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Socialist Democracy November 2004

By Dagga Tolar

Darfur in Western Sudan remains a human tragedy as capitalism continues to set and break its own record as the greatest maker of human tragedy in human history. Not satisfied with consuming millions of lives in Liberia, Sierra-Leone, Somali, Rwanda and Burundi, Congo, whose smoke is yet to die down. It has again, through the Darfur crisis, returned Sudan into another preventable human tragedy.

Sudan was for 20 years in the throes of war between its government and the Sudanese People Liberation Army, led by John Garang. Today, it is engulfed in another war this time in the Darfur region. Already, 70,000 have been killed, 1.5million people displaced from their homes, having been sacked from 376 of their villages that were razed down with fire powder and bullets.

At the core of the present dispute is the question of land, water and control of other resources between the Black farmers and their Arab nomadic' neighbours. The latter gained the support and finances of El-Bashir government in Khartoum, which has no other solution than to back the Arabs to put in place a militia known and referred to as the Janjaweed. It is this Janjaweed that now went ahead in spree of madness to wipe out thousands of lives and homes of the black farmers.

Not to continue to be at the bloody mercy of the Janjaweed , the blacks had to form their own rebel armed groups like Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement with which peace talks have presently been brokered with the Sudanese government by the African Union.

With another round of peace talk in Abuja, Nigeria, the question is: What was the outcome of the first round of talk? Nothing whatsoever. Would this be any different? No. Emphasis, as usual, would remain the question of the various rebel groups putting down arms. The fundamental cause remains the profit system of capitalism, which guarantees millions of a country's wealth for a few, while condemning the millions of the majority of the population to penury, would never be addressed. If anything, it would be business as usual.

Even the peace talks and the African Union peace force already dispatched to Sudan is geared towards the same profit motive. There is the European Union $221 million approved 6 months budget for a supposed force of 2,341 men in face of Sudanese troops of 40,000 and 12,000 police in Darfur that have not brought the crisis to an end. The AU force would therefore not fair any better. It is certainly not the road to peace in Darfur. Already, the Nigeria government, whose president, Obasanjo, also doubles as the head of AU has 300 of its soldiers in Sudan.

Sudan would only end up being another Liberia for the pro-capitalist government of Obasanjo, like Liberia was for Babangida and the Abacha regimes, conduit pipe wherein a huge sum of $12 billion dollars of tax payers money went unaccounted for, all in the quest to bring peace to Liberia, which they were never able to bring about in the end. As the country awash in excess oil fund with oil selling for a record high of $55, Sudan would just but provide the Nigerian ruling elite another opportunity to loot the country's fund and rationalize it in the name of bringing peace to Sudan. Already $270 million is being put forward as estimated 6 months budget for the less than 500 Nigerians contingent in Darfur.

What this would mean is that majority of the working masses and their families would again be visited with deprivation, as basic infrastructures would further collapse.

It is in this light that we call on the labour movement, through the NLC, CFTU, TUC to demand for the immediate withdrawal of Nigerian troops from Darfur as well as other African troops. Only the overthrown of the El-Barshir government and an end to the capitalist system in Sudan and its replacement with a socialist arrangement of workers and poor farmers government, that would manage the resources of Sudan for the use and benefit of the people of Sudan, could usher in permanent peace.

Socialist Democracy November 2004