SPLA issues warning to oil workers

The Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) announced on Monday that they had captured Nhialdiu in Western Upper Nile, after a battle on 13 September. In a press release, Samson Kwaje, the SPLA spokesman in Nairobi, said the town was strategic in its proximity to neighbouring oil fields. Kwaje issued a stern warning to foreigners in the area saying that “all oil workers [foreign and national] are hereby warned to evacuate the area”. The statement said Nhialdiu was the administrative base for Ler County in Western Upper Nile, and that government soldiers and militia had been forced to scatter to the towns of Bentiu and Ler.

George Garang, editor of the SPLA newsletter in Nairobi, told IRIN on Monday that the warning to oil workers had been issued after numerous appeals to the the Canadian Talisman oil company operating in the area. He accused Khartoum of selling oil to buy weapons, thereby rendering the oil companies a “legitimate military target”. “Why should a company like Talisman, from a democratic country like Canada, be seen to be embracing a country that is killing our people?” said the spokesman.

Meanwhile, Talisman came under heavy criticism recently in Canada. According to a 14 September report in Toronto’s ‘Globe and Mail’, former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis said in a speech before delegates of the International Conference on War-Affected Children in Winnipeg that, with regard to the Canadian government, “Talisman Energy remains a terrible cross of dishonour.” In his remarks made on 13 September, he also demanded condemnation of Sudan “for allowing a rebel army based on its territory to use abducted, brutalized children as solders”.