A-Infos (en) Anarkismo.net: Report - Blood, water & oil: fallacies of the Darfur War by Michael Schmidt

The Darfur War has been described as the worst conflict in the world today - 
and yet despite intensive media coverage, many aspects of the conflict are 
misunderstood because of the propaganda battle that runs in tandem with the war 
on the ground. The view from the ground offers different perspectives.
Much has been written on the crisis in Darfur, the three arid westernmost 
provinces of Sudan, so I will not repeat it here. Suffice to say that the USA 
alleges genocide against the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa tribes by Khartoum 
backed Janjaweed militia ? an interest spurred no doubt by Washington?s desire 
for access to Sudan?s oil reserves which are currently being exploited 
exclusively by China and to a lesser extent, Malaysia and India.

On the other hand, Nafi Ali Nafi, the deputy leader of the ruling National 
Congress Party admitted that Khartoum armed and trained a ?popular defence 
force? from among civilians to be used to support the Sudanese Defence Force in 
its battle against rebels in Darfur, while denying any genocidal campaign.

Sudan remains, in World Bank terms, a highly indebted poor country. But oil is 
changing all that: by 2006, oil accounted for over 25% of Sudan?s gross 
domestic product. However little of the wealth from that 120,000 barrels of 
crude a year finds its way into an economy propped up by Bangladeshi guest 
workers lured to Sudan on false promises (winding up sweeping floors for about 
US$100/month), or into neglected extremities like Darfur.

The International Monetary Fund has been pushing the fatal policy of 
privatisation in Sudan, which has on the one hand adopted unpopular austerity 
measures at home, while joining the initiative for a Free Trade Area for east 
and southern Africa abroad.

Also, by last year, it was estimated that up to 200,000 people had died in 
Darfur either directly or indirectly as a result of the war and 2,2-million 
people have been displaced. There is no known oil in Darfur, but the China 
National Petroleum Corporation is keen on laying a pipeline through it to 
connect Port Sudan on the Red Sea via Sudan?s oil-rich Abeyi region to new 
reserves in Equatorial Guinea. But there is also a giant aquifer, which runs 
from the Libyan border under Darfur to the Nile, and groundwater will soon, I 
predict run a close second to oil as a valued commodity, as sustainable use of 
the Nile reaches capacity.

After spending time in el-Fasher and Nyala, the capitals of North and South 
Darfur respectively, last month, I offer these brief thoughts on the situation 
in Darfur that I hope will shed a different light on the war:

1. The conflict in Darfur is not between ?Arabs? and ?Africans?. In Darfur it 
is patently obvious that such distinctions, while embraced by a minority of the 
people, do not hold up in fact because those so defined all speak Arabic, dress 
identically and have the same culture. Within the same family, facial features 
express the mixed heritage of Darfurians. The differences that do exist are 
rather tribal than ethnic, which begs the question of why the Darfur question 
has been racialised in the Western media? The conflict in south Sudan could 
easily be used emotively for geo-political ends by the West by suggesting it 
was a battle between an oppressed southern Christian culture and a dominant 
northern Islamic culture. The same argument cannot be applied in Darfur which 
has a largely homogenous population ? and yet a subtle, dishonest version of it 
(of Arabs versus Africans) continues to be peddled in the West. This can only 
be about the demonisation of Arab and Islamic culture by America?s Christian 
fundamentalist lords of the New Crusades.

2. Sudan is not an Islamic fundamentalist state. Despite the introduction 
starting in 1983 under a previous regime of certain aspects of shari?a law and 
of a policy of Islamisation that technically only applied to northerners, 
Sudan?s Islamic tradition is overwhelmingly Sufi with its emphasis on personal, 
ecstatic communion with Allah. The austere Salafist Islam that has produced 
groups like al-Qaeda remains a minority tradition within Sudan and of very 
little social and political effect (even though Osama bin Laden lived in 
Khartoum in the early 1990s). In politics, the long-lived Umma Party may recall 
the anti-colonial mania of the Mahdist Revolt of 1881-1885, but in reality, it 
remains merely the hobby-horse of the Mahdi?s grandson, Sadiq al-Mahdi. 
Meanwile, the Muslim Brotherhood was not consulted (as it should have been 
according to the shura principle of shari?a) on the Islamisation policy of the 
government, and some aspects of the legal code were in direct conflict with 
shari?a so the legal code remains unacceptable to many Sudanese ? Muslims included.

3. The cause of the conflict is not only political. It is clear that many 
rebels took up arms because they saw that route as the only way (based on the 
apparent success of the southern struggle) to convince Khartoum to devolve 
power and resources to the Darfurian backwaters. But of greater general concern 
is the implacable eastward march of the sands of the Sahara, at a rate 
approaching 10km a year. For example, as recently as 1992, the edge of the 
desert stood a good 120km west of Nyala. Today, the desert is only 5km from the 
city limits. So desertification and environmental degradation ? exacerbated by 
the decimation of Darfur?s trees by wood-sellers ? has compressed the tribes 
into ever-smaller areas where they bicker and battle over shrinking water 
resources and grazing land. Modernisation since the Nimeri era (see below) also 
eroded traditional methods of dispute-resolution, and as in Somalia, the 
addition of automatic weapons has spiralled tribal bloodletting beyond its 
normal bounds.

4. The deployment of United Nations peacekeepers will not help. It is clear 
that the very establishment of camps for ?internal displaces? all over Darfur 
works in favour of Khartoum. The camps, like the one at Abu Shouk north of 
el-Fasher where 50,000 displacees live, are run by the regional governments, 
aided by a plethora of United Nations and other aid agencies, and policed to a 
degree by the African Union. But though life in the camps is relatively good, 
with everything from cellphones to cosmetics on sale and health rates that 
appear better than the towns (at least in my comparison of Abu Shouk and 
el-Fasher), they remain concentration camps in the original sense of the term. 
That is, they forcibly concentrate formerly nomadic tribal peoples in an 
artificial ?town? for years, urbanising them and exposing them to the 
seductions of the market ? and of course, removing on-the-ground support from 
the rebels. The deployment of UN blue-helmets will most likely merely reinforce 
this pattern, which heavily favours Khartoum at the expense of Darfur.

That said, Darfur is clearly occupied territory, with Sudanese Army 
?technicals? (Toyota trucks with heavy machine-guns mounted on the back) much 
in evidence, with Chinese helicopter gunships at el-Fasher and MiGs on the 
runway at Nyala ? and with a strong plain-clothes National Intelligence and 
Security service presence.

We anarchist-communists naturally need to condemn Khartoum?s brutal use of 
proxy forces ? and its cynical use of displacee camps ? to control the civilian 
political process in Darfur.

But we also need to reject both the racialisation of the debate by the Western 
media and the false solution that an armed UN presence would bring. We should 
also appreciate the environmental and tribal roots of this complex war and see 
that, as the Darfurian rebels appreciate all too well, the only guarantor of a 
modicum of democracy in Darfur is the devolution of power to the people armed 
(though this is not to be read as an endorsement of any rebel platform).

The obvious question then becomes, what is the alternative? For that I will 
turn to a brief overview of the Sudanese left. The Sudanese Communist Party 
(HSS) was founded in 1946 during the global postwar upsurge of anti-colonial 
sentiment, and got its first brief taste of power in 1964 when a transitional 
government embraced all factions including the Muslim Brotherhood. But after 
elections in 1965 were followed by serious fighting by southern secessionists, 
the government swung rightwards and the HSS was outlawed.

The party was reinstated in 1969 thanks to the coup by Colonel Gafaar Mohammed 
Nimeri, who struck a military-HSS and laid the groundwork for a one-party 
Soviet-aligned state. But in 1970, Nimeri, Libya?s Muammar Gadaffi and Egypt?s 
Anwar Sadat announced they were to unite the three countries in a federation. 
This was unacceptable to the HSS and it staged a coup under Major Hashim al-Ata 
which ousted Nimeri ? but he was restored to power within three days and the 
HSS was driven underground again.

Nimeri?s political orientation meanwhile swung towards the USA in the wake of 
the 1981 assassination of Sadat, who had displeased him by reaching a separate 
peace with Israel. In 1985, a general strike brought Khartoum to a standstill 
and precipitated the fall of Nimeri who was on a visit to the USA, in a 
bloodless coup. Dr Gizuli Dafallah, a trade unionist prominent in the strike 
action, was appointed prime minister by the transitional military council, an 
indication of the growing power of the Sudanese trade union movement.

But the government proved unstable in the context of the emergence of a new 
secessionist force in the south, the Sudan People?s Liberation Movement / Army 
(SPLM/A) and with deepening divisions over Nimeri-era Islamicisation of the 
legal code and in 1989, Brigadier Omar el-Bashir staged a coup in the name of 
the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation.

The left nationalist SPLM/A enjoyed the support of the Stalinist regime of 
Mengistu Haile Mariam in neighbouring Ethiopia, but he himself was overthrown 
in 1991, echoing the general collapse of the East Bloc and the liberation 
movements it backed.

In 2001, the Bikisha Media Collective in South Africa ? which went on to form 
the core of today?s Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation ? had contact with 
a major who was a rebel commander within the National Democratic Alliance 
(TWD). Formed in 1989, the TWD was based in exile in Eritrea, embraced 11 
northern and southern opposition groups including the HSS, SPLM/A and various 
trade unions, and aimed at replacing the el-Bashir regime with a parliamentary 
democracy.

The TWD major asked: ?With great respect as comrades at arms, I would like more 
information regarding the revolution for it is the right of everyone to fight 
for freedom which we have been denied as peace-loving Africans since we have 
remained prisoners mentally??

He went on to request information on the ?best formation? and ?defined 
techniques? necessary for victory and we directed him to the Organisational 
Platform of the Libertarian Communists. Although contact was later lost, this 
demonstrates there was a hunger for the sort of practical politics that 
anarchist-communism can deliver.

This is not to overstate the potential for an anarchist-communist project in 
Sudan today. For one thing, the drawing of the SPLM into government through the 
comprehensive peace agreement struck in 2005 has undercut the potential of its 
more radical tendencies (and dissidents within the movement tend to be 
ethnically-based).

Legalisation has seen the old Stalinist edifice of the HSS fracture, however, 
with several ?ultra-left? tendencies breaking away, primarily among students at 
the University of Khartoum. Although these mostly have a Maoist flavour, 
influenced as they are by conditions of rural warfare, the potential remains 
for anarchist-communism to make inroads here with fresh ideas. And the trade 
union movement, though heavily urban, remains strong, which is a good sign for 
any who wish to see an empowered Sudanese working class.


Article written for Anarkismo.net

http://www.anarkismo.net/
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