Armed intervention in Sudan must be opposed

Crisis in Sudan:

Armed intervention must be opposed

THE CRISIS gripping Darfur, in western Sudan, has been prominently in
the news for weeks now. Media reports claim that up to a million people
have been displaced and up to 50,000 killed as a result of reported
attacks by the Janjaweed militia, backed by the Sudanese government.

Robert Bechert

Certainly the TV pictures and reports look horrifying, with women and
children desperate for food and medical aid, and views of burnt out
villages. Naturally many people internationally want action to resolve
this humanitarian emergency.

At the end of July Tony Blair spoke of having the "moral responsibility
to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that we can." General
Jackson, chief of the British general staff, immediately confirmed that
this could mean sending British troops back into Sudan; it was a de facto
colony of Britain until 1956.

The United Nations (UN) says that the world’s worst humanitarian crisis
is unfolding in Darfur and its Security Council has passed a US resolution
calling on Sudan’s government to halt atrocities by Arab militias within
30 days or face further action. Both houses of the US Congress have
denounced "genocide" in Darfur.

Ten years after the Rwanda genocide cost 800,000 lives the British and
US governments are saying that action must be taken to prevent something
similar occurring again. Suddenly, in a number of countries, enormous
publicity is being given to the terrible situation in Darfur and there is
a growing clamour for intervention.

But after the Iraq invasion there are widespread suspicions, especially
in Africa and in Arab countries, that both Blair and Bush are using Darfur
for their own cynical purposes. Further south in Africa there is a renewed
possibility that full-scale war will resume in the Congo. Three million
people died in the last round of fighting in the Congo between 1998 and
2000, but Blair and Bush are silent on this.

Certainly both Blair and Bush want to restore their "humanitarian"
credentials after the debacle of Iraq but their concern with Sudan also
has other motives. There is oil in Sudan, and in southern Darfur the oil
concession is currently held by the China National Petroleum Company.
Perhaps as an aside Bush and Blair hope to get their hands on this oil?
Already there are signs of rivalry in the region between the major
imperialist powers with French troops operating in Chad on the border with
Darfur.

Any intervention into Sudan by Britain, the US, France or the UN would,
in reality, be a step towards a virtual re-colonisation, not this time to
set up a formal colony but to install a compliant, pro-imperialist regime.

It is possible that the African Union will send in troops from other
African countries, but these forces will also be acting in the interests
of the capitalist countries that sent them and/or the major imperialist
powers. The cynicism of some African leaders knows no bounds. Taking a
"moral high ground", Nigeria’s President Obasanjo has demanded action from
the Sudanese government to stop the fighting. But he ignores the fact
that, at home in Nigeria, at least 10,000 Nigerians have died in ethnic
conflicts and 800,000 made internal refugees since he came to office in
1999.

Stark choices

What then can be done? Sudan has been gripped by civil wars in the
south since 1983 and in Darfur since 2003. In Darfur the central Sudanese
government were backing the Janjaweed militia against the Sudan Liberation
Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) that are linked to
one of its opponents, the Islamic leader Hassan al-Turabi.

While the crises in each country naturally have theirs own
characteristics generally African nations face stark choices. Economically
and socially African countries are not advancing, indeed in many respects
they are going backwards. Since 1981 the 13% drop in national incomes per
head in sub-Saharan Africa has resulted in a doubling of the numbers of
people trying to survive on less than a dollar a day from 164 million to
314 million. More than 500,000,000 Africans live on less than two dollars
a day.

In this situation ethnic, tribal and religious conflicts will develop
where there is no strong workers’ movement that can offer a way forward
through collective struggle against capitalism. This means building a
united movement of working people and the poor that can bring power into
their hands and decide their own future.

But many, seeing the terrible pictures from the refugee camps, will ask
whether this is possible and what should be done now?

The crisis in Darfur is providing another opportunity for the Western
media to present Africa as a continent in chaos where Africans themselves
are helpless and need Western aid. Certainly the legacy of colonialism and
the continuing domination of the world economy by imperialism have meant
that most of Africa is in crisis, but this does not mean that there have
not been very significant movements by Africans themselves.

Up until the 1970s Sudan itself had one of the largest Communist
Parties in Africa and the Middle East. Tragically, its leaders did not
rely on mobilising their supporters in a struggle for socialism. Instead
they made alliances with different groups of army officers, a policy which
resulted in them suffering massive repression after a military coup they
supported failed in 1971.

While supporting the giving of any emergency humanitarian aid the
workers’ movement internationally must oppose any imperialist
intervention, whether under the British, UN or African Union flags, into
Sudan and give whatever support they can to those working to rebuild the
forces of socialism in that country.


Sudan, geographically Africa’s largest country, was artificially created by the British Empire following Kitchener’s 1896-1898 campaign of military conquest. Although the colony was formally jointly run by Egypt and Britain, Egypt itself was then run by Britain, with British officers commanding the Egyptian army.

In Sudan the British colonial administration based its control upon the policy of “indirect rule” that revived the powers of tribal sheikhs and chiefs, a policy that strengthened tribalism. It also played its usual game of “divide and rule”.

During the 1920s the British, fearful of nationalism spreading into Sudan from Egypt and preparing for a possible division of the country, introduced the “Southern Policy” eviction of Muslims, of whatever ethnic origin from south and formation of so-called “closed districts” where Muslims were forbidden to settle.

Sudan was granted independence in 1956.