In 1994 China, an emerging super power, desperately in need of new oil sources helped a poor Government in Khartoum convert the Sudanese nation into oil exporters.  In the 14 years since, as the oil and the money flowed, the relationship between the two nations has blossomed.

Today, China accounts for a quarter of Sudan’s imports and for nearly 70% of it’s, oil led, exports.  The economic monopoly enjoyed by China through soft loans and state owned company investing in the Sudanese economy resulted, from its outset, in an incredible amount of Chinese political control over the government in Khartoum.   

The Government in Khartoum with its newfound friend and financial backer was soon in trouble.  Long standing provincial and tribal instabilities rekindled with the influx of oil revenue engulfed the Sudanese nation.  Unwilling to share or negotiate the government in Khartoum, flush with cash, began to view the military situation with a new and dangerous perspective.   The conflict in the North would be solved unequivocally.  There would be a final solution.  Groups of native Nomads, recently turned bandit, would be well armed and tasked with killing, mutilating and displacing the residents and source of one of the more bitter insurrections - the civilians of the Darfur province.  

Genocide had come to the Sudan.  For the last decade, government armed nomads, known as the Janjaweed, and government air strikes and helicopter attacks, have combined to terrorize the people of Darfur.  Killing over 200,000, while raping, and mutilating, and displacing more than a million human beings.  The situation in Darfur is nothing less than Genocide in all its fury.  It is made more horrific by both the global knowledge of the problem and the inaction of those that could help stop this clear and present violation of International law.

It is worth noting, at the very least as an important lesson, that in this author’s opinion China, in hindsight and in fairness, had little choice but to do business with the Sudan.  As its economy boomed, the Beijing government needed new sources of energy to fuel the growing national demand.  By 1994, Western powers, long conscious of the strong correlation between oil access and world power, had secured primary access to nearly all oil originating in more or less stable regions and countries.  Western shock over China’s rise further complicated the Beijing predicament by preventing Chinese state owned companies from buying large ownership stakes of existing American based oil multinationals to satisfy domestic demand.  With its options limited China began doing business and investing heavily in the regimes in Tehran, North Korea, Burma, and Khartoum.  

China’s dependence on the stable flow of oil from these countries has created a moral carte blanche for these regimes and has undermined the international efforts to restore law and order.  Sanctions have proven ineffective because China refuses to enforce them, and military intervention for a long time was blocked by the Chinese U.N Security Council Veto.

All that began to change, when actress Mia Farrow published an op-ed piece in the New York Times, in the limelight of the upcoming Olympic games, about China’s involvement in the Darfur Genocide and the need to mount an international athletic boycott, as was partly done against Hitler’s 1936 Olympic games.

Within days, after 10 years of trying (a perfect example of the Red Dragon influence in Khartoum), the long-standing international peacekeeping force offer for Darfur was accepted by the government of Sudan.  China then donated 10 million dollars for ‘humanitarian work’ in the affected regions, sent 300 peace engineers to help the international force, and reassigned a top party official to manage ongoing damage control.  With so much invested in the Beijing Olympics Games, the government of China is having to try something new – listening to public moral outrage.  

However many justly argue that the transition is not going smoothly, dissidents in China continue to be arrested, and China could, all agree do much more, to immediately end the hostilities and Genocide by terminating the systematic delays imposed on the international millatry force and to enforce the newly negotiated ceasefire across the region.

If you think we must all play a role in enforcing basic international law and stopping the Darfur Genocide drop a comment below.