[WestMALocals] Fwd: Stop the U.S. and Zionist War Against Sudan

[David Rolde]

Here is a short article on Sudan that I wrote that I have been  
printing as a double-sided flyer and handing out to try to get people  
to oppose the war.

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Stop the U.S. and Zionist War Against Sudan
By David Rolde,  Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts

The United States has been waging war against Sudan for the past 15  
years, and we need to stop it.  Just like with Iraq, the U.S. war  
against Sudan is a war for oil and a war for Israel.  The proposed  
invasion of Sudan is based on lies. The lie of accusing the  
government of Sudan of “genocide in Darfur” serves the same function  
as the lie a few years ago accusing the government of Iraq of  
“possessing weapons of mass destruction”. The U.S. government, and  
its allies the Israeli and UK governments, are the real world  
champion purveyors of genocide and possessors of WMDs.

Sudan, the geographically largest country in Africa and the home of  
35 million people, has been devastated by U.S. attacks for the past  
15 years. In the early 90s the U.S. government declared Sudan to be a  
"state sponsor of terrorism" because the government of Sudan does not  
support Israel.  The U.S. government imposed sanctions against Sudan.  
The U.S. sanctions and trade boycott escalated in severity several  
times during the 90s and 00s and damaged the Sudanese economy causing  
immense human suffering. Throughout the 90s the U.S. government armed  
and funded the SPLA rebels in the south of Sudan in a war against the  
Sudanese government, and against rival southern groups, in which  
millions of persons were killed or displaced.  Millions of southern  
refugees fled from the SPLA and now live in Khartoum, the northern  
capital.  The culmination of  U.S. support for war in Sudan was the  
so-called "Sudan Peace Act", signed by George W Bush in 2002, which  
allocated one hundred million dollars per year to the SPLA.

One notable episode of the US war against Sudan happened in 1998 when  
the U.S. government of Bill Clinton, with a missile strike, destroyed  
Sudan's only pharmaceutical plant, the al-Shifa plant near Khartoum.  
This rendered Sudan unable to produce needed human medications to  
treat endemic diseases such as malaria and also veterinary medicines  
needed by Sudan's livestock industry which is a major part of the  
livelihood of the people of Sudan.

In 2004, during the U.S. presidential election campaign, the U.S.  
government started leveling false allegations of "genocide" against  
the Sudanese government in regards to the new civil war in Darfur in  
the west of Sudan.  The U.S. media and pro-imperialist “human rights”  
organizations (such as Human Rights Watch which is controlled by  
billionaire George Soros and the Council on Foreign Relations)  
falsely portrayed the conflict in Darfur as a slaughter of Black  
Africans by a "White Arab" Sudanese government.  In reality it was a  
civil war among many armed groups, some of which were supported by  
the US and Israel, fighting over limited resources in an impoverished  
region. Nearly everyone in Sudan is a Black African. And  nearly  
everyone in Darfur is a Black African Arabic-speaking Muslim. The  
numbers cited for the “genocide” in Darfur were inflated estimates of  
how many people might die from famine and disease.

This year the propaganda against Sudan in the United States has  
intensified again. On April 30, 2006, the U.S. government in  
conjunction with U.S. Zionist groups, staged a large pro-war rally in  
Washington DC.  U.S. congresspersons, as well as members of the Bush  
administration, spoke at the rally calling for the war against Sudan  
to be escalated by sending in an invasion force of U.N., NATO or U.S.  
troops.  Nearly every pro-Israel group in the USA has anti-Sudan  
propaganda on the front of their website. In Massachusetts an example  
of a Zionist group doing  pro-war activism is the Jewish Community  
Relations Council (JCRC) of Greater Boston.

The anti-Sudan rhetoric is no different than the rhetoric that the  
U.S. government uses against other countries that the United States  
is attacking.  One aim of U.S. attacks against Sudan is to gain or  
maintain control over Sudan’s natural resources: notably petroleum  
but also uranium, other minerals, gum arabic, and the Nile River  
which supplies water to Egypt.  China currently has access to oil  
from Sudan, and the U.S. government wants to cut China off.   
Destabilizing and impoverishing Sudan serves American and Israeli  
hegemonic interests to make sure there are no prosperous independent  
nations in the Middle East and North African regions.

But within the United States the anti-Sudan rhetoric is useful for  
more than just getting Americans ready for more overt war against  
Sudan. Anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric regarding Sudan is part of  
the general anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda that is used to gain  
U.S. domestic support for the war in Iraq, continued U.S. support for  
Israel, and the so-called “war on terror”.  Zionist groups in the  
United States have been purveying anti-Arab propaganda regarding  
Sudan for many years before the Darfur war, making false claims about  
“slavery” in Sudan.  Slave redemption efforts in Sudan have been  
shown to be a hoax.  Divesting from Sudan is a Zionist anti-Arab  
counter-proposal to the idea of divesting from Israel. Lies about  
Arabs divert attention from efforts to end Israeli apartheid in  
Palestine.

On September 1, 2006, the US rammed a resolution through the UN  
Security Council calling for tens of thousands of UN troops,  
ostensibly "peace-keepers" but really an imperialist invasion force,  
to be sent to Darfur to replace the current smaller US-puppet African  
Union force.  On September 17, Zionists and other pro-war Americans  
held an anti-Sudan rally in Central Park in New York City. The  
keynote speaker at the rally was Madeleine Albright, Clinton's  
Secretary of State, who is infamous for having admitted that the  
Clinton administration and the UN had killed half a million Iraqi  
children through the sanctions in the 90s but nevertheless defending  
the actions against Iraq as worthwhile.  Rally attendees were asked  
to wear blue hats to signify their desire to send "blue helmet" UN  
troops to invade Sudan. These  UN troops would not be "peace- 
keepers". We can see the likely outcome by looking at Haiti where, in  
2004, the US deposed the legitimate government and then sent in a UN  
occupation force which has terrorized the country and brutalized the  
Haitian people. When foreign UN soldiers get to Darfur and can't  
determine which Black Arabic-speaking Muslims are the "bad Arabs" and  
which are the "good Africans", the UN troops will kill people  
indiscriminately. The Sudanese people will rightly resist. The  
situation will escalate. US warmongers will call for sending more  
troops, including US troops, and bringing the war to Khartoum. It  
will be a disaster. The US war against Sudan needs to be stopped and  
reversed now.

Anti-war activists are not working hard enough to stop the US and  
Zionist war against Sudan. The current threats against Sudan are just  
as serious as the threats against Iran. Anti-war activists should be  
focusing more effort to stop the war against Sudan and to work  
against US imperialism in Africa in general - the current war against  
Sudan is just one manifestation of centuries of European colonialism  
and neo-colonialism in Sudan and Africa. The situation for the people  
of Sudan will improve once foreign intervention in Sudan stops.