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2 Will China help out the West
in Sudan? By Peter Lee
China, which purchases much of
the oil from East Africa and provides investment
and armaments to the Sudanese government in
return, has suffered abuse and derision for its
engagement with Khartoum.
But
perhaps only China has the deep pockets and
appetite for risk to buy the world's way out of
its Sudan problem: a problem created largely by
Western fecklessness.
Sudan and newly independent
South Sudan are sliding towards war because these
are two countries that hate each other; because
Sudan lost 75% of its oil fields when the South
split off; and the regime of President Omar
al-Bashir in Khartoum is fighting for its
survival.
Kind or stern words from
Beijing will have minimal effect on
Bashir, whose decision to
pursue a Muammar Gaddafi-style rapprochement with
the United States (yes, before the Libyan war,
Gaddafi's abandonment of his weapons of mass
destruction programs and normalization of
relations with the West was seen as a victory of
George W Bush-era big-stick diplomacy and a model
for other anxious strongmen) now looks more like
assisted suicide.
Bashir is looking at drastic
curtailment of government revenues, inflation,
burgeoning popular discontent, and prospects of
Arab-Spring type unrest. To add to his woes, he is
under indictment by the International Criminal
Court for his brutal anti-insurgency operations in
Darfur.
In response, Bashir is
desperately cleaving to the Islamic governments of
north Africa and seizing oil fields on the border
with South Sudan. He is also fiddling with the
passage of South Sudan crude in the pipeline
crossing Sudan to Port Sudan for export (to China
and elsewhere).
He's also on a search for
hard cash and leverage. The fact that South
Sudan's only export pipeline traverses Sudan to
Port Sudan on the Red Sea gives him both.
As
was typical of the haste and "hope is not a plan"
lack of forethought surrounding the push for
independence, the fact that South Sudan was 100%
reliant on the good offices of Sudan to get its
crude to market (and relies on oil for 98% of its
non-non-governmental government revenues) was seen
to be something that could be comfortably
addressed after partition.
The
most recent crisis was triggered by Sudan's demand
that South Sudan pay exorbitant transit fees to
move its crude through Sudan for export; and the
pre-emptive seizure of crude as assessment for
unpaid (exorbitant) transit fees. In response, the
Government of South Sudan (GoSS) is shutting down
the output of its oil wells.
Maybe this intractable
problem will be worked out when the presidents of
Sudan and South Sudan meet this week. But perhaps
not, especially if the Khartoum regime decides the
best solution to its domestic problems lies in a
satisfying war with the South. Eric Reeves, the
dean of Sudan-watchers, wrote in a gloomy and
indignant op-ed, Sudan's Obstructionism Threatens
War:
But without a
fundamental shift in the negotiating posture of
Khartoum ... the talks in Addis will break down
on Friday (January 27) when Presidents Salva
Kiir and Omar al-Bashir are scheduled to meet.
But we should keep in mind the clear possibility
that a collapse of these talks is in fact
deliberate on Khartoum's part: since an already
highly distressed northern economy would implode
with the precipitous loss of all oil revenues
from the South, economic woes of all sorts could
be collectively blamed on a hostile and
"belligerent" South.
The regime would blame this
implosion not on its own gross mismanagement of
the economy, its vastly excessive military and
security expenditures, or its accrual of an
unsustainable external debt of more than $38
billion - but rather on the South. The generals
in Khartoum who now make decisions about war and
peace will have their pretext for war - a war
that will be justified, in a grim irony, as
punishing the South for its "economic warfare"
against the north. [1]
Reeves recites
a grim litany of Sudanese bad faith and
malfeasance and concludes:
If war comes -
and it almost daily appears more likely - it
will be a war emerging from the indifference,
foolishness, and cowardice of an international
community that refuses to see the Khartoum
regime for what it is, or even to speak honestly
about what it has done and continues to ... We
have reached the "brink of war" ... not because
of what South Sudan has done, but because of
what the international community has not
done.
Dr Reeves has previously
advocated a blockade of Port Sudan to improve
Bashir's behavior.
However, an aggressive
international response to pressure Bashir and
avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in the region
appears unlikely. The centripetal forces that the
West set in motion with its support of South
Sudanese self-determination are too powerful,
politically and economically, to be undone.
A
confrontation will probably be driven by economic
and strategic objectives, at the expense of the
humanitarian goals Reeves advocates.
The
dream of shared economic interests has been pretty
much undone by Khartoum's intransigence and abuse
of its control over the pipeline to Port Sudan.
Pointedly responding to
Khartoum's interference with the existing
pipeline, the government of South Sudan concluded
a much-anticipated deal with Kenya to build a new
pipeline south from its capital of Juba to the
planned Kenyan megaport of Lamu. When completed,
it will remove much of the incentive for civil
economic and diplomatic relations between Sudan
and Southern Sudan.
The government of South Sudan
is also less likely to respond to Sudanese
petro-coercion and an economic crisis prompted by
cessation of oil revenues by rolling over
militarily.
Thanks to assistance from its
allies Kenya and Uganda and a blind eye from the
United States, South Sudan muscled up during the
truce with Sudan (when import of military materiel
was supposedly prohibited), and has acquired an
estimated arsenal of 100 battle tanks, among other
things. [2]
On January 6, United States
President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on
sales of defense articles and defense services to
South Sudan because doing so "will strengthen the
security of the United States and promote world
peace." [3]
In response to the oil
transshipment crisis, South Sudan has put its army
on "maximum alert".
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