All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show is Ramzi Baroud.
He is editor of palestinechronicle.com.
He's the author of the Second Palestinian Intifada, a chronicle of a people's struggle.
And my father was a freedom fighter, Gaza's untold story.
And he's got this very important piece.
I think at counterpunch.org.
It's called East Africa at the Brink.
Welcome to the show Ramzi.
How are you doing?
Thanks for having me Scott.
Well, you're welcome.
Happy to have you here.
Appreciate you joining us.
So yeah, Sudan.
There's a place.
I don't know a lot about other than a bunch of movie stars want us to intervene in a five-year-old war in the West that I don't even think is going on anymore.
But when it comes to South Sudan the last I heard there was a big peace agreement back in what 2005.
They finally quit fighting a some form of civil war and then last year, right?
The South seceded from the Union, which I thought the Americans were against that kind of thing.
But no apparently it's perfectly fine because America's on the side of the Southerners seceding.
But other than that, I think I speak for most of my audience to when I say don't know too much heard rumors that this has something to do with keeping Chinese out of oil fields something like that.
But otherwise I'd like for you to fill us in as best you could with what the hell is going on over there.
Well, there's a lot of truth to what you said.
I mean just the beginning of an important discussion the agreement you were talking about the 2005 comprehensive peace agreement.
It was signed between the government in Khartoum in the capital of Sudan and Juba the capital of South Sudan which became fully independent last year in July of 2011 that war really lasted from 1983 to 2005 and it never came to a complete halt as we know civil wars tend to be very very complex because yes, we call them civil wars, but in reality they involve so many other parties.
So you had regional countries involved you have Uganda you have Kenya you have Chad you have other parties and other rebels taking advantage of that kind of chaos that's going on in that part of Sudan and kind of moving their troops there either trying to perpetuate a conflict or take advantage of it somehow.
So even though the comprehensive peace agreement was signed in 2005 and even though there was a referendum in January of last year by which the vast majority of South Sudanese expectedly voted for independence and that independent actualized in July of last year the conflict carried on and carried on for many reasons partly because the outside parties were so interested in exploiting the situation in their favor and the signing of an agreement doesn't mean their interest in that region ended.
So they want to stay there.
Now the government in Khartoum is fighting at several fronts.
They are still fighting some smaller in the Darfur regions and in the east, but they are also fighting the South Sudan Liberation Army, the SPLA, that did not completely disband at the border area.
Yes, part of the SPLA became part of the South Sudanese army, but part of it remained in what we call the Kordofan region, North Kordofan and South Kordofan and also the Unity Province.
They continued to operate there.
The South Sudanese government is supporting them financially and they see them as part of the continued fight against the north.
The US government supported them financially by about 100 million dollars and they supported them for many years according to a statement made by or a study rather made by Amnesty International that came out two days before the independence of South Sudan last year.
They accused Russia, China, but mostly the United States of having a lot of military investment and support in all the warring parties, especially the South Sudanese Liberation Army.
So as a result, all of these things continue.
Of course, there are more complications and centered around the issue of oil, which we can talk about, but this is just a brief to get us going on the subject.
All right.
Well, boy, and that's already quite a bit there, I guess.
Well, let's go ahead and head that direction right now then about the oil.
I know so little about this.
My knowledge of is just the sketchy little thing with no details really, but I guess I was under the impression that the Chinese were already pretty well on their way to developing some oil resources there and that's when the or or actually not now that I think about it was something about the pipeline has to go from the south up through the north and that's where the Chinese interests are and the Americans are trying to cut them off in the south or something like that.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, yes, of course.
I mean that but the Chinese the interest of the Chinese in that region is not new that pipeline already exists.
It's about sixteen hundred to be exact.
It's sixteen hundred sixty kilometers and it goes all the way from South Sudan passing by the area of his leech, which was occupied by the South Sudanese army and they were defeated rather quickly by the Khartoum army just a few weeks ago and then it goes all the way to Sudan and it kind of makes it somewhere towards the east and it goes to the Red Sea where the oil is being distributed to other parts of the world.
Well since South Sudan became independent the north said well you took pretty much most of our oil.
So we have very little here to rely on economically by agriculture the old arrangement that was was between both countries stated that the oil dividends are divided 50-50 between Juba in the south and Khartoum in the north of Sudan South Sudan became independent.
Of course, they did not want to honor that agreement.
The oil is in their land and their land is now independent.
And of course they were supported and pushed on by the US and other countries saying listen, we can construct a different pipeline that goes through other countries and doesn't have to go through Sudan.
Well, the government in the north wants to make sure that this is impossible.
So they said to the South government if you do not pay $38 per barrel, which is about 10 times higher than the average of anywhere else in the world.
If you don't pay us that much then we are not going to allow you to export your oil anywhere else in the world.
The result is 98% of the economic power of the South which relies on oil is now shut down.
Not a drop of oil gets out of South Sudan.
Now, let's remember South Sudan is completely destroyed.
No infrastructure, nothing.
A war that has lasted for a long time.
2 million people dead in that region as a result of the civil war.
Famine is still happening there and now no oil, no economy.
So they're desperate.
They would do anything and of course they are open for exploitation by others as well.
The US, Israel and other countries, they would do anything right now to get some sort of access.
The North is blocking them and the South again is ripe for exploitation and this is why this is happening.
Now China is caught in a really tough position here because they have historic ties to the Khartoum government.
They have very strong relations to various Arab countries.
People want to come across that they are on the side of South Sudan against this historic alliance going on for decades.
But at the same time, they want the South Sudanese oil.
They refuse to participate in the establishment of this new pipeline being more like a pipe dream under these circumstances.
But at the same time, they are still economically supporting the South Sudan government in Juba.
So the Chinese are really not doing horrible things there as much as we hear by the mainstream media.
I'm not saying that they are a progressive force for good, but they are not the ones who are stirring the trouble.
It's to their best interest that the situation settled and the South Sudanese oil continue to flow to the good benefit like the rest of other countries.
Yeah, it seems much more like it's the Americans who are obsessed with precluding China from having any interest anywhere in Africa at this point.
It all at least serves as a great excuse for somebody at the Pentagon, I guess, for us to expand further.
But anyway, we'll have to pick it up on the other side of this break.
We're talking with Ramzi Baroud from PalestineChronicle.com.
We'll talk about Palestine too, I hope, here in just a minute on Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm talking with Ramzi Baroud, editor of PalestineChronicle.com.
He's also the author of the books, The Second Palestinian Intifada and My Father Was a Freedom Fighter.
And right now we're talking about East African Affairs.
In other words, American Affairs somehow.
And then I hope we can talk about Palestine a little bit here in a minute too.
But now, yeah, where we left off, I was referring to, I guess, a single Chinese person anywhere in East Africa as a reason why America has to intervene there.
Whether the Chinese mean anything provocative by it or not, it'll serve, you know, well enough as an excuse for American intervention there.
And here's the headline from Anti-War.com today, U.S. to send large combat brigade throughout Africa announcing a major expansion of the African command.
And, of course, there are no state enemies in Africa to go to war against unless, I don't know, one of these revolutions is really successful or something.
But otherwise, what we're doing really is we're just training up militaries to fight wars against their own people inside, you know, and their own domestic concerns inside their countries.
And I can't help but note that the mission that Obama sent to Uganda, Central African Republic, Congo, and one other, I forget, maybe it was South Sudan, was at least right there in the region next to South Sudan in the name of hunting Joseph Kony.
And it seems like, well, you know how it is, advisors, whether in Vietnam or anywhere else, once you send them in, they never leave.
They only get, you know, they only multiply.
It's a greater and greater numbers.
And I wonder whether, well, I wonder whether you think there's any point in any of this or it's just selling M-16s to the Army or what?
Well, I mean, we remember when the Africa Command, AFRICOM, first started a few years ago, there was a lot of suspicion that this is really unnecessary.
We don't have that much interest in Africa.
And I, you know, my hunch here is that we actually wanted to fuel conflict so that we can get involved.
And the buzzword, of course, is Al-Qaeda.
Whenever there's Al-Qaeda, then there's nobody who can contest any American involvement in that region.
Now, Al-Qaeda has been operating somewhere in North Africa, but in a very loose network, very, it's difficult to define.
And also been kind of really keeping them in check with the French in cooperation with various other countries in that part of Africa.
However, since we participated in the war against Libya, Tabard, Muammar, Gaddafi, we completely changed the social makeup of Libya.
So people of certain racial origins and people of certain cultural origins, I'm referring here to, you know, either black Arabs or just Africans, or the Tawarik, the tribal people of the Sahara, found themselves on the move.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been dislocated as a result of this war.
We just heard about the capture of Gaddafi, and that's as if that's the end of the story.
Well, actually, no, that's just the beginning of a whole new chapter that destabilized that part of Africa.
Now, the first thing that these guys did when they returned to their, either went to new regions to return to their original homes, for example, in Mali, they succeeded.
They declared the northern part of Mali, for example, an independent Islamic emirate for the people of Ethiopia.
And now the Mali government is having to battle the people who took over half of the country.
And guess who is now volunteering to help out?
Africa.
So we have this situation in which we create trouble purposely, and then we say, we need to remedy it somehow.
Then we get involved, we create more trouble, then more side effects, and then and therefore the trouble expands, but we expand as well.
So now AFRICOM is becoming, well, of course, we have to battle Al-Qaeda.
They took over.
They actually have an independent country.
This is the first time perhaps in the history of this movement where they can actually claim a territory as their own.
Of course, AFRICOM has got to involve and now to expand and so forth.
So not only are they getting, you know, expanding that part of Africa, but also in East Africa as well.
They have been going after Uganda to open new branches for AFRICOM there.
The Uganda government has been opposing that for various reasons, but we think that eventually they will not only succeed in penetrating Uganda and Kenya, but also South Sudan.
They have to, especially they are paying a lot of money and the South Sudanese government doesn't have the power, neither the political power nor the resources to oppose that push much, much longer in the future.
And now I guess they say that there's a lot of undeveloped oil resources in Uganda, but how much is alive?
Is it anything like what, I mean, obviously the Empire doesn't face the same kind of profit and loss tests that a company has to, but is there anything like enough oil that would seem to justify even in the mind of these people that it's worth dominating even?
Well, we don't really know for sure because much of these regions are unexplored as far as energy sources are concerned.
Much of the economies and the infrastructures are underdeveloped or de-developed rather.
So we really don't know what is going on as much as the wealth.
In my opinion, it's much more important than the issue or direct than the issue of just, is there oil to be exploited or not?
If not, then we are not going to be there.
If yes, then what are we doing there?
I think it has a lot to do with the fact that China is increasingly becoming the number one partner, trade partner with all African countries.
I think that number is either actually did happen or it's going to happen in the next couple of years.
China is having a great deal of influence through building schools and hospitals and that sort of thing, but also having much more fairness in the way they trade with various African countries.
Europe is very alarmed by that, but doesn't have the military capacity to exert itself as much as the United States does.
The U.S. has that winning card of the war on terror, so they can deploy anywhere at any time.
In fact, I am certain that they are in many more places in Africa than we actually know that they are.
Europe doesn't have that sort of political and military maneuvering capabilities.
The U.S. does, so I think the U.S. is trying to choke any Chinese influence in parts of Africa that are trying to create shortcuts for themselves, that are trying to block any Chinese influence in that part of Africa.
But another important issue here is that we should not neglect the fact that Africa itself, I mean, it's not about, you know, this rush for Africa as if Africa has no political will on its own.
That actually is not true at all.
The African countries, and of course I'm talking relatively here, have been trying to unite around political and economic ideals.
South Africa in particular, in the south, and Libya under Gaddafi in the north, believe it or not, had a great deal to do with that new African unity.
What they are trying to achieve here is to have better negotiation power with China, with the U.S., with the European Union, with Middle Eastern countries.
So we're not talking about a European Union style of unity in Africa, but at least we're talking about countries that finally have some sort of a platform that allows them to negotiate and to assert their independence.
And this is the first time it's really happened since the 50s and 60s when countries like Ghana and others began gaining their independence.
This is alarming as well.
If this is allowed to carry on, then a lot of people are going to be at the losing end.
Africa cannot be allowed to develop and unify around nationalistic and regional themes.
So China and the unity of Africa that has proved very alarming as far as the U.S. and the EU are concerned, and therefore I think the push by AFRICOM in Africa is an attempt at stifling the African Union and a regional development independent from outside interference.
All right.
Well, we have so very little time.
I guess can I ask you just very quickly what you think the new super-duper majority for Netanyahu and the Israeli Knesset means for the future of any hope of any kind of real negotiations a Palestinian state or whatever is your preference for how we get to peace from where we are now in the Israel-Palestine issue?
Well, because of the lack of time, I'm just going to cut to the chase here and say that any changes within the political establishment in Israel itself cannot in any way lead to peace and justice, and that region would have to have actually other elements in order for it to actualize.
None of them would include having a coalition that includes 75% of the Israeli parliament, including ultra-nationalist fascist parties, really right-wing parties, and being led by no other than right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
I think this clearly has a lot to do with Israeli politics than with the peace process or any of that.
Well, and so you think that it would take, what, just an American president forcing the Israeli government to give up the West Bank for that to ever happen, that kind of thing?
Well, if that ever happens, it would be really nice.
But I think that the Arab Spring or the so-called Arab Spring has kind of focused the attention back to the region in the sense that it made the people in the Arab world and in the Middle East in general an important channel and platform for change.
So I think that any analysis now regarding the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict or any similar issues in that region would kind of have to find itself, find a different home for itself aside from Washington DC or Tel Aviv or Brussels, to be honest, and move somewhere else, to Cairo, to Tunisia and somewhere else.
I think there is a new momentum that is going on in the Middle East and that momentum could, in fact, upset the balance of power, could, in fact, redefine the relationship within the Arab world and between the Arabs and Israel.
And perhaps this has something to do with the coalition in Israel.
They understand that they are not as invincible as they thought they were.
There is a new push for redefining Arab relations toward Palestine and Israel.
I was in Egypt recently.
The subject of Israel, the Camp David Agreement, the peace process, Palestine, and all of this is an actual major theme in Egyptian politics.
Egypt is a powerful country in relative Middle Eastern terms, of course, and Israel is taking all of that into account.
So I think whatever change that could happen in the future will most likely happen as a result of the massive political and political changes that are underway in various Arab countries.
Well, so do you think that maybe the best thing people in America who want peace could do would be to just insist that our government butt out completely and let others work out this problem?
Exactly.
But also, I mean, you know, I think that we have to divest morally from any conflict, whether it's in Uganda or in Israel, Palestine.
You know what?
Put my tax money, go to buy bullets and guns and contribute to the Palestinians who just a couple of days ago celebrated 64th year of their disposition and their misery and their catastrophe.
We should not be participating in this sort of thing.
So whether the US actually puts pressure on Israel or doesn't, American citizens, taxpayers should not be involved in funding occupation, should not be building apartheid walls, should not be contributing to the Israeli budget in ways that are in fact harming Palestinians on a daily basis.
If we get started with that, I think it's a huge and major shift in our foreign policy.
All right.
Well, we're already way over time.
Thank you very much for your time, Ramzi.
I really appreciate it.
My pleasure, Scott.
Everybody, that's Ramzi Baroud, ramzibaroud.net, also palestinechronicle.com and find his piece East Africa at the brink at counterpunch.org.
