Financing Mass Murder How free-market investors contribute to genocide in Darfur while they take the profits October 8th, 2004 4:25 PM http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0441/hentoff.php
Sudan's oil reserves yield two billion dollars in annual revenue . . . —Samantha Power The New Yorker, August 30, 2004
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For six years, the most passionate, meticulous researcher on the atrocities committed on black Africans in Sudan by the Khartoum government has been Eric Reeves, a professor of English at Smith College in Massachusetts. With prodigious energy, he devotes most of his time to writing about this holocaust and informing others, including me.
In a recent study, Reeves focuses on "the many European and Asian companies that are now propping up the Khartoum regime by means of large commercial investments and capital projects," and as a result, becoming accomplices in genocide.
Among the most resistant members of the United Nations Security Council to placing truly punitive sanctions on Sudan's oil industry is China.
"The dominant and most ruthless international player in Sudan's oil sector," Reeves writes, is "China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). After Goldman Sachs failed in 2000 to secure a $10 billion Initial Public Offering for CNPC, the Wall Street firm created a so-called financial 'cut-out,' which became the new entity 'PetroChina.' . . . Wholly controlled and 90 percent owned by CNPC, it lists on the New York Stock Exchange." (Emphasis added.)
The companies of other nations, in addition to China, that invest in Sudan "accept payment [from Khartoum] in the form of Khartoum's petrodollars—revenues raised from oil development projects located almost exclusively in southern Sudan . . . "
When you read about Khartoum's helicopters bombing villages in Darfur as a prelude to the murderous raids by the Arab Janjaweed, who are often accompanied by official Khartoum troops, you may not have realized that, as Eric Reeves continues:
"Khartoum's extensive military purchases, especially over the last half-dozen years, have been made possible by virtue of realized and anticipated oil revenues. These purchases include many of the helicopter gunships that have been deployed to such deadly effect against civilians in both southern Sudan and Darfur. A measure of the profligacy of Khartoum's military purchases can be seen in the recent completion of a deal with Russia for 10 MiG-29s—one of the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world."
At the United Nations' so-called Security Council, Russia, like China, has been very reluctant to put enough pressure on Khartoum to stop the murdering and raping of black Africans in Darfur. Not surprisingly, Eric Reeves discloses, "Russia's Tatneft is an important participant in Sudan's oil sector (and also lists on the New York Stock Exchange)." (Emphasis added.)
And the New York Stock Exchange—oblivious to the more than 50,000 black Africans murdered, and the more than 10,000 dying every month of disease and Janjaweed violence in the refugee camps—also lists Germany's giant Siemens AG. That company, Reeves writes, is "presently building outside Khartoum the world's largest diesel-powered electrical generating plant . . .
"It is this presence," Reeves emphasizes, "that does so much to sustain the National Islamic Front and convince the regime that ultimately petrodollars speak louder than the cries of death and suffering in Darfur." (Emphasis added.) Sudan's oil reserves bring Khartoum $2 billion in annual revenues.
An enduring memory of my boyhood was the headline on a magazine: "Would You Do Business With Hitler?" Many companies, including American corporations, saw no problems in trafficking with the Third Reich. It's happening now with the genocidal Khartoum government.
Among other partners in Khartoum and its killing fields, Reeves adds, are "Switzerland's ABB Ltd. (also listed on the New York Stock Exchange), now engaged in a huge project to upgrade the electrical grid for Khartoum and the surrounding urban areas, as well as in automation work for the major oil production consortium in Sudan, the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company."