TJ COLES

Like most countries, the Republic of South Sudan is a complex nation of shifting alliances and external influences.

Recently, President Salva Kiir, who sports a Stetson hat gifted him by George W. Bush, signed a peace agreement with old enemies, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-In Opposition. Around the same time, the so-called Embassy Troika consisting of the US, Britain, and Norway facilitated International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs for South Sudan.

When China proposes investment schemes, US politicians call it “debt-trap diplomacy.” As has been seen in South Sudan, whenWestern corporations seek to plunder poor, resource-rich nations, they call it “development.”

The West’s interest in South Sudan is oil. Invoking the colonial-era “white man’s burden” of 19^th century imperialists, the US government-backed Voice of America recently justified foreign interference in South Sudan by pointing out that the country’s 3.5 billion proven barrels of crude cannot be easily exported due to the lack of pipeline infrastructure and financial mismanagement. The Embassy Troika and its IMF programs insist “that fiscal data – including on oil and non-oil revenues – should be published … regularly and without delay.”

Today, the US has lost control of the proxy it created and South Sudan is descending into a humanitarian crisis. Alan Boswell, a South Sudan specialist at the International Crisis Group, has acknowledged, “US efforts in South Sudan seemed like a final spasm of naive American nation-building, which has all collapsed in epic fashion.”

So what role did the US play in splitting Sudan and driving the country’s south into crisis?

“Tell them Muslims are responsible”

In 1899, Britain created the Condominium of Anglo-Egyptian of Sudan. The “Egyptian” eponym was a misnomer because Britain also ruled Egypt as a so-called “veiled protectorate,” so Sudan and its capital Khartoum were basically placed under British control until independence in 1956.

According to a CIA Intelligence Assessment, a “profitable slave trade was developed by European traders and their Arab cohorts in Khartoum … [T]he violence and cruelty that it fostered have not been forgotten in the South.”

Britain adopted its typical divide and rule strategy. “Christian missionaries kept the slavery issue alive by telling southerners that northern Muslims were responsible.” After independence, the southern region was “barely integrated” with the north.

In 1955, secessionist southern rebels, the Anya-Nya (“snake venom”), initiated the decades-long civil war. The CIA’s Current Intelligence Country Handbook noted that religion was not the only — or even main — point of division. The majority of southerners were black and the ruling officials in the north were overwhelmingly Arab. Resource concentration was a major problem. Heavily dependent on revenue from cotton, Khartoum absorbed Sudan’s wealth to the detriment of the rest of the nation.

CIA analysts were hopeful that the first post-independence dictator, Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Abboud, would follow a pro-Washington course. An Intelligence Bulletin states: “The regime has accepted the American aid program … [and] has moved to curb pro-Communist …. publications.” Gains made by communist politicians a decade later were crushed after the elected government banned left-wing parties and disenfranchised southerners.

As the north’s war against southern secession continued, a reported one million people had died by 1970 and hundreds of thousands had fled to neighboring countries. The US tolerated Soviet arms to Khartoum as it effectively let the USSR fight a proxy war against the south. Israel poured weapons into the south, reportedly to worsen the war in the hope of diverting the attention of the northern government from the Arab-Israeli conflicts.

The South: “exploitable amounts of crude oil”

Between 1971 and ‘72, Ethiopia brokered a short-lived peace between Sudanese ruler, Maj. Gen. Gaafar Nimeiri, and the Anya-Nya’s political wing, the South(ern) Sudan Liberation Movement. The agreement later led to Anya-Nya rebel leader, Lt. Joseph Lagu, heading the High Executive Council of the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region; a political arrangement that lasted until its abolition by President Nimeiri in 1983. By this time, Chevron had spent millions of dollars in a fruitless effort to modernize the south so that it could efficiently extract oil.

US policy shifted to quiet support for the southern secessionists. With Sudan’s oil located mainly in the south, US analysts reckoned that Nimeiri’s regime, which they described as “moderate” and “pro-Western,” had continued de-developing the south. At the time, Washington’s adversary, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, had long been in power next door in Libya. The pro-Soviet Mengistu was ruling Ethiopia on the southeast border. The CIA feared that Sudan’s “severely underdeveloped” south would again rebel, weaken Nimeiri, and leave Khartoum open to Soviet influence.

The 1980s saw the emergence of American “soft power” in Sudan: the use of “aid” and investment to create a viable, independent southern regime.

A history of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) operations in fertile Sudan noted in the early-‘80s that, “[b]efore Sudan becomes the ‘breadbasket’ of the Middle East and other parts of the world, … it will need a great deal of investment directed towards development projects.” Of greater interest to Washington was petroleum: “The Sudanese government is reasonably confident that commercially exploitable amounts of crude oil have been discovered in southern Sudan.”

In 1983, the Sudanese Armed Forces mutinied. Commander John Garang, who had been trained by the US at Fort Benning, Georgia, led the creation of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army. A CIA research paper describes Garang as a “socialist.” Other papers note his being backed by Ethiopia and Libya. Their backing wasn’t to last in the face of US “aid” programs.

The Clinton years: “energy management” and soft power

Washington’s slow push for south Sudanese secession probably began in the 1980s, with so-called civil society projects designed to boost the rebel groups opposing the northern government. In 1987, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – the US government-sponsored regime change entity – began funding The Sudan Times, which “uses NED funds to purchase supplies essential to its continued publication.”

In the north, President Nimeiri was overthrown by General Rahman Swar, whose ephemeral reign saw him replaced by the elected President Ahmed al-Mirghani. At this point, the CIA’s record dries up, so it is unclear what relationship the US initially enjoyed with General Omar al-Bashir, who took over in a coup in 1989.

Martin Meredith’s history of Africa notes that from 1991, the ethnic Nuer commander, Riek Machar, was aided by al-Bashir to seize the oilfields by wresting control from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, led by Garang, an ethnic Dinka. Evidence is scarce, but the Clinton administration (1993-2001) presumably saw southern political fractures as empowering their northern enemy, al-Bashir.

The USAID program, Sudan Transitional Rehabilitation, successfully negotiated a peace between Garang and Machar in 1999. The Agency notes that its grants included provision for “Energy management.” Northwest University’s William Reno seems to argue that the effect of USAID’s Operation Lifeline Sudan, which started the year in which al-Bashir came to power, ultimately legitimized the southern rebels. Claiming that they were spies, Al-Bashir’s men executed USAID staff in 1992, leading the Agency to halt its northern programs.

In 1993, Garang was openly courting the US State Department, though media showed little interest and the history is largely confined to specialist publications. At a meeting in Washington, Garang pressed the southern elites’ cause with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and longtime CIA hand, Frank Wisner, and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, George Moose. Eventually, the meetings paid off.

USAID reports: “In 1998, at the urging of Congress, the White House changed policy to allow the United States to provide development assistance to opposition-held areas alongside humanitarian aid countrywide.”

In 1997, an Operation Lifeline Sudan report revealed the grassroots organizing in which USAID and partner NGOs were involved. So-called Capacity Building included working with “community leaders” from Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the political wing of the southern Army (SPLM/A). Training included land surveying and gender empowerment “at odds with cultural norms and values.” The cultural modernization project prepared south Sudan for future independence.

Proxy nations as “front line states”

Garang was a personal friend of Uganda’s pro-Western dictator, Yoweri Musevini, who provided arms to the SPLM/A. Human Rights Watch reported in 1998: “The U.S. is providing U.S. $20 million in surplus military equipment to Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uganda, for defensive purposes (referring to the government of Sudan’s purported support for rebel forces from each of those countries).” Likewise a Library of Congress report notes that, “[d]uring the mid-1990s, [Clinton] instituted a Front Line States policy of pressure against Khartoum with the assistance of Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.”

The Clinton administration sanctioned Sudan, citing as an excuse the Bashir regime’s alleged links with “al-Qaeda” and the political National Islamic Front, which certain US politicians claimed was a terror group.  In 1998, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) revealed: “Dr. John Garang, in his meeting with SFRC staff, insisted that all development assistance be targeted to areas under SPLA control, some of which have not been under [National Islamic Front] control for five or more years.”

So-called aid money continued to pour into the south in an effort to consolidate the rebels and build a sense of southern nationalism in the public psyche. In March 1999, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) President, Carl Gersham, said: “NED grantees continued to play prominent roles in the human rights and democracy struggles in Liberia and Sudan, where NED has mounted significant programs.”

In 2001, NED began funding the Center for Documentation and Advocacy (CDA), which “publishes and distributes the South Sudan Post throughout Sudan and abroad.” The CDA also received USAID grants. USAID notes that ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains was signed in January 2002 at the behest of the US and Switzerland, calming violence between al-Bashir’s forces and SPLM/Nuba people, who sit on enormous oil wealth. The July 2002 Machakos Protocol, according to USAID, “established the premise of ‘one country, two systems’.”

But “one country, two systems” would soon become two countries, two systems. By then, the George W. Bush administration’s (2001-09) attitude towards the north was a little more balanced. Secret “counterterrorism” operations saw quiet collaboration between al-Bashir and the Bush administration, even as the US continued to bolster al-Bashir’s southern enemies. Al-Bashir’s National Security Advisor, Salah Gosh, for instance, was a CIA collaborator who met with Secretary of State, Colin Powell. (Gosh later attempted a failed coup against al-Bashir.)

In 2002, US Ambassador John Danforth described the SPLM as “the chief antagonists in the Sudan conflict.” In December, USAID’s Office of Transitional Initiatives (OTI) sponsored the All-Nuba Conference, which “[brought] together representatives of civil society, the [government of Sudan], the SPLM, and others from all parts of the political spectrum to discuss the future of the Nuba people.”

Peace agreements legitimized southern rebels

USAID’s OTI was described in 2004 as “supporting people-to-people peace processes in southern Sudan.” The program also sought to “increase the participation of southern Sudanese in their governance structures.” This would be achieved by establishing a so-called Independent Southern Sudan Media and the creation of legal aid units, women’s empowerment, and an Education Development Center to establish short-wave radio broadcasts in Dinka, English, Juba-Arabic, and Nuer.

Facilitated by USAID’s  then-administrator, Andrew Natsios, and Ambassador John Danforth, al-Bashir signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 with the SPLM. Though the US took credit, it was a hard-won peace largely negotiated behind the scenes with Garang and Vice President Ali Osman Taha. USAID notes that the CPA “usher[ed] in a new era of American assistance in Sudan.  The country became a U.S. priority in Africa, and among the highest in the world.”

Garang died in a 2005 helicopter crash attributed to “pilot error.” He was replaced with Salva Kiir, whom US President George W. Bush described as “a friend of mine.”

In November of that year, Kiir addressed the US government-funded think tank, the Wilson Center. “I have met very important officials and I have not only come to know at personal levels but has afforded me to know how things work at the American Government,” said Kiir. This led to the establishment of “the two chambers of the national legislatures” in the south, “as well as the council of ministers (Cabinet) of the Government of National Unity.”

“Aid” continued to mold fractured southern rebel movements into a cohesive whole in preparation for the independence vote. In November 2005, US Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Zoellick, noted the southern factions’ “inability to come together (sic).” Perhaps more importantly, aid was also used to propagandize the southern civilians into supporting unity. Run by the Grand Africa Media Service Co., the Khartoum Monitor was established in 2000 by southern journalists. Its publisher, Alfred Taban, won the NED’s Democracy Award 2006.

In 2007, Rep. Frank R. Wolf, a Republican stalwart of humanitarian interventionism, told Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice: “Salva Kiir needs his people to be trained with regard to the security, with the death of John Garang, if anything happened to him. So if you can quickly make sure that his people are trained, that would be helpful.”

The Obama years: chasing “millions of dollars worth of oil”

The US-backed Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) promised a referendum on particular forms of government for the south, including the possibility of secession. In September 2010 just months before the referendum, President Obama’s Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and future head of USAID, Samantha Power, said of her boss: “The President decided to participate in this event, which was actually at one point originally intended as a ministerial, because this could not be a more critical time in the life of Sudan.”

NED funded and championed a host of South Sudan civil society and propaganda organizations, including: the South Sudanese Network for Democracy and Elections, Eye Radio 98.6FM, the Internews Community Radio Network the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, and the South Sudanese Women’s Empowerment Network.

With pro-Western PR stunts like wearing the Stetson hat, regional leader Kiir promoted US iconography. This was bolstered by a visit from Hollywood star, George Clooney, who “observed” the referendum, which was officially monitored by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) in Khartoum and the Southern Sudan Referendum Bureau (SSRB).

But USAID influenced both organizations: “we are playing a key role by providing technical and material assistance, and have provided significant funding to international and domestic groups to both educate voters and ensure credible observation of the referendum.” This included a voter registration drive, which according to the European Union Election Observation Mission (EUEOM) was more concerned with getting 60 percent of registered voters to participate, as the CPA demanded, than educating the populace about the issues.

The referendum took place in January 2011. Having seized control of southern media, the US by proxy blocked out pro-unity arguments. The EUEOM concluded: “An almost complete absence of pro-unity campaigning created an environment where debate on the consequences of secession or the continued unity of Sudan was drowned out.”

Despite a preposterous 98.83 percent of voters opting for independence, US President Barack Obama instantly recognized the new government of Salva Kiir and his Vice President Riek Machar as the leaders of the Republic of South Sudan.

In 2011, the SPLA was legitimized in the eyes of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM). SPLA soldiers were trained in de-mining and tactical casualty combat care by AFRICOM personnel.

Joseph Kony’s “Christian” Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is the African equivalent of “al-Qaeda”: an elusive terror group that offers the US a pretext to arm several nations under the banner of counter-crime and counter-terrorism. Commenting on the LRA, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Karl Wycoff, said in February 2012 (paraphrased by AFRICOM): “the United States is providing training, equipment and logistical support for military efforts in Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan to fight the insurgency.”

But South Sudan, flooded with US arms and training, descended into civil war. Noting the importance of oil to the equation, AFRICOM stated that “South Sudan’s government in Juba turned off the flow in early-2012, charging that the Sudanese are siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil (sic).” Also in 2012, US President Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travelled “to the world’s youngest country, … where she and President Kiir discussed security, oil and economic opportunity.”

Years of US meddling culminate in humanitarian disaster

US efforts to create an oil vassal state did not go according to plan. The South’s Kordofan and Unity states remained in conflict, with the African Union trying to mediate. With the northern Sudanese government based in Khartoum attacking the states, the SPLA sent troops to occupy the oilfields. Citing SPLA attacks, the Sudanese Armed Forces annexed Kordofan.

A year later in December 2013, Kiir accused Vice President Machar of attempting a coup. This led to the South Sudan Civil War, in which Machar formed the rival SPLM-In Opposition. The peace of 2015 was ruptured after the SPLM-In Opposition splintered and stoked more internal fighting.

In July 2015, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) reported: “The Obama administration is blunt: the humanitarian disaster now underway is the result of unscrupulous political leaders who have exploited an ethnic conflict that they cannot control.” But the CFR neglected to mention who empowered these corrupt leaders.

China has quietly done what successive US administrations had hoped it would not do: courted South Sudan’s government and invested in the country’s energy. The International Crisis Group has said that, “by 2013, roughly 100 Chinese companies were registered in South Sudan, covering energy, engineering, construction, telecommunications, medical services, hotels, restaurants, and retail.”

Meanwhile, the public suffers the consequences of neocolonial games. South Sudan’s GDP is under $5bn compared to Sudan’s already small $35bn. Extreme poverty is over 60 percent, compared to 25 percent in Sudan. Malnutrition is 12 percent in Sudan and not even measured in South Sudan, though USAID suggests that it could be as high as 50 percent. Infant mortality in South Sudan is 62 deaths per 1,000 live births compared to 41 in Sudan. The republic is suffering under internal power struggles and violence, including a border clash that left 24 dead on January 5, 2022.

Many of these economic disparities and political problems existed while the south was part of Sudan, but after decades of US meddling, there is little light at the end of the tunnel.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

As`ad ABUKHALIL

The recent announcement that Washington would be lifting U.S. sanctions on Sudan in return for Sudan’s normalization with Israel is a case study of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

Sudan, like Somalia, has long been a battleground for Cold War intrigues by the U.S., which is responsible for the massive export of arms to both countries.  Like the longtime Somali dictator, Muhammad Siad Barre, Sudan’s Jaafar Nimeiry (1969-1985) switched sides during the Cold War, and the U.S. was more than willing to reward him.

In my childhood in the 1960s, Sudan had one of the most vibrant political cultures and media in the Arab world.

Its famous politician Muhammad Ahmad Mahjub (who served both, as prime minister and foreign minister)  was the quintessential mediator in intra-Arab conflicts, and his name was dominant in Arab newscast.  He was often dispatched by Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser to reconcile warring factions and feuding rulers.

Sudan had more political parties than most Arab countries, which then (and many now) prohibited political parties. (Gulf monarchies — the West’s favorite governments in the Middle East — still ban them.)  Sudan’s political spectrum was rather rich, ranging from communists to Islamists, from secularists to fundamentalists.  Yet, during the democratic era of Sudan in the 1960s, political parties were able to deal with their differences without war or bloodshed.

End of a Brief, Vibrant Democratic Era

But the democratic era of Sudan did not last long; it was ended when a U.S.-trained military officer, Nimeiry, launched a military coup d’etat that ended Sudan’s vibrant democracy.  (American media always insisted that Israel was the Middle East’s only democracy when both, Lebanon and Sudan had democratic political systems).

Nimeiry was an eccentric figure: he was first inspired by Nasser and wanted to model his “revolution” after the Egyptian revolution of 1952.  He consulted often with Nasser and pursued policies supportive of the Palestinian resistance and Arab unification.

Like Muammar Qadhdhafi of Libya, who seized power in the same year, Nimeiry wanted to impress Nasser. That pleased the Sudanese people who were — like Arabs elsewhere — swept with the tide of Arab nationalism which Nasser had inspired since his nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956.   While the people of Sudan were not pleased with the squabbling and internecine wars among the various political parties represented in parliament, they did not necessarily want to replace representative democracy with a repressive military government.

Nasser died in 1970, and military leaders in North Africa were on their own to fashion their policies and governments.  There were coup attempts to replace Nimeiry but none affected him as deeply as that of 1971, when Sudanese communist officers (led by Hashim `Ata) attempted to overthrow  him.  He was deposed for a few days before he launched a counter-attack and restored himself to power (possibly with U.S. assistance given that the communists almost seized power).

Hashem al Atta under arrest following the failed 1971 Sudanese coup d’état. (Wikimedia Commons)

Nimeiry responded with hangings and a brutal campaign against one of the largest political parties in the Arab world at the time.  Communist leaders of Sudan are still remembered for their courage while facing the gallows; the Sudanese communist leader, `Abdul-Khaliq Mahjoub, could have sought refuge in the East German embassy but he instead surrendered himself and was hanged.   Communist union leader, Ash-Shafi` Ahmad Ash-Shaykh, walked to his death chanting: “Long live the struggle for the working class.”

Aligning with US 

Prime Minister Gaafar Mohammad Nimeiri of Sudan, at right, arriving in U.S. for a state visit, 1983. (U.S. government, Michael Tyler, Wikimedia Commons)

Nimeiry then shifted his foreign policies away from the U.S.S.R. and aligned himself squarely with the U.S.  Washington was more than happy to arm and fund another Middle East dictator who would serve U.S. efforts during the Cold War.  It is still not fully known the extent to which the U.S. assisted Nimeiry in crushing the communist coup and in the crackdown against Sudanese communists that followed.

Nimeiry also moved his policies away from support of the Palestinian resistance and was one of the few Arab leaders to maintain close ties with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat even after the Camp David accords.  Like other opportunist Middle East leaders, Nimeiry was suddenly overcome with religious zeal in the early 1980s and decided to impose brutal Islamic penal measures on a country known for its diversity and for its flexible version of Islamic practices.

The Sudanese people were horrified when he imposed a ban on alcohol and enacted the amputation of hands as punishment for theft (just like in Saudi Arabia, which maintained excellent relations with him).  Nimeiry also ordered the execution of moderate Islamic thinker and leader, Mahmoud Mohammed Taha in 1985.

Nimeriy was overthrown in the same year, and Sudanese gathered outside local hotels, chanting: “We want beer, we want beer”, declaring an end to Nimeiyi’s fanatic prohibition and repression.  The U.S. lost a close ally who rendered crucial military and intelligence services to itself and Israel, and was known for facilitating the flight of Falashas from Ethiopia to Israel for a fee.

A Singular Surrender

Nimeiry was overthrown by a military general who is still remembered as the only Arab military figure who ever surrendered power voluntarily (Gen. Muhammad Siwar Ad-Dhahab).  He considered his mission to lead a transition to democratic rule, but that was not to last because another officer, Omar Al-Bashir, would seize power in 1989 and rule the country until last year.

The U.S. opposed Bashir during much of his rule and he also imposed a religiously fanatical rule, and repressed the opposition.  He aligned himself with local Islamists, Iran and the Syrian regime, but toward the end of his rule — and in return for cash — he shifted his alliances toward Saudi Arabia and UAE. Both support regimes that move away from Iranian influence.

Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir during development conference Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Jan. 31, 2009. (U.S. Navy/Jesse B. Awalt, Wikimedia Commons)

Bashir also ended his support and relationships with Hamas and Hizbullah.  He also is remembered for his savage role in the wars of Sudan in Dharfur and the South.  But the U.S. and Israel served as midwives for the creation of the country of South Sudan in 2011, thus depriving the North of vital oil resources.

Bashir was overthrown in a military coup accompanied by a popular uprising. (It is not known if the U.S. was involved, although that is very likely as the new military junta seems to serve U.S. interests rather obediently.)  The uprising pushed for civilian rule and popular elections, but the military junta (and presumably the U.S. and the Sudanese intelligence service) would not allow freedom for the people of Sudan and maneuvered  for ostensible power sharing between the military junta and so-called representative of the popular uprising.

A Sudanese economist, Atallah Hamdok, with experience in Western and UN agencies, was selected as prime minister.  But it quickly became clear that the generals would be running the show, leaving only technical financial matters in the hands of Hamdok and Western leading institutions.  The real power was in the mitts of the chief of the intelligence service, Abdul-Fattah Al-Burhan (who was the local executioner of the Kushner-Netanyahu vision).

Sudanese protestors near the army HQ in Khartoum, April 2019. (M.Saleh, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

All this occurred in the context of Jared Kushner’s adventures in the Middle East region and his failure to sell his Deal of the Century, which was only endorsed by its real architect, Benjamin Netanyahu.

When the Deal fell through, the alternative was a quick scheme to bolster the sagging fortunes of the Trump campaign. Saudi Arabia had been pushing its own peace plan since 2002, known as The Arab Peace initiative, which basically provides Israel with full normalization in return for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Normalization in Return for Nothing

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo arrives in Khartoum, Sudan, Aug. 25, 2020. (U.S. Embassy Khartoum, Alsanosi Ali, U.S. State Department, Flickr)

But the second end of the bargain was never acceptable for Israel, and it  (and Kushner) instead pushed for normalization-in-return-for-nothing.

The UAE and the Saudi client state Bahrain were more than happy to lend a helping hand to Trump, who they see as the winner on Nov. 3, due to wishful thinking. They are banking on being rewarded in a second Trump term.

Sudan is one of the poorest Arab countries and Bashir left the country’s economy in shambles.  The U.S. has been imposing a series of cruel sanctions on the country.

The Sudanese new government (led by the generals who are clients of the U.S.) was basically blackmailed — literally — by the U.S. government.  The government was told that to lift the U.S. sanctions, free frozen Sudanese assets and to end its designation as a terrorism-sponsoring country, it has to establish relations with Israel.

This trade-off discredits the very U.S. designation of countries on the terrorism list. (Apparently the U.S. doesn’t mind terrorists establishing relations with Israel). It underlines the use of economic livelihood and survival as a regular target of pressure and coercion by the U.S. government.

Yemen (one of the poorest Arab countries) was punished in 1990 when it voted against the U.S. wishes in the Security Council to vote for military action against Iraq.  Furthermore, the U.S. wanted Sudan to pay $335 million in compensation to the families of victims of Osama Bin Laden’s terrorism during his stay in Sudan, as if the people of Sudan had a hand in it.

Rushing through the last stretch of his campaign, and eager for an achievement to brandish on the campaign trail, Trump could not wait, and an ultimatum of 24-hours was issued to the government of Sudan: either normalize with Israel or the terrorist label would stick, and sanctions would remain.

President Donald Trump in conference call with Sudanese officials and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Sudan agreed to start normalizing ties with Israel, Oct. 23, 2020. (White House, Tia Dufour)

The government (or the generals against the wishes for their public) obliged and made itself a hostage of U.S.-Israel relations.  There were protests in the Sudan against normalization but none of the Western media reported it.  Zogby analytics (which had longstanding, strong business ties with the UAE regime) published bogus public opinion polls claiming to show support for normalization with Israel, when the most comprehensive and methodologically sound survey of Arab public opinion showed yet again that normalization with Israel is widely unpopular among the Arab population (even in Gulf countries).

The precedent of what happened in Sudan bodes ill for the region.  It proves that the U.S. won’t refrain from resorting to the most cruel methods to force Arab governments to establish peace with Israel. Those peace treaties will require a solid U.S. commitment to support Arab despots at all cost to preserve those treaties.

The U.S. has proven that it is willing to make people suffer, and even starve, if governments don’t acquiesce to its demands for normalization.  The current Lebanese crisis, for instance, is partly due to U.S. pressure on Lebanon to improve relations with Israel and to weaken the role of Hizbullah in the political process (Hizbullah received the largest number of votes in the last parliamentary election).

The Lebanese government got the hint and quickly arranged for border negotiations with Israel under U.S. and UN auspices (the U.S. even demanded that Lebanon recognize the U.S. as an honest broker between Lebanon—a country suffering from U.S. sanctions — and Israel — the United States’ closest ally in the Middle East).

The U.S. had made similar promises to Arab countries before: in 1979 in Egypt and in 1994 in Jordan the U.S. promised prosperity and development if the two countries were to normalize relations with Israel. Decades later, the two nations still suffer from poverty and growing public debts.

It seems the U.S. formula is for Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel in return for more U.S. pressures and dictates, and for false promises of economic relief. Sudanese officials admitted to The New York Times that they were subjected to strong arm twisting by the U.S., and the Sudanese people are becoming more and more vocal against this peace announcement.

The uprising leaders are insisting that the transitional government does not have the powers to reach peace with Israel. It would not be surprising if  this Sudanese-Israeli peace agreement will be as short-lived as the Lebanese-Israeli peace deal of 1983, which lasted less than a year.

consortiumnews.com

The Algerian military had originally seized power in 1992 after it was apparent that an Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front, would win a democratic election. Bouteflika assumed control of a “National Reconciliation” government in 1999, which was, in reality, a front for the military. Bouteflika had been on the Algerian political scene the 1970s, when he served as Algeria’s globetrotting foreign minister. Bouteflika’s resignation spelled the end of the rule of Algeria’s independence-era “old guard” – the “four Bs of Bouteflika, Ahmed Ben Bella, Houari Boumediene, and Chadli Bendjedid.

Bouteflika resigned on April 2, 2019. He was replaced by acting president Abdelkader Bensalah, the Chairman of the Council of State, who remains supported by the armed forces hierarchy, particularly, Algerian People’s National Army chief of staff Ahmed Gaid Salah, until a new presidential election is held this summer.

For the world, Bouteflika’s resignation represented a sea change for the resource-rich North African nation. When Bouteflika was Algeria’s foreign minister in the 1970s, his foreign interlocutors included US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, British Foreign Secretary James Callaghan, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

In Sudan, President Bashir, who had served as Sudan’s president since 1989, was toppled by a military coup that followed mass pro-democracy protests. Even though Bashir resigned, he still has hanging over his head an indictment for crimes against humanity in Darfur, which were brought by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The coup against Bashir was led by his own Vice President and Defense Minister, Lieutenant General Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf, who announced the creation of a textbook Transitional Military Council. The council invited the opposition and protesters to form a civilian government.

Protesters have not left the streets of Khartoum and other major Sudanese cities. Many recently turned out in force to protest an offer of $3 billion in assistance to Sudan from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Many protesters told the Saudis and Emiratis to keep their money. They recalled that Bashir was a longtime recipient of assistance from Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai and they do not want to see one president with puppet strings to the Saudis and Emiratis replaced by another.

In Libya, forces of the rebel “Tobruk Government,” led by a one-time Central Intelligence Agency asset and US citizen, “Field Marshal” Khalifa Hifter, commander of the Libyan National Army, stood at the outskirts of the capital, Tripoli, after conquering most of the country, including the eastern province of Cyrenaica, the southern region of Fezzan, and most of the western province of Tripolitania. In 1987, Hifter became a prisoner of war of Chadian forces after Libya’s unsuccessful military invasion of Chad. In 1990, Hifter decided to go to work for the CIA and he spent almost twenty years in Falls Church and Vienna in northern Virginia, near CIA headquarters, and was involved in various US plots against Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.

After the outbreak of the US-, NATO-, and Israeli-supported rebel uprising against Qaddafi in 2011, Hifter assumed command of the rebel Libyan Army. In 2017, Hifter’s forces took control of Benghazi. HIfter took aim at the Government of National Accord, the United Nations-recognized government based in Tripoli. Hifter has been called a war lord and he his forces have been accused of carrying out war crimes in Libya. Hifter is supported by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Israel, and the Abu Dhabi-based mercenary army of Blackwater founder Erik Prince. It is believed by many informed observers that Prince is an interlocutor between Hifter and the Israelis.

Although the US formally recognized the Tripoli government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, Donald Trump called Hifter in mid-April offering him praise and support. Trump’s encouraging words to Hifter, who he glowingly referred to as “Field Marshal,” came after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo requested Hifter and his forces to “stand down” and begin negotiations with the Sarraj-led government for a peaceful resolution to the Libyan civil war. Trump’s unconditional support for Hifter also came after Trump’s White House meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a major ally of the “Field Marshal.”

Some outside players are not keen on Hifter being in control in Libya. Turkey has been caught arming Libyan guerrilla groups opposed to Hifter, including groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Sarraj government. While Morocco is seen as backing the Tripoli government, Tunisia has been accused of supporting Hifter.

Hifter, who once tried to invade Chad on behalf of Qaddafi, is seen as potentially bringing Chad and its president, Idriss Deby, into his orbit. For that reason, Qatar, which does not want to see Chad fall under Saudi and Emirati influence, is backing a Chadian guerrilla force led by Deby’s nephew, Timan Erdimi, who is attempting to oust Deby. Erdimi’s base of operations is the Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti (BET) region along the Chadian-Libyan border, the same area where Hifter suffered his “Waterloo” in 1987.

An interesting point about the spelling of Hifter’s name. As with Qaddafi, whose name had more than thirty spelling variations, when Hifter first appeared on the scene after the outbreak of the rebellion against Qaddafi, news reports spelled his name as “Hifter.” It then dawned on the CIA that the spelling was outwardly similar to “Hitler.” The media, in unison and complying with the “groupthink” that is expected from them, began spelling the “Field Marshal’s” name as Haftar. This writer prefers to use the CIA’s original spelling of “Hifter,” regardless of whether it sounds like Hitler. The CIA should have thought about that before it hauled Hifter out of mothballs in northern Virginia and gave him his own army in Libya.

Hifter, who once served as Qaddafi’s loyal army officer, is practicing the same sort of tribal politics as Qaddafi to achieve total control of the country. He has made common cause with such tribes as the Misrati, Zintan, Zawiya, and even Qadhadhfa tribe ex-officials of the Qaddafi government.

The Trump administration is clearly a spectator to the rapidly unfolding changes in North Africa. The winds of change across the Sahel and Maghreb regions are also beginning to be felt further south in sub-Saharan Africa. Two erstwhile allies, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, both authoritarians, who show no desire to leave office anytime soon, are rattling sabers at one another. Kagame, who leads a minority Tutsi government in Rwanda, has accused Museveni of backing rebel forces of the majority Hutu tribe of Rwanda, namely, the Hutu-led Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda; General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, the former Tutsi comrade of Kagame, who served as his Army chief of staff and head of military intelligence before breaking with Kagame; and veteran members of the Association France Turquoise, mostly Hutu former Rwandan Army members loyal to the late President Juvenal Habyarimana and participants in the French military’s Operation Turquoise in 1994. The operation was designed to protect Hutu forces from the advancing armies of Kagame, who was then backed by Museveni’s Ugandan military.

It was the April 6, 1994 downing by a missile of the Rwandan presidential aircraft carrying Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira, home from a peace summit in Tanzania that triggered the Rwandan genocide. African politics makes for strange bedfellows as dissident General Nyamwasa was blamed by a French court of inquiry of participating, in league with Kagame, in the attack on the presidential aircraft. Now, Nyamwasa, a Tutsi, is allied with his old enemies, the Hutus, in trying to drive Kagame from office.

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda soon spread to neighboring Burundi and Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo. That same scenario could reoccur if Rwanda and Uganda go to war. But, as with the fluid geo-political situation in North Africa, the Trump administration is a by-stander. Pompeo has little regard for African affairs, while Trump referred to African nations as “shit holes.” The exodus of Africa and Middle East experts from the State Department, National Security Council, and CIA, and their replacement with right-wing and neo-conservative ideologues loyal to Trump, Pompeo, and National Security Adviser John Bolton will ensure that the United States will be driving blind as events in Africa and the Middle East continue to unfold.

The agenda included economic and military cooperation. The Sudanese leader said he had discussed modernization of the Sudanese military with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu before meeting President Putin. "We agreed with the defense minister that Russia will offer assistance to that," he informed. The sides agreed to increase the size of defense attaché staffs.

Omar al-Bashir asked the Russian president for “protection from the aggressive acts of the United States." He expressed concern over the situation in the Red Sea, where he sees the US military presence as a problem, saying "we would like to discuss the issue from the point of view of the use of bases in the Red Sea." The Sudanese leader believes that the conflict in Syria is the result of US interference. The country would be lost if Russia did not lend a helping hand. The success in Syria boosts the Moscow’s reputation and makes other developing countries seek its friendship and cooperation.

According to President al-Bashir, Sudan could serve as a gateway to Africa for Russia. Khartoum is looking forward to cooperation with Moscow in oil exploration, transport and agriculture. In 2015, Russian company Siberian for Mining found large gold deposits in Sudan with only explored reserves standing at 46,000 tons and signed the biggest investment deal in the country’s history. Large gold deposits were discovered in two provinces – the Red Sea and the River Nile. The market value of the gold amounts to US $298 billion.

Al-Bashir, who rose to power in 1989, is on the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) wanted list for allegedly committing crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region. ICC prosecutors issued two warrants for al-Bashir’s arrest, in 2009 and 2010. The Russian government recognizes al-Bashir as the legitimate president of the country. In 2016, Moscow formally pulled out from the ICC. The reason was the failure of the ICC “to… become a truly independent and respected body of international justice». According to Moscow, the judicial body is ineffective and one-sided. Some provisions of the Rome Statute contradict Russia’s constitution, including the mandatory transfer of investigated persons to the ICC, the right to sue heads of state and government figures, and non-compliance with the principle that no one should be held accountable twice for the same crime (“ne bis in idem”).

The Russia-Sudan summit is demonstration of Moscow’s growing impact in Africa. Russia has more than 40 full-fledged diplomatic representations on the continent and has fixed special trade missions to help facilitate trade and investment in a number of African countries. Russia has a special relationship with South Africa. Both countries cooperate within the framework of BRICS. Egypt, a traditional US ally, has shifted sides and allied with Russia since President Sisi took power. Russia’s relations with the countries of the continent are deepening. This is facilitated by negotiations at the highest level. Relations develop with leading regional associations, including the African Union.

The last couple of years have seen a rise in Russia–Africa trade, with aggregate turnover reaching $14.5 billion in 2016, up by $3.4 billion year-on-year. The bulk of it ($10.1 billion) was done by four countries, including Egypt ($4.16 billion), Algeria ($3.98 billion), Morocco ($ 1.29 billion) and South Africa ($718 million).

28 out of 55 African nations boast growing trade with Russia, with Ethiopia, Cameroon, Angola, Sudan and Zimbabwe leading the trend. According to the Eurasian Economic Commission, Africa was the only region to have expanded its trade turnover with Russia in 2016 (unlike the EU, MERCOSUR, APEC, and others).

Nuclear power development options in Africa are now a hot topic, with relevant agreements already signed with Sudan, Zambia, Morocco, South Africa and other countries. Africa is a promising market for Russian grain and agricultural machinery, with the country’s wheat exports heading to Morocco, South Africa, Libya, Kenya, Sudan, Nigeria and Egypt. Sudan, Congo and Senegal have recently indicated interest in pursuing joint oil and gas projects. Russian business holds a leading position in mineral exploration (bauxite, gold, and copper, and cobalt, and diamonds, and many more). Russian diamond-mining company ALROSA is active in South Africa, Sierra Leone, Namibia, and Angola (where it reportedly controls 60% of all extracted diamonds). An agreement with the African partners on economic and trade cooperation in order to avoid double taxation and protection of intellectual property is on the agenda.

Russia is a major supplier of arms to both North and sub-Saharan Africa. Russia continues to gain ground in North Africa, boosting its military exports to Algeria and Egypt while strengthening economic ties with Morocco and Tunisia. Russian arms are an increasingly popular alternative to US weaponry. Moscow’s historically strong arms trade with African countries has been growing in recent years, despite tough competition. Russia ranks first in arms imports to sub-Saharan Africa accounting for 30% of all supplies. Missiles, artillery, small arms, and aircraft are key Russia’s export items to Africa, with helicopters taking an increasingly important share.

There is something more to promote the Russia-Africa rapprochement. They have a common interest in the formation of a just and democratic world order, based on collective approach to the resolution of international problems and the superiority of international law. Both Russia and Africa, reject the unipolar model, the attempts of one country or a limited number of countries to impose their will on the rest of the world. Sudan is a good example of an African country getting closer to Russia in response to the pressure from the West. It seeks new partners to counter the diktat of the United States. Developing ties with Moscow offers such an opportunity.

The implementation of Agenda 2063 (a far-reaching plan indeed!) was a priority topic. (1) This is a program of general development and economic independence. There may be obstacles on the way, but Africa has achieved a big economic success and that’s an undisputable fact. With all hurdles to overcome (1), Africa is certainly outpacing the European Union. 

There were other events to occur this year related to the summit. It all mirrors a certain trend. The NEPAD summit is worth to be mentioned. The abbreviation stands for the New Partnership for Africa's Development, an African Union strategic framework for pan-African socio-economic progress sometimes called the program of African Renaissance. (3) The initiative was put forward by Tabo Mbeki, former South African President, as a plan for social, economic and cultural regeneration of the continent. No doubt the emergence of the program was one of the reasons President Mbeki was dismissed (outside forces played an important role to make him resign). South Africa is involved in the North-South Corridor – a multi-modal and multi-dimensional infrastructure system that includes road, rail, border posts, bridges, ports, energy and other related infrastructure – which passes through 12 countries. The 12 countries include Tanzania, Congo, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.

The June 10 tripartite summit brought together the Southern African Development Community (SADC), The East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). The parties signed an agreement on trade free zone (TFA). The Tripartite TFA encompassing 26 Member/Partner States from the three organizations with a combined population of 625 million people and a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of USD 1.2 trillion will account for half of the membership of the African Union and 58% of the continent’s GDP. The agreement is one more step on the way of boosting trade and establishing an economic entity. It took four years to form the COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite association. The African Union officially began negotiations on plans to create a continent-wide free trade zone called the new Continental Free Trade Area by 2017. South Africa and 11 other countries signed up for an ambitious proposal of having a single air-transport market on the continent within two years. (4)  Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta urged African countries to end their reliance on foreign aid saying the future of the continent cannot be left to outside forces. In a message posted to his Twitter account on June 12, Kenyatta says foreign aid often carries unacceptable conditions and is not a solid basis for prosperity and freedom in Africa. 

Everything’s not that rosy, there are also hitches on the way. Some issues evoke sharp controversy. One of them is the reform of the United Nations. On the one hand, the African Union is unanimous in its desire to make the United Nations Security Council more democratic. In 2005 the AU reached the Ezulwini Consensus (5), a position on international relations and reform of the UN (6). It calls for a more representative and democratic Security Council, in which Africa, like all other world regions, is represented. The AU put forward a demand for two permanent seats and a total of five non-permanent seats with the African Union to select candidates. Allegedly, an agreement was reached on South Africa and Nigeria to become permanent UN Security Council members. But speaking at the summit Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe blasted the two candidates saying Africa would never agree to them getting permanent seats on the UN Security Council. This was because they both voted for UN Security Council Resolution 1973 in 2011, which authorized military action against the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. According to him, they betrayed the continent which could never trust them. (7)

There is another important issue on the agenda. Since a long time the AU has been unwilling to recognize the governments that came to power through coup, even when a regime was popular and enjoyed political support within the state. Some unconstitutional regimes are subject to collective ostracism while in other cases the AU turns a blind eye on those who evidently come to power as a result of coup. The 2012 coup in Mauritania was quite, but it entailed a wave of indignation to suspend the country’s membership in the Union. In 2010-2011 an internal crisis hit Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast).Alassane Dramme Ouattara, the incumbent «president», came to power with the help of French military. The presidential palace was destroyed. No reaction followed. There are cases of absurd hypocrisy, especially when it comes to the right to re-election. This May the Burundi's constitutional court approved President Pierre Nkurunziza's bid for a third term. The decision provoked a flurry of indignation on the part of African Union though the ruling in no way contradicts the country’s constitution. The African Union openly interferes into the internal affairs of a sovereign state which is its member.

There was a scandal during the event. The International Criminal Court's 2009 quest to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and genocide took a step closer to reality on June 14 after he arrived at the African Union summit in South Africa. The North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria barred al-Bashir from leaving the country while hearings determine the fate of the ICC arrest warrant. The ICC always closely watches the Sudanese President’s moves when he leaves his country. Local NGOs rushed to court in an effort to have a decision ordering the South African government to arrest the President of Sudan. The court needed just a few hours to hand down the ruling in favor of claimants. It proves the fact that there are instruments to exercise internal leverage upon the country’s government to make it comply with what the global power tells it to do. There was no legal ground for detaining and putting the Sudanese President under arrest. The mantra about the need for South Africa to cooperate with the International Criminal Court is legally groundless. Any young and inexperienced lawyer knows that cooperation and arrest are not the same thing. It’s clear that the judges realized how absurd their ruling was. Even an ordinary person cannot be arrested upon the demand of foreign or international bodies. The case should be studied first before a ruling on extradition or refusal to extradite is handed down. This time in South Africa human rights activists filled TV channels to persuade that it should be done automatically. The judges were confused. Declaring the decision to take the Sudanese President into custody the court said it would submit the legal opinion for the ruling …next week.

The South African government should be given its due. It guaranteed in practice its obligations and respected the immunity of foreign head of state coming to the country upon an invitation to take part in a session of international body. Omar al-Bashir left the country an hour before the ruling was handed down.

All told, the Johannesburg summit showed that there are serious contradictions between the members of the African Union while the West exerts pressure on Africa. No matter that, the AU is moving to economic integration and independence. No doubt, the pressure will grow. It had to fight hard for political independence. Achieving economic independence requires no less effort.

Johannesburg, South Africa

Footnotes:

Berlin’s interest in this turbulent, far-off African country is motivated by both economic and geostrategic considerations. Three quarters of Sudan’s oil reserves are located in South Sudan, and the country has borders with Kenya and Uganda – countries that are generally regarded to be pro-Western. Khartoum, meanwhile, occupied an anti-Western position, for which it seems to have paid the price of the country’s partition. You may recall that South Sudanese President Salva Kiir’s first visit was to Tel-Aviv, where he met with the Israeli president, as well as the heads of Israel’s foreign and defence ministries. Subjects under discussion included economic cooperation between Juba and Tel-Aviv, and the opening of a South Sudanese embassy in Israel. Israel’s political and economic presence in East Africa is traditionally strong. Relations between Germany and Israel are collaborative in every way. Uganda and Kenya have always been in Tel-Aviv’s field of vision, since presence in the former meant control over a strategically important position in East Africa, and in the latter ensured transit from Israel to the Indian Ocean. It also enabled Israel to have a backdoor influence on the politics of its enemies among North Africa’s Muslim states – Egypt, Sudan and others. 

A rapprochement between South Sudan and the East African Community, which is also being regarded as a united project of the pro-Western faction, is now in the interests of both Uganda and Kenya. A close cooperation between Juba and the East African Community will bind South Sudan with Kenya and Uganda in a number of ways, while closer relations with an oil-rich region is also arousing genuine interest in these two countries. Juba, unlike Khartoum, does not have access to the sea to transport its oil to the international market. 

Kenya has agreed to let South Sudan use its own ports for the transportation of oil. Furthermore, back in 2005, Kenya announced its intention to open a consulate in South Sudan in order to attract Kenyan companies to South Sudan’s oil market. Military cooperation between Juba and Nairobi is also gaining momentum. The stakes are so high that the Kenyan government has repeatedly expressed its willingness to begin training several thousand South Sudanese police officers, and the Ugandan air force has subjected the positions of those supporting former South Sudanese Vice-President Riek Machar to bombing campaigns (although Kampala denies this). Machar is a member of the Nuer ethnic group, while South Sudanese President Salva Kiir is a member of the Dinka ethnic group. There is a long-standing conflict between these two South Sudanese ethnic groups which emerged fully as soon as Juba obtained its independence from Khartoum. 

Berlin’s policy regarding Sudan should generally be in keeping with the policies of Washington and London, namely: the partition of a formerly united country and the separation of South Sudan should not just mean the separation of a large area with considerable strategic importance from Khartoum, but also a change in the ownership of a significant part of Sudan’s oil resources. In this instance, the interests of Germany, the US and Great Britain are the same – these Western powers are eager to «protect» East Africa from penetration by China… Today, more than half of Sudan’s oil is being exported to the People’s Republic of China, and Chinese workers and engineers in Sudan are no longer an uncommon sight. 

Cooperation between Beijing and Khartoum does not just involve oil, but arms as well. China supplies Sudan with tanks, aircraft, and artillery equipment. The international isolation of Khartoum initiated by three leading Western states (the US, Great Britain and Germany) has pushed Sudan even closer to Beijing, but this does not mean that Beijing is not looking for ways to cooperate with the South Sudanese authorities. It is important for the West to make sure that the oil contracts in South Sudan bypass the Chinese. Despite the fact that Western companies managed to be the first to entrench themselves in South Sudan’s oil market, China’s presence there is becoming increasingly more noticeable. 

It must be admitted that Khartoum gave the West a number of reasons to intervene during the conflict, carrying out policies of Arabisation and Islamisation in South Sudanese provinces inhabited by Christians. Washington, London and Berlin are now positioning themselves as fighters for the rights of the South Sudanese population. In truth, however, prolonged interethnic conflicts are tearing apart many African countries, and far from all of these have been awarded the «good fortune» of becoming an object of concern for Western proponents of democracy. South Sudan was «lucky» because it has oil.

Berlin’s awareness of East Africa is not a new trend in Germany’s foreign policy, but a long-forgotten old one. At the end of the 19th century, German East Africa included Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. Today, these countries are members of the pro-Western East African Community, whose zone of influence is expected to pull in South Sudan. 

However, German experts are not sure whether it is worth Berlin interfering in events in this part of the world. South Sudan is quickly sinking into the abyss of an intertribal war. There is no guarantee that the conflict will not spread to neighbouring countries, with the whole of East Africa plunging into an abyss of drawn-out armed conflicts.

One country in the region, however, is gleaming with satisfaction. Tel Aviv has been given a free hand by the instability that it has helped author with Washington in the region. The chaos around it has allowed Israel to move ahead with its annexation of more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank while it pretends to be talking peace with the Palestinian Authority of the irrelevant Mahmoud Abbas. All it needs now is for the US to lead a war against Iran and its allies.

The current upheavals actually have a resounding resemblance to the objectives of the Yinon Plan of 1982, named after its author Oded Yinon from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which calls for the fracturing of North Africa and the Middle East. The Israeli document may have been written in 1982, but it represents the strategic goals and ideas of Israel. «Breaking Egypt down territorially into distinct geographical regions is the political aim of Israel», according to it. It is a continuation of the colonial project of the British in the region and has been transmitted to American foreign policy, which explains the views of the neocons and Ralph Peters about the «New Middle East» that they seek. The «Clean Break» documented authored by Richard Perle for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also based on the Yinon Plan and informs the current position of the Obama Administration and Netanyahu’s government on Syria.

Undemocratic Arabia

The Arabian Peninsula is a powder keg that is waiting to explode. All the regimes are fragile and cannot survive without US and foreign patronage. Their main concerns are survival, but the lack of freedom and oppression is like a toxic buildup waiting to ignite an epic fire that will burn all Arabia. «The entire Arabian Peninsula is a natural candidate for dissolution due to internal and external pressures, and the matter is inevitable especially in Saudi Arabia», according to Israel’s Yinon Plan.

Generally, the littoral states of the Persian Gulf, aside from the Sultanate of Oman, have actively been instigating Shia-Sunni divisions internally and regionally as part of their attempt to gain some legitimacy for the dictatorships of their ruling families and feudal hierarchies. This is part of their survival strategies, but is detrimental to them. The Saudi military has intervened in both Bahrain and Yemen and claimed to be fighting an Iranian regional conspiracy and Shiite Muslim treachery. Aside from discrimination, the Shiite Muslims of the Arabian Peninsula have been accused of being tied to Iran, and this has been used to justify their oppression. In the words of the Saudi Ayatollah Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, however, they have no ties with Iran or any other state nor do they have any loyalties any of them.

The world has watched as the unarmed people of Bahrain have faced the brutality of the Khalifa regime and their army of predominately foreign security enlistees from places like Jordan, Yemen, and Pakistan. Bahranis, specifically the indigenous Baharna, are being further marginalized by the Khalifa’s population transfer and settlement programs that are naturalizing foreigners or importing them to displace the Baharna and other Bahraini communities. The majority of Bahrainis are being systematically discriminated against and ghettoized, because they are barred from the prominent jobs or government positions that are instead being given to foreigners. In addition to the Khalifa reign of terror and the secret police, the Khalifa’s are deliberately stoking Shia-Sunni tensions as a means of keeping Bahrainis divided, keeping themselves in power, and trying legitimizing themselves. Bahrain is basically under foreign occupation.

In Saudi Arabia, the throwback kingdom of misogyny and horrors, there has been agitation by the people against the Saud regime. Despite the brutal crackdowns, there have been consistent protests since 2011 across Saudi Arabia demanding equality, basic freedoms, and habeas corpus. Speculation and rumours about palace coups in Saudi Arabia have also been rife too. The latest of which is that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah had Prince Khalid bin Sultan put under house arrest shortly after he was dismissed from his post as Saudi deputy defence minister.

In reality, the Arab petro-sheikhdoms are fragile constructs that have wobbly foundations. Their princes are united by their insecurities, but have a list of animosities against one another that could breakout under the proper circumstances. The sedition and terrorism that petro-sheikhdoms are spreading across the region will eventually blow back in their faces. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia already fear the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Persian Gulf.

In Yemen, the republican exception to the royalties of Arabia, there is a risk that the country could revert back to the two parts that united in 1990, respectively North Yemen or the Yemen Arab Republic and South Yemen or the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen and North. A Houthi rebellion in the north against the embattled Yemeni government, which has been accused of discriminating against the Zaidi Shiite Muslims by the Houthi, and a strong secessionist movement in the southern areas have brought the state near the point of collapse and allowed Yemen to become a playground for the US and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), specifically Saudi Arabia. Yemen has turned into the Obama Administration’s drone firing range.

Bloodletting in the Mashreq: Mesopotamia and the Levant

Instability and terrorism has gripped Iraq. The groups that can be referred to as Al-Qaeda in Iraq are set on turning Iraq into a failed state by working to implement a wave of terror and violence in Baghdad and across Iraq as a means of making the Iraqi government collapse. These terrorist attacks are actually tied to the regime change agendas of the US, UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey in Syria. The terrorist groups in Iraq have also crossed the border into Syria to join the insurgency there and form what they call the «Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant». They run a twin strategy in Iraq and Syria.

Iraq has devolved into three sections. The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq is virtually independent while countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey are taking advantage of the feeling of disenfranchisement among the Sunni Arabs. Outside powers are doing nothing short of stoking division among Shias and Sunnis and between Arabs and Kurds in Iraq, just as they are pushing for communal division in Syria.

This is what Oden Yinon had to declare about Iraq: «Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shiite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north».

Syria is bloodletting even more than Iraq. Israeli and American analysts, experts, and policymakers keep insisting that the country will fall apart. The foreign-sponsored anti-government forces are killing civilians on the basis of their community affiliations as a means of spreading sedition and hate.

Harking back to Israel’s Yinon Plan, it states: «The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unqiue areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shiite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan».

In tiny Lebanon tensions have been building as a result of the events in Syria and with the help of foreign powers trying to ignite another Lebanese civil war, specifically between Muslims. There has been agitation by a loud set of small deviant groups that support the anti-government militias in Syria and Al-Qaeda, which have been supported by Saudi Arabia and the GCC and given a political cover by Saad Hariri’s Future Party and March 14 Alliance. «Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab World including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula», according to the Yinon Plan.

A new wave of terrorism in Lebanon has started off by deliberately targeting two Shiite Muslim areas in Beirut and then the Sunni Muslims in the Lebanese port of Tripoli. The aim is to make it look like the Shiite and Sunnis are committing terrorism against one another and that the bombing in Tripoli was a Shia response to the bombings in Beirut.

North Africa

Tunisia has been facing a growing crisis. There have been clashes between Tunisian security forces and militant groups near the Algerian border. Two opposition politicians, Chokri Belaid and Mohammed Brahmi of the People’s Movement Party, have been murdered. There have been increasing protests that include demands by Tunisian opposition parties and unionists that the Ennahda Movement government of Prime Minister Ali Laarayedh be dissolved.

Next door Libya is in even worse and used to smuggle weapons into Tunisia and the other surrounding countries. There have been clashes and strikes at its oil terminals and the country is effectively divided. The Libyan government has little control of the country. The real control is in the arms of the militias in the streets. Tensions are also escalating with the fears that the militias from Misrata may make a power play for control of even larger chunks of the country and confront Zintan.

Observers have warned that Sudan, which was divided into two parts in 2011, could face even more violence as tribal conflicts intensify and the government in Khartoum loses control over them. Although South Sudan has become a neoliberal paradise for investors to exploit its wealth and people, it has been plagued by lawlessness, ethnic tensions, and violence. A lesson is to be learned here. South Sudan was a far better and more peaceful place when it was a part of Sudan.

Now reports are emerging that there has been a merger of two armed groups in North Africa. Mokhtar Belmoktar, the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, has announced a new collation with the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO). These groups have been active in places like Algeria and Mali and provided the perfect excuse for external powers to intervene in North Africa. Now they declaring that they plan on getting involved in Egypt in a new war that will rage on from North Africa’s Atlantic coastline to the Nile Delta.

Bloodbath in Egypt

The Arab Republic of Egypt, the largest of the Arab countries, is going down the path of Algeria. The military is determined to keep its power. Egypt has also been central in keeping the Arabs paralyzed in Israel’s designs. Yinon’s averred thus about Egypt: «Egypt is divided and torn apart into many foci of authority. If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join the downfall and dissolution of Egypt».

The Yinon Plan says two important things about Egypt. The first is thus: «Millions are on the verge of hunger, half the labour force is unemployed, and housing is scarce in this most densely populated area of the world. Except for the military, there is not a single department operating efficiently and the state is in a permanent state of bankruptcy and depends entirely on American foreign assistance granted since the peace.»

The second is this: «Without foreign assistance the crisis will come tomorrow.»

Oded Yinon must be smiling from wherever he is. Things seem to be going his way, at least in parts of the Arab World.

Note: All quotes are from the Yinon Plan.

The Nile Basin is seeing record fragmentation of nation-states by secessionist and other rebel movements, some backed by the United States and its Western allies and others backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Yet other secessionist groups are backed by regional rivals such as Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, and Sudan.

Ethiopia has announced that its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project on the Blue Nile will begin diverting the Blue Nile at the end of 2014. Ethiopia’s decision has set off alarm bells down river in Sudan and Egypt, which are both critically dependent on the Nile for drinking water, irrigation, and in the case of Egypt’s Aswan High Dam, electric power. A 1959 agreement between Egypt and Sudan guarantees Egypt 70 percent and Sudan 30 percent of the Nile’s water flow.

Egypt’s government has warned Ethiopia, a historical rival, not to restrict the Nile water flow to the extent that it would adversely affect the Aswan Dam or Egypt’s water supply. Sudan has voiced similar warnings. Cairo and Khartoum are also aware that their mutual enemy, Israel, has close relations with Ethiopia and the Republic of South Sudan, the world’s newest nation. The independence of South Sudan would not have been possible without the backing of Israel’s leading neo-conservative allies in Washington and London.

The White Nile flows from the Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, through Uganda and South Sudan, to Sudan. Egypt and Sudan have also been concerned about Israel’s heavy presence in South Sudan. The South Sudanese secession put tremendous pressure on the future territorial integrity of Sudan, which faces additional Western- and Israeli-backed breakaway movements in Darfur and northeastern Sudan.

Independence for South Sudan was long a goal of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her god-daughter, current U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice. The splitting of Sudan into an Arab Muslim north and a black Christian and animist south was also long a goal of Israel, which yearned for a client state in South Sudan that would be able to squeeze the supply of the Nile's headwaters to Egypt and north Sudan.

South Sudan’s independence was cobbled together so rapidly, its Western sponsors were not even sure, at first, what to call the country. Although South Sudan was finally agreed upon, other proposals were to call the nation the «Nile Republic» or «Nilotia,» which were rejected because of the obvious threatening meaning that such names would send to Cairo and Khartoum.

The names «Cush» or «Kush» were also rejected because of their reference to the land of Cush that appears in the Jewish Bible and the obvious meaning that such a name would have for those who accuse Israel of wanting to expand its borders beyond the borders of the Palestinian mandate. «New Sudan» was also rejected because of implied irredentist claims by South Sudan on the contested oil-rich Abyei region between Sudan and South Sudan.

Egypt has been lending quiet support to Ethiopian and Somali secessionists, which Cairo sees as a counterweight to Ethiopian neo-imperialist designs in the Horn of Africa. Although Ethiopia maintains good relations with the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, Addis Ababa does not want to see Somalia fragmented any further. But that is exactly what is desired by Cairo to keep Ethiopia’s military and revenues preoccupied with an unstable and collapsing neighbor to the east. 

Two other parts of Somalia, Puntland and Jubaland, also spelled Jubbaland, have declared separatist states. Jubaland should not be confused with the capital of South Sudan, Juba, which is being relocated to Ramciel, close to the border with Sudan. However, all this confusion and map redrawing is a result of increasing hydropolitics in the region, as well as the ever-present turmoil caused by the presence of oil and natural gas reserves. The Rahanweyn Resistance Army is fighting for an independent state of Southwestern Somalia. 

Somaliland has its own secessionist movement in the western part of the country, an entity called Awdalland, which is believed to get some support from neighboring Djibouti, the site of the U.S. military base at Camp Lemonier.

Ethiopian troops, supported by the African Union and the United States, are trying to prop up Somalia’s weak Federal government but Somalia’s fracturing continues unabated with Kenya supporting a semi-independent entity called «Azania» in a part of Jubaland in Somalia. 

There are also a number of nascent separatist movements in Ethiopia, many being brutally suppressed by the Ethiopian government with military assistance from the United States, Britain, and Israel. Some of these movements are backed by Eritrea, which, itself, broke away from Ethiopia two decades ago. Chief among the groups are the Ogadenis, who want a Somali state declared in eastern Ethiopia and the Oromo, who dream of an independent Oromia. 

Ethiopia’s ruling dictatorship has tried to placate the Oromos and Ogadenis with peace talks but these moves are seen as window dressing to placate Ethiopia’s benefactors in Washington and London.

However, separatist movements throughout the Horn of Africa took pleasure in the advent of South Sudan because they saw the «inviolability» of colonial-drawn borders, long insisted upon by the Organization of African Unity and the African Union, finally beginning to wither. In fact, that process began with Eritrea’s independence in 1993. Eritrea also faces its own secessionist movement, the Red Sea Afars. The Afars also maintain separatist movements in Ethiopia and Djibouti, the latter having once been known as the French Territory of the Afars and Issas.

In another U.S. ally, Kenya, the homeland of President Barack Obama’s father, Muslims along the coast have dusted off the Sultan of Zanzibar’s 1887 lease to the British East Africa Company of the 10-mile strip of land along the present Indian Ocean coast of Kenya. Legally, when the lease expired the strip was to revert back to control of the sultan. Since the Sultan was ousted in a 1964 coup, the coastal Kenyans argue that the coastal strip was annexed illegally by Kenya and that, therefore, the coastal strip should be the independent Republic of Pwani. The discovery of major oil and natural gas reserves in Uganda and South Sudan has resulted in plans for pipelines to be built to the port of Mombasa, the would-be capital of Pwani on the Indian Ocean. In Kenya, hydropolitics and petropolitics in the Horn of Africa has resulted in Balkanization spilling into Kenya.

In the Himalayas, glacier retreat and rapidly diminishing snow cover are also adding to hydropolitical angst and fueling separatist movements backed by the bigger powers in the region: India, China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Snow melt is now being seen in some parts of the Himalayas in December and January. Four dams on the Teesta River, which flows from Sikkim through north Bengal to the Brahmaputra basin, have not only affected the geo-political situation in Sikkim, which has nascent independence and Nepali irredentist movements, but also helps to fuel demands for increased autonomy for Gorkhaland, Bodoland, and Assam, an independent Madhesistan in southern Nepal, an ethnic Nepali revolt in southern Bhutan, and consternation in Bangladesh, where the Brahmaputra and Ganges converge to largely support a country with a population of 161 million people. Bangladesh has also seen its share of secessionist movements, including the Bangabhumi Hindu and the Chittagong Hill Tracts movements.

Hydropolitics, petropolitics, and the status quo, like water and oil, do not mix, especially when it comes to the preservation of current borders. Northeastern Africa and South Asia are not unique in this respect.

For those nations that have refused to allow their economic futures to be decided by unelected bankers and international bureaucrats on far-away shores, sanctions continue to be the chosen method to force assimilation by the recalcitrant. These nations include Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Syria and Sudan… After Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi was ousted and assassinated by NATO-financed Islamist guerrillas, Libya is now a member of the «club», along with post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

For those countries that acceded to the international contrivances of free trade areas and common currency zones, it has been the WMD of austerity and budgets dictated by supranational entities like the European Union, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank that have ruled the day. 

U.S. sanctions against Cuba are now engrained in the American body politic. Suggestions by American politicians that trade sanctions against an island that is 90 miles from Key West, Florida are a Cold War anachronism and should be lifted are met with howls of protest from Cuban-American senators and representatives from southern Florida and New Jersey. The Cuban minority in the United States has emulated a much larger and wealthier minority, Jewish-American supporters of Israel, in their dual and often-coordinated stranglehold on U.S. foreign policy in order to placate a few at the expense of the many.

A recent Bloomberg News editorial indicated where much of Wall Street now leans on the issue of trade sanctions against Cuba. Bloomberg offered the following question: «Is Cuba really America’s most serious national security threat?» The media firm opined, «You might think so from the sanctions the U.S. imposes on it, which are more onerous than those on Iran and North Korea.»

Crippling American sanctions on Cuba resulted in the development of a homegrown health care capability that is now the envy not only of Latin America and the Caribbean but of many poor regions in the United States where adequate health care in non-existent. After Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and environs in 2005, the United States was quick to reject a Cuban offer to send doctors and field hospitals to the stricken area lest Americans discover how much more advanced Cuban medicine was to their own second-rate health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and local care. 

A decades-long American embargo on pharmaceutical products to Cuba resulted in Cuban researchers developing homeopathic medical products that have provided effective treatment for such diseases as leptospirosis, also known as swamp fever. Cuba also independently developed vaccines for polio, measles, cholera, meningitis-C, diphtheria, and tuberculosis.

EU, U.S., Japanese, and other sanctions on Iran have failed to cripple the nation’s economy as hoped for by the imposers of the trade blockade. The Tehran skyline is rife with construction cranes and although the immediate effect of financial sanctions imposed on Iranian banks drive up consumer prices, the land of the old Silk Road has managed to work around modern contrivances by re-engaging old trade routes with the neighboring and friendly government of Iraq, majority Shi’a Tajikistan, and independent elements in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

In addition, the leaders of the BRICS nations, meeting in Durban, South Africa, announced their opposition to Iranian economic sanctions. The emerging powerhouses of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa carry more weight than ever before as EU nations, the United States, Canada, and Japan struggle with austerity programs and severe budget cuts. 

Cuba and Iran have been relative success stories in battling against the globalist WMD of economic sanctions. North Korea, for all of its bluster, worsening relations with South Korea, and imposition of retaliatory economic sanctions by the UN, still relies on the Rajin-Sonbong Special Economic Zone along the Chinese border to gain access to consumer goods and hard currency. And the surprising ace up North Korea’s sleeve is the secret relationship between the military clique that pulls the strings for Kim Jong Eun and Israel’s military–intelligence complex. Israeli companies have signed contracts with the North to enhance the security fence along North Korea’s border with China. Israel, in fact, markets its wall technology that divides the West Bank to eager «wall builders: abroad.

The other globalist WMD, austerity, has had a devastating effect on Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, and more recently, Cyprus… Central bankers at first tried to levy a ten percent tax on all Cypriot bank depositors’ savings. It then modified the plan to levy a 40 percent tax on savings accounts over $130,000. The many days of bank closures in Cyprus sent a shock wave through the Cypriot working class as well as throughout other countries that have been suffering from EU, World Bank, and IMF-dictated austerity programs and mandatory budget cuts that have drastically eroded social safety nets and pensions across Europe. The Bank of England followed the Cyprus fiasco by ordering British banks to raise $38 billion to offset future financial quakes. The scenes of working class Cypriots lining up at ATM machines to make government-capped withdrawals sent shivers through many parts of an already snow bound United Kingdom. 

The Tory-Liberal Democratic Party coalition government then hit British citizens with an austerity sell-off shock: the Royal Air Force’s famed air/sea search-and-rescue helicopter service was going to be privatized with the contract going to Bristow Group, a Houston firm with close ties to the Texas oil business. Coastal communities bristled at the idea that life and death decisions would be based on profit motives. The Scottish National Party government in Edinburgh, which had just scheduled September 18, 2014 for an independence referendum, saw a new issue with which to convince Scots it is time to leave the embrace of the pin stripe-suited connivers of London and its sacrosanct «City» of secretive bankers. 

Residents of Detroit also received a bitter taste of the globalists’ WMD of austerity when Michigan’s Republican Governor, Rick Snyder, appointed Kevyn Orr of the alligator shoe law firm Jones Day as emergency manager for the city that once served as the nexus for America’s automobile industry: Detroit. Emergency managers are the new globalist rage for the United States. Bypassing democratically-elected officials, emergency managers are empowered to cut salaries and pensions of municipal employees and can put city assets on the auction block to be gobbled up by vulture-like greedy investors who seek profits from publicly-owned property.

On the auction block in Detroit were the city-owned Belle Isle Park, an island in the Detroit River between the state of Michigan and Ontario, Canada; Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport; and the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. 

Americans were getting their first taste of European-style austerity. On the national front, President Obama and his alleged opponents on the Republican side were secretly having their aides meet to plot on ways to gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Americans were discovering firsthand what it was like to see their public assets sold off to shyster billionaires in quick fire sales. Throughout Europe, rail systems, highways, water and electric utilities, seaports, airports and airlines, state banks, oil companies, sports stadiums and arenas, public broadcasters, bridges, ferries, state lotteries, postal services, museums, palaces, parks, foreign embassies, government buildings, even entire islands – everything but the air we breathe — were being hawked to the top unsavory bidder who had dubious cash in hand. 

Working class people in Detroit, Madrid, Nicosia, Athens, Lisbon and Rome now had much in common with people who continued to suffer from sanctions in cities like Tehran, Isfahan, Havana, and Cienfuegos. They also had a common enemy who would not hesitate to use the WMDs of sanctions and austerity on innocent civilians.