by THOMAS C. MOUNTAIN
As South Sudan implodes in a growing mass insanity of ethnic violence and once again tens of thousands have to flee for their lives the warning signs all point towards the US plan to destabilize Sudan having begun to hit its stride.
To start with, the US pays the salaries for the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA, the national army of South Sudan), over $100 million in 2011 alone. Does a country really have independence when a foreign power pays its army’s salaries? Whose orders is the army really going to follow?
Today, thousands of UN “peacekeepers” are pouring into South Sudan. These “peacekeepers” are almost entirely from next door Ethiopia and are part of an Ethiopian military carrying out a counterinsurgency/genocide in the Ogaden in south east Ethiopia.
An Ethiopian military that has repeatedly invaded Somali acting under orders from the USA. The same Ethiopian army that six years earlier invaded Eritrea. “Peacekeepers” indeed.
The Ethiopian “peacekeepers” salaries, all their expenses actually, are being paid for by Uncle Sam.
So the South Sudan military is paid for by the USA as well as the UN Ethiopian “peacekeepers”. With friends like this is it any wonder that South Sudan is disintegrating?
And now comes word that the Obama regime presently occupying the White House in the USA is planning on “selling” advanced weaponry to the SPLA. As every day hundreds of children in South Sudan die from lack of clean drinking water, food, shelter and medical care the USA’s answer is to provide jet fighters and bombers, the better to see Sudanese kill Sudanese.
What this is all about is the Sudanese oil fields in the Abeye region, basically right on the border between Sudan and South Sudan. The Sudanese oil fields are the only majority owned and controlled Chinese developed oil fields in Africa.
The “USA/UN” plan is supposed to see up to 10,000 Ethiopian military personnel under cover of a UN “peacekeeper” mandate take up stations around the Abeye oil fields, the better to one day control that oil.
Ethiopia is the USA’s local enforcer, cop on the beat/gendarme in East Africa and where better to use its services but around the only Chinese owned and controlled oil field in Africa in Sudan’s Abeye region.
The USA can kill two birds with one stone by destabilizing South Sudan.
The first is by helping to instigate a series of ethnic bloodbaths in South Sudan, maybe ignite an outbreak of fighting between Sudan and South Sudan and under cover of which the Abeye oil fields, and the very vulnerable Abeye-Port Sudan pipeline will be attacked and damaged.
This will effectively end China’s most important energy development project in Africa.
Secondly, by cutting off Sudan’s oil supply the USA will put enormous pressure on the Sudanese government lead by President Omar Al Bashir.
With his oil revenues halted Pres. Bashir will find it very difficult to maintain the standard of living many of his people have come to expect and this could seriously destabilize the government.
In mid 2011 South Sudanese officials were reported to have said that the USA had told them they didn’t need oil money to survive, they could depend on western aid. A fore teller of things to come?
Whether this all comes to pass or not, the one thing clear for the world to see is that the western supported independence of South Sudan is turning into a nightmare for the people of the region. Little wonder when one finds out who is actually funding, and now arming, the armed forces in the country.
The one thing that should be expected is a continuing “crisis management” policy by the USA in South Sudan, as in create a crisis and then manage the murder and mayhem the better to exploit the wealth of the land, or if necessary, at least deny it to your enemy.
And maybe even see the end of the long western vilified Sudanese government lead by President Omar Al Bashir in the process.
Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.
