Global Policy Forum

By Charles Omondi

Two member countries of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development IGAD have lately clinched an oil importation deal with Sudan, raising serious reservations about the regional body's moral authority to serve as a forum for seeking peaceful solution to the Sudanese conflict.

Oil is today considered the single leading factor in the perpetuation of Sudanese civil war that is now in its 18th year. IGAD member Ethiopia, on June 15 this year signed an agreement with Khartoum to be supplied with 120,000 metric tonnes of gasoline and 36,000 tonnes of kerosene annually. Ethiopia will also be allowed to build a fuel depot inside Sudan so as to ensure a steady supply of fuel by road.

Whereas basic economics would justify Kenya's decision this month to buy oil from Sudan as opposed to the more distant Middle East, those who subscribe to the paradigm of business with morality find the move "despicable and a monumental contradiction of our times".

Kenya's President Daniel arap Moi is the current chairman of IGAD and Kenya hosts the IGAD secretariat on Sudan. The head of the secretariat is a Kenyan, Ambassador Daniel Mboya and most of the IGAD deliberations between Sudan's warring parties have been held in the Kenya soil.

At another level, Kenya continues to bear the brunt of the Sudanese protracted conflict in several ways, both directly and indirectly. At least 100,000 Sudanese refugees live in Kenya, a serious strain on the economy of the East African nation that continues to record its worst performance since independence.

Kenya's internal security has been greatly compromised by the proliferation of arms from her fighting neighbours, chief among them Sudan. Sudan's civil strife is the longest-running war in Africa with more armed conflicts than anywhere else in the world.

Incidents of bloody conflicts and other acts of lawlessness related to the Sudanese civil war are commonplace in the Kenyan soil. Just as Kenya's Energy Minister Raila Odinga was announcing the oil deal with Sudan, reports about clashes around the border town of Lokichoggio between Kenya's Turkana and their Toposa cousins from Sudan, were making headlines. Some Catholic nuns were reportedly raped during the clashes.

Many are the times when the Sudanese have turned Kenya into a battlefield and butchered each other in total disregard to the host nation's hospitality.

Would it not therefore be in Kenya's interest to lead the way in the search for a lasting solution to the Sudanese conflict? To merely host IGAD talks without digging deeper into the fundamental issues behind the egregious war can only be likened to treating the symptoms of a serious ailment rather than the ailment itself.

The current phase of the Sudan war that in its broadest definition pits the Arab Muslim north against the predominantly Christian and traditionalist south, dates back to May 1983. It has claimed an estimated two million lives, displaced 4 million people and dispatched tens of thousands into exiles as refugees.

From the time the largest African state began exporting oil in August of 1999, fears were expressed that Khartoum would no longer be interested in seeking a peaceful solution to the conflict. Sudan's oil export business was set in motion by the completion of a 1,650-km pipeline from the oil-rich Unity State in the south to Port Sudan.

The multi-million project was undertaken by a consortium of corporations under the aegis of Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company led by Canada's Talisman Oil Company. Other members of the lucrative venture are the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation; Malaysia's Petronas and Sudapet.

Other foreign companies with investments in Sudan oil are: Sweden's Lundin Oil, OMV of Austria, the Gulf Petroleum Corporation of Qatar and France's TotalFinaElf, which owns an as-yet-unexploited 120,000 sq km concession in the south of the country

Now earning about US$2 million dollars daily from the 200,000 barrels of oil a day, the Lt Col. Omar Bashir led military regime is more than ever before better placed to impose its will on the southerners. That the oil revenue has tilted the war to Khartoum's favour has been made manifest in many ways. Aerial attacks on the rebel territory have increased considerably since last year, while the military government now

boasts of the capacity to manufacture a wide range of military hardware. At the same time, Khartoum has continued to warm up to several states formerly opposed to her fundamentalist form of governance. Many have now chosen to keep mum about Khartoum's crimes against humanity.

The SPLA, led by Dr. John Garang, maintains that all the oil operations in Sudan are illegal and classifies them together with organisations and individuals involved in them in Sudan, as legitimate military target. To put their point across, the SPLA has on several occasions attacked the oil installations, resulting into bloody clashes and loss of many innocent lives.

The British NGO, Christian Aid, is among the organisations and individuals that have come out strongly against Sudan's oil business. Its recent report titled, The Scorched Earth, gives graphic details of the evils associated with the lucrative venture.

"Across the oil-rich areas of Sudan government troops are terrorizing, raping, killing and displacing thousands of ordinary people to make way for oil," the report, says in part. "In three oil concessions in the contested centre, government forces and sponsored militias are depopulating the concession areas step by step as oil exploitation takes place," it adds. "The right of foreign oil companies to exploit oil concessions is taking precedence over the right of Sudanese civilians to live peacefully".

Christian Aid has worked in Sudan for more than 30 years and today has 24 Sudanese partners in both north and south Sudan. Its partner, the New Sudan Council of Churches NSCC, campaigns to end foreign involvement in oil until a just and lasting peace is achieved, and has been involved in groundbreaking people-to-people peace efforts.

The United States too continues to stand firm against Khartoum's trade in oil. A legislation passed last month by the US House of Representatives threatens to bar foreign oil companies operating in Sudan from raising capital in the US.

A report by the Centre for Strategic and Investment Studies released this year concludes: "Oil is fundamentally changing Sudan's War. It is shifting the balance of military power in favour of Khartoum".

To US Republican Senator Leonard Bowell: "Sudan oil is blood oil and anyone or any company or country dealing with Khartoum government in purchase of this oil is a promoter of human slaughter.

When all is said and done, it is all up to Kenya and IGAD member countries to decided whether to seek a solution to the Sudanese conflict or fuel it.