------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 12, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
100,000 MARCH IN KHARTOUM: WILL SAUDAN BE THE NEXT IRAQ? By John Parker Oil and the disappointing results for U.S. imperialist designs in Iraq have brought the continent of Africa into even greater focus. The pieces are being assembled to further U.S. imperialist aims in Sudan. Already the Bush administration has forced sanctions and has assembled troops in the region under United Nations cover. Washington is using the tragedy in Western Sudan to justify its actions. UN sources estimate at least 30,000 people have been killed and more than a million others displaced by the conflict. More than 100,000 people marched in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, Aug. 4 to protest against any foreign intervention. Marchers said they were ready to fight against the invaders, the BBC reported. As stated by an Aug. 2 Guardian article, many people have failed to notice the primary motivation for this renewed interest: "The absence of anti-war skepticism about the prospect of sending troops into Sudan is especially odd in view of the fact that Darfur has oil. "For two years, campaigners have chanted that there should be 'no blood for oil' in Iraq, yet they seem not to have noticed that there are huge untapped reserves in both southern Sudan and southern Darfur. "As oil pipelines continue to be blown up in Iraq, the West not only has a clear motive for establishing control over alternative sources of energy, it has also officially adopted the policy that our armies should be used to do precisely this. Oddly enough, the oil concession in southern Darfur is currently in the hands of the China National Petroleum Company. China is Sudan's biggest foreign investor." In August 1998 then-President Clinton bombed Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world, using fabricated evidence to accuse Sudan of manufacturing chemical weapons. Following the bombing, a fact-finding mission in 1998 that included former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark gathered and reported first-hand evidence exposing U.S. terror against Sudan. The report noted that the bombed Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant had produced over 50 percent of Sudan's medicines. This included 90 percent of the most critically needed drugs. Bombing that plant caused the suffering and death of tens of thousands of innocent people, many of them children, by depriving them of basic medicines against malaria, tuberculosis, and other easily treatable diseases. The bombing followed a policy of destabilizing Sudan that intensified under the first George Bush presidency after the Sudanese government refused to support the 1991 war on Iraq. Washington considered Sudan a rogue nation and the Bush administration pushed the UN into sponsoring sanctions. The year before Sudan refused to join U.S. imperialism's war on Iraq Bush called Sudan a good role model for "democracy." The Aug. 1 Sunday Telegraph reported that U.S. Marines based in Camp Lemonier in nearby Djibouti are undertaking special anti-terrorist operations in Sudan and the Horn of Africa. The Sudanese government has attempted to accommodate the U.S. by allowing small teams of U.S. soldiers to pass into the country as part of official visits. This happened last month on Secretary of State Colin Powell's trip. Despite these conciliatory steps, Sudan is now under threat of international invasion. In actuality the invasion has already started. The Sunday Telegraph reported that a team of five Special Forces soldiers broke off from the Powell entourage for a weeklong mission in the Kurush Mountains. There U.S. aerial surveillance allegedly backs up claims that Al-Quaeda is operating in the region. French imperialism, with its long history of colonialism in neighboring Chad, is also intensifying its threat against Sudan. The BBC on July 31 reported that the French army with about 1,000 troops in Chad was moving to the Sudanese border. French ambassador Jean-Pierre Bercot told the BBC from Chad's capital, N'Djamena, that 200 French soldiers would now be deployed to Chad's eastern frontier with Sudan. The U.S.-drafted resolution that the Security Council adopted July 30 demands that Sudan end the fighting in the Darfur region. Although the Sudanese government has held negotiations with the warring parties and severely punished some of the combatants, the resolution's punitive actions are in effect. The resolution calls for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to issue a report in 30 days on the progress made in each of those areas. The resolution passed the UN Security Council only after the U.S. dropped the word "sanctions" and added economic and diplomatic "measures." As reported by the BBC July 31, Sudan's UN 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," Mr. al-Said told reporters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa earlier this week." The stage is set for a repeat of U.S. imperialist plunder under cover of "humanitarian" operations and supported by the European imperialist powers--unless the progressive movement here can recognize the intervention for what it is soon enough to resist it here in the U.S. [John Parker, who accompanied Ramsey Clark on the 1998 mission to Sudan, is the 2004 presidential candidate for Workers World Party.] - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. 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