Bush, a fervent foe of Chavez, nominated Zoellick to lead the World Bank, and the former U.S. trade representative and deputy secretary of state is expected to be confirmed before the end of the month.

Chavez has used surging oil revenues to pay for a socialist revolution in the OPEC nation and gain influence with other countries in Latin America at the expense of the United States.

He has said he wants to withdraw Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil supplier, from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, blaming their decades-old economic recipes of tight budget control, privatizations and open markets for poverty across Latin America.

"If a country feels it doesn't need or want the services of the international financial institutions, that's their choice," Zoellick said. "I've found no shortage of countries interested in trying to work with the World Bank."

The World Bank would focus on rebuilding in war-torn countries like Sudan, Haiti and Afghanistan under his leadership, Zoellick said.

After last month's forced resignation of Paul Wolfowitz as World Bank president over a high-paying promotion for his companion, Zoellick was put forward as the candidate of the United States, which traditionally chooses the head of the institutional lender.

No other nominee had been made as of Friday's deadline, making Zoellick a shoe-in for the job at the World Bank.

Chavez is popular among Venezuela's poor majority for his efforts to redistribute billions of dollars in oil wealth but has often drawn international criticism for treading on the rights of opponents.

In May, he closed down an opposition television channel and threatened to take another off the air.

Heavy spending of oil revenues has heated up Venezuela's economy, pushing the inflation rate to almost 20 percent and leading the government to impose price controls on basic goods.

Venezuela put its withdrawal from the IMF on hold this month because of concerns the move could trigger a technical default on its sovereign debt.