Oil has given war “new cause”

The bombing campaign in southern Sudan contradicts President Omar al Bashir’s international “charm offensive”, the London-based ‘Economist’ said on Thursday. “Sudan has been remarkably successful in breaking out of its diplomatic isolation” the article said. This, despite the fact it had been until recently shunned as a “rogue” state and surrounded by enemies. The UN imposed sanctions after Sudanese agents were accused of an assassination attempt on Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995, and further sanctions were imposed when the US put Sudan on the list of countries supporting terrorism. “In the past two years, luck and diplomatic skills have enabled Sudan to wriggle out of this cage,” ‘The Economist’ said. The US - although deeply divided on how to handle the country - has reopened its embassy, and European countries are “keen to take commercial advantage of Sudan’s new oil industry”. Northern politicians who fled into exile in the early 1990s to escape a repressive military-Islamist government have been successfully persuaded to return, and there is greater freedom of the press. The economy is expected to see a seven percent growth, and oil revenue is expected to provide 22 percent of the budget this year, the article said. ‘The Economist’ warned that despite the optimism, Sudanese politics “are ambivalent and contradictory”. With secessionist movements in the south fighting since 1955, the article argued that religious and ethnic differences were not the main cause of the war. “Basically, it is the south against Khartoum”. Power in Khartoum was held in the hands of “a few families...connected to certain religious sects, which have become political parties”. It said that in fact the war had become “even nastier” with oil “giving the war a new cause”. Rebel threats against the oil fields had resulted in Khartoum bombing, re-arming, and “pouring out militaristic propaganda”.