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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Mon Jul 18 2011 - 13:58:30 EDT
Foreign Intervention Behind Creation of South Sudan
<http://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/su20110717.mp3> DOWNLOAD THE MP3 AUDIO of
this report
2011/07/18 <http://www.corbettreport.com/sunday-update-20110717/>
Video- http://www.corbettreport.com/sunday-update-20110717/
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome. This is James Corbett of <http://www.corbettreport.com> The
Corbett Report with your <http://sundayupdate.blip.tv> Sunday Update from
The Centre for Research on Globalization at <http://www.globalresearch.ca/>
globalresearch.ca for this 17th day of July, 2011. And now for the real
news.
The world welcomed a new nation to the international community last week as
South Sudan officially became its own country. Obtaining independence from
Sudan on July 9th, the Republic of South Sudan became the 193rd
<http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2011/07/15/south-sudan-becomes-193rd
-member-of-united-nations/> member state of the United Nations in a general
assembly vote earlier this week and Africa's first new country since Eritrea
became an independent state in 1993.
So far, coverage of the story in the western establishment media has
unproblematically portrayed the creation of South Sudan as the hard-won
fruit of a valiant and spontaneous liberation movement among the southern,
mainly Christian and animist population,who have been engaged in a
decades-long struggle against the mostly Arab north, where embattled
President Omar al-Bashir has been broadly criticized for his rule. He was
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/12/bashir-charged-with-darfur-geno
cide> indicted last year by the International Criminal Court for genocide in
the Darfur region.
However, critics and independent journalists note that Sudan has long been
the victim of outside interference by western powers with financial
interests in the vast resource wealth of the region. They allege that
mainstream western press about South Sudan has gone out of its way to find
human interest angles in the story that are conspicuously free of historical
context or geopolitical analysis.
Britain's Telegraph newspaper
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/8632832/London-2012-O
lympics-South-Sudan-can-compete-at-Games.html> ran a story on Tuesday noting
that "South Sudan will be able to take part in the London 2012 Olympics but
face a race against time to do so under their own flag."
The Daily Star out of Lebanon ran
<http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Lifestyle/2011/Jul-13/South-Sudans-wild
-hope-for-the-future.ashx> an entire article devoted to how a wildlife
preserve hopes to attract more tourists now that the south is its own
country.
The Washington Post posted
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early-lead/post/luol-deng-hosts-basketb
all-clinic-in-south-sudan/2011/07/12/gIQASawlAI_blog.html> a feature story
about Chicago Bulls forward Luol Deng traveling to South Sudan to host the
country's first post-independence basketball clinic.
The New York Times ran
<https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/world/africa/10sudan.html?_r=1&pagewante
d=all> a lengthy report about South Sudan's independence celebrations,
providing great detail about the festivities, the personal experiences of
random Sudanese, and a lengthy list of the foreign dignitaries in
attendance. But, as independent journalist Russ Baker notes in
<http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/07/11/two-million-dead-now-whats-that-south-suda
n-independence-about/> an essay criticizing such reporting, the Times does
not even mention the question of South Sudan's primary resource until the
24th paragraph of their article, when they note:
"Negotiators have yet to agree on a formula to split the revenue from the
south's oilfields, which have kept the economies of both southern and
northern Sudan afloat."
The effect of these reports are to downplay one of the central questions
behind the decades-long strife in the region, and obscure what many are
alleging is a history of western interventionism in the name of the region's
strategic, mineral and economic interests.
Only ever mentioned as a backdrop to the hostilities that have been the
hallmark of the Sudan in recent years, oil accounts for between 70% and 90%
of the region's exports. Sudan is the
<http://africa.berkeley.edu/Sudan/Oil/SudanOilFactsheet-Sept06.pdf> third
largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, and according to a
<http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/repor
ts_and_publications/statistical_energy_review_2008/STAGING/local_assets/down
loads/pdf/statistical_review_of_world_energy_full_review_2008.pdf> 2008 BP
Statistical Energy Survey, it had proven oil reserves of over 6.6 billion
barrels at the end of 2007. Now, as much as
<http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=243929> 85% of those
reserves are believed to lie in the newly-created Republic of South Sudan,
reserves whose fate are now in question as the region's treaties and
agreements are rewritten by a new government.
Throughout the 1990s, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6323017.stm> China has
invested massively in the region's oil deposits, including the construction
of a <http://www.sudantribune.com/CNPC-to-build-new-Sudan-pipeline,231>
1000 kilometer long pipeline to pump Sudanese oil to Chinese ships anchored
in the Red Sea. By the time of separation, China had become Sudan's largest
trading partner, buying
<http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2008/gb20080314_430126.htm
> 40% of Sudan's oil.
But with the creation of the new government in the South, that looks set to
change. The South Sudanese central bank has been
<http://blogs.wsj.com/corruption-currents/2011/07/15/south-sudan-central-ban
k-is-clear-of-us-sanctions/> formally cleared from the US sanctions that
prevent American businesses from dealing with the Sudanese central bank.
Just this week, the new South Sudanese government announced that they have
<http://www.sudantribune.com/South-Sudan-Nile-Petroleum,39532> launched a
joint venture with Glencore, the world's laragest commodities training
company, to develop the country's vast oil wealth.
As long-time observers of the region are now noting, these latest moves
belie the fact that all of the western attention on this region over the
past decades, including economic, financial, military and even humanitarian
interest in Darfur, have been tied to the vast potential wealth of the
country, and the creation of a new, Western friendly government was the
geopolitical endgame all along.
To learn more about the story behind the story of the creation of South
Sudan, The Corbett Report
<http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-356-keith-harmon-snow/> talked last
week to <http://www.consciousbeingalliance.com/> Keith Harmon Snow, a
writer, photographer, humanitarian campaigner and award-winning journalist
who has been writing about western interventionism in Sudan for several
years.
Allegations that foreign interest in the Sudan was geared toward the
establishment of a western-friendly government in the region appear to be
vindicated by developments since the creation of the new state.
During independence celebrations, South Sudanese revellers were
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV8YdhZvT3Y> seen to be carrying Israeli
flags, a reflection of
<http://news.antiwar.com/2011/04/06/israeli-official-admits-to-tuesday-attac
k-on-sudan/> Israel's active support for the South in opposition to the Arab
government in Khartoum throughout the period of civil strife. Now, Israel
has
<http://news.yahoo.com/israel-recognizes-south-sudan-offers-economic-aid-084
150563.html> officially recognized the government of South Sudan in its
capital, Juba, and Juba has reciprocated
<http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE76F01320110716> by saying it
wants to help Israel in forging a middle east peace deal.
The South Sudan government also
<http://wireupdate.com/wires/18835/south-sudan-establishes-central-bank-as-i
t-receives-its-new-currency/> launched its own currency this week, the South
Sudanese pound, which was printed in Germany and flown into the country
yesterday. As a testament to the willignness of the South Sudanese to
subject themselves to the economic subjugation of the western-led
international financial order, the government in Juba
<http://www.sudantribune.com/South-Sudan-formally-applies-for,38647> applied
for IMF membership back in April, before it had even officially gained
independence from Sudan, a country with which the IMF has historically had a
rocky relationship.
Now, as
<http://www.npr.org/2011/05/26/136669793/fighting-in-sudans-disputed-abyei-r
egion-persists> tensions flare up once again between Sudan and South Sudan
over control of disputed, oil-rich areas of the region which are still in a
territorial grey zone, and as UN peacekeeping forces
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/new-un-force-in-south-sudan
-will-have-7000-military-and-900-police/2011/07/08/gIQArEKA3H_story.html>
flood into the region to ostensibly make sure those tensions do not fly out
of control, look for the establishment media to continue to provide
contextless, fact-free reporting on issues of no significance whatsoever and
to unwaveringly side with the western-friendly South over the
Chinese-friendly North in every dispute over resources.
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