The War the World Isn’t Watching

One day, it’s a relief clinic, the next, an elementary school and on another, an animal pharmacy. The bombing of civilian targets in Sudan is no longer news even though, or perhaps simply because, such incidents occur nearly every day. With virtually no attention from the Western media, the war in Sudan, called by one observer “the most destructive civil conflict in half a century,” has intensified in recent months.

It is tempting to view the bombings as just another example of the “bad” northern, fundamental Islamic government in Sudan attacking “good” southern, innocent, Christian civilians. But the story is far more complex. Contrary to popular belief, there are no “good guys” in this conflict; neither side is any closer to winning the war. Since 1983, when the fighting began anew, more than 2 million civilians have died and millions more have fled their homes. These numbers rise daily with each bomb dropped by the Sudanese government and each mortar round fired by anti-government rebels.

Politics, religion and oil make a combustible mix in Sudan. Indeed, it is somewhat misleading to call the fighting a “civil war,” a convenient rhetorical device that keeps responsibility for Sudan’s unspeakable suffering far from Western shores. Transcending Sudan’s borders, the 17-year-old war has become a convoluted international affair involving a variety of actors: first and foremost, the government of Sudan and the many fractious rebel groups in Sudan; second, multinational companies and foreign governments, especially China and Malaysia, that have facilitated the development of Sudan’s oil-rich zones and secured a pipeline to drain oil from the south out through the ports of the north to international markets; and the U.S. government, whose pro-rebel policies have done more to foment violence in Sudan than to promote peace.

Since Sudan’s independence in 1956, anti-government rebels, located primarily but not exclusively in the south, have fought, often with just cause, against successive regimes of northern oppression. Pausing for an uneasy 10-year hiatus in 1973, the latest round of fighting erupted over how to divvy up the south’s undeveloped oil reserves and the introduction of Islamic sharia law by the then-pro-U.S. government of Sudan.

During the Cold War, when Sudan was strategically important, the United States ignored Khartoum’s increasingly fundamentalist Islamic government and denounced anti-government rebel activity in the south. Development and humanitarian assistance flowed generously to the north, while much of the south was left to starve. In 1988 alone, more than 250,000 southerners from the Dinka tribe died in a famine marked by an embarrassingly slow response from the international community, including the United States.

But with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the ultrafundamentalist National Islamic Front regime in 1989 in Khartoum, the United States abruptly changed course, going from anti-south to anti-north. The suffering of Washington’s newfound Christian brothers became a popular cause among conservative U.S. politicians and aid agencies.

The anti-government rebel groups of the south, scattered and easily manipulated by rival factions or the Sudanese government, have become particularly adept at exploiting the good intentions of a sympathetic U.S. Congress and Clinton administration. Throughout this summer, they have run roughshod over cease-fire agreements and increased their attacks on government-held towns. The government of Sudan, emboldened and enriched by successful exploitation of oil and natural-gas resources, has intensified its years-long campaign of aerial bombardment of southern Sudan.

Thousands of Sudanese civilians have lost their homes in the fighting, scattering to the north, south, east and west, sometimes crossing international borders. With them go their cattle, on whom they depend for survival. Over the past month, 100,000 cattle in need of immediate vaccination have poured into Bentiu alone, near the newly exploited oil fields in the Upper Nile region of southern Sudan. This has increased conflicts among herding groups and spread disease.

Much of the latest fighting is about oil, a precious resource that could be the key to a prosperous and harmonious Sudan but instead has been violently exploited by the Sudanese government and oil firms from Europe, North America and Asia. The Khartoum government’s ill-gotten gains have funded an escalation of its military attacks against civilians living in the oil fields of the south. Human-rights groups have documented how the northern government is using scorched-earth policies and campaigns of forcible displacement to rid the oil fields of their native southern residents.

The rest of the fighting is about religion. The Clinton administration’s misguided policy of isolating the Muslim-dominated government of Sudan and strengthening anti-government rebels has backfired. Indeed, U.S. policy has destroyed the rebels’ incentive for peace.

Over the past decade, the United States has provided Sudan with more than $1 billion in humanitarian assistance. Much of this aid has gone to salve the wounds of the south, a rather hypocritical gesture in the face of the U.S. responsibility for protracted violence in Sudan. Alongside its financial assistance, the United States needs to make a far stronger political commitment to stop the fighting. While the administration has slowly taken positive steps to restore diplomatic ties with Sudan, much more needs to be done. U.S. allies still cringe at the ill-conceived bombing of the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum in 1998 and last year’s equally misguided plans to provide “humanitarian” assistance to rebel groups.

It is time for Washington to go, hat in hand, to Europe and forge a common policy to foster a just and lasting peace in Sudan, one that includes concerted action to stop the fighting related to oil extraction. The recent campaign to clean up the diamond industry, which is as badly implicated in violence in southern and western Africa as oil is in Sudan, can serve as a model for international action. The diamond embargo against Sierre Leone, itself a war-torn country, is a collaborative effort led by de Beers, the world’s largest diamond company, human-rights groups, the United Nation Security Council and various governments, especially Great Britain and the United States. In its final year, the Clinton administration can start to right the wrongs of 10 years of harmful policy in Sudan by leading a similar coalition of Western nations, advocacy groups and multinational companies in a campaign to finally bring about peace in Sudan.