If this "No Fly Zone" resolution was put in place in 2005, why was it still being discussed in the Dem. Debates recently in 2007?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Box...
In March 2005 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed Boxer's amendment to the Foreign Affairs Reauthorization Bill strongly urging Saudi Arabia to permit women to run for office and vote in all future elections.
Boxer is a cosponsor of S. 495, or the Darfur Accountability Act of 2005, which would impose sanctions against perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Darfur. Sanctions under this legislation include imposition of a military no-fly zone in Darfur, a coordinated effort between the U.S. and Sudanese governments to track down and prosecute individuals in Sudan in any way involved with genocide or other war crimes in Darfur, a call for the Sudanese Government to take an active roll in combating Janjaweed forces within its borders, and a policy of sanctions against the Sudanese government, including sanctions that will affect the petroleum sector, and individual members of the Sudanese government whose actions support the crimes of violent militias in Darfur.
Khartoum is also where the CIA hunted bin-laden according to the book "Hunting the Jackal" (militarybookclub.com). China's involvement in acquiring oil in areas where it is politically unsavory for the U.S. gives them a strategic advantage in every anti-U.S. country (like Venezuela) in the world. Energy Security (wikipedia.org) becomes of grave concerns as we are 5% of the worlds population, use 25% of the worlds energy and 40% of the worlds petrol products.
tim trevathan <trevathantim@yahoo.com> wrote:
http://www.gvnews.net/html/Corp/newsfeed...
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October 25, 2005
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Op-Ed
In Khartoum's Oil Pipelines Flow Blood
By Peter Wanbali
The Nation
KHARTOUM, May 21, 2002 -- Two documents on the Sudan released almost simultaneously last week expose the complexities and contradictions inherent in the search for peace in that country's conflict that has lasted two decades, killed two million people, displaced 4.5 million others and burnt hundreds of billions of dollars.
And nowhere is this more dramatic than in the reports' treatment of the role of oil in the war between the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and its allies, and the Government of Sudan GOS.
The first report, Depopulating Sudan's Oil Regions, is written by Diane deGuzman for the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan. It is a searing condemnation of the GOS strategy to strafe civilian populated regions in South Sudan for the express purpose of clearing the regions for oil drilling work to either start or continue.
It documents atrocities against the civilians starting from October 2001, when the GOS launched an offensive in the southeast part of Ruweng County, in oil concession Block 2.
Although no SPLA troops were on the ground, the report says that the villages between Jukabar and Bal were bombarded from the air, with ground troops moving in to mop up. Many were killed and those lucky to survive now huddle in swampland to the northeast and southeast of the county.
Timing too fortuitous to be coincidental
Within a month of the clearing up of the region, the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC), comprising Talisman Energy, Chinese National Petroleum Corporation, Petronas Carigali and Sudapet, moved a drilling rig into the area. The timing of the raid and the decision by GNPOC was too fortuitous to be coincidental.
The report also documents another raid that by mid-February this year had depopulated the northern part of Block 5A, in Western Upper Nile.
The two campaigns by the GOS have displaced an estimated 80,000 people from Ruweng County and another 50,000 from the Western Upper Nile, who are now forced to wander in search of food, safety and shelter.
Harrowing quotes from men and women who lost loved ones during the raids make for very sober reading, very much in the vein of two earlier reports: The Scorched Earth by Christian Aid in 2000, and Report of an Investigation into Oil Development, Conflict and Displacement in Western Upper Nile, released mid-last year by Georgette Gagnon and John Ryle.
The second report released this month was Sen John C. Danforth's memo to the US President. Mr Danforth was appointed Special Envoy for Peace in the Sudan in late 2000 and this is a report on his mission.
Several observations stand out, not least his advice that there should be no more new US-led initiatives. Rather, the US should engage more actively bilaterally in the Sudan and that increased support should be offered to existing initiatives like the Kenya-led IGAD peace process and the Egyptian-led Joint Initiative (with Libya).
Sen Danforth details four "tests" of will that he subjected the GOS and the SPLA to, whose results were the basis of his guarded optimism.
One was demand for a cease-fire and setting up of a comprehensive relief and rehabilitation programme for the devastated Nuba Mountains region;
the second was observing days of tranquillity to allow relief agencies work on programmes to eradicate polio, guinea worm and bovine rinderpest.
The third was prevention of intentional, wanton attacks (often by government) against innocent civilians and
fourth was a proposal to the GOS to strengthen the effectiveness of its own anti-slavery commission. He claims varying degrees of success in these tests.
Although Sen Danforth acknowledges that any movement forward must grapple with the thorny issues of self-determination for South Sudan, governance, religion and oil, his analysis of how oil features in the cauldron is perverse. His suggestion that a formula should be worked out for sharing the oil revenue between the GOS and the SPLA is both bizarre and impracticable.
Renewed confidence
The oil revenue, about $2 million every day, has given GOS renewed confidence and apart from enabling it increase its fighting efficiency, will soon become a significant cause for the war.
For the process of peace to move forward - even with renewed vigour from the US and a boost to the sub-regional initiatives - the oil booty must be made a non-issue in the process.
Companies like the GNPOC consortium must be prevailed upon to exercise some moral influence on the government and stop pretending that they do not see or care about what their money is financing in the Sudan.
Countries like Kenya should also rethink the ridiculous posturing they are involved in - on the one hand acting as concerned mediators and peace-makers while on the other hand they are key customers buying the oil and financing the war. Ultimately, UN sanctions would be considered against all parties involved even if such penalties have not been great successes in the past.
This clearly, is a hard number to push when there is so little moral firepower left for the US to expend - see what it did with Nigeria and Angola even at the height of human rights atrocities in those countries. These two reports do not give cause for hope that south Sudan's long walk out of the swamps and depths of despair it has been forced into will be ending any time soon.
漏 The Nation, 2002. Distributed in partnership with Globalvision News Network (www.gvnews.net). All rights reserved.
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