Link between war and oil - Christian Aid

The NGO Christian Aid has said the recent news of a Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) attack on the country’s most productive oilfield in Heglig (Hajlij), Unity (Wahdah) State “reinforced the findings of a report it published earlier this year [in March] on the effects of foreign oil company operations in southern Sudan”. The SPLA said it caused casualties and destroyed oil installations in Heglig, a claim rejected by the Sudanese army and the Canadian oil company, Talisman. “Our position is that the presence of oil companies is fuelling the war,” said Dan Silvey, Christian Aid’s senior policy officer, in a press statement. “In particular, our report revealed [that] an airstrip upgraded by the oil companies is being used by Sudanese government aircraft for bombing missions against civilian populations. This recent attack confirms that, in spite of reassurance from the oil companies, all is far from peaceful in the oil concession areas,” he added. Christian Aid maintains that the revenue from Sudan’s oil operations is being used by government forces to pursue their war efforts in the south. “Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and displaced by a systematic policy of depopulating the oil-rich areas,” according to Silvey. Each time an oil concession was developed, it was accompanied by massive human rights violations, he said. Since the completion of the oil pipeline two years ago, Sudan has become a net oil exporter, earning enough to pay for the estimated US $1 million a day it spends on the war, according to Christian Aid. Fighting in the oil areas has increasingly become not just a battle between the government and the SPLA, but a bitter oil war over control of the country’s natural resources, it added. Christian Aid, as a key member of a coalition of over 60 European NGOs campaigning on oil in Sudan, on 10 August reiterated its call for a suspension of oil operations in the country, and a temporary ban on European investment in the Sudanese oil industry. “The only way for oil companies to prevent being implicated in further human rights abuses in Southern Sudan is to suspend oil operations until a just and lasting peace settlement has been reached,” according to Silvey. [for further information, go to: http://www.reliefweb.int/w/Rwb.nsf/vLCE/Sudan? OpenDocument&StartKey=Sudan&Expandview] [IRIN inadvertently referred to Almaz Mako as “he” in yesterdays item ETHIOPIA: Speaker of Federal Council defects, and apologises for this error]