The Letters Editor,
The Daily Telegraph

Dear Sir,

W.F. Deedes (Notebook, Friday 22 June – oil is driving the disaster in Darfur) states quite rightly that the situation (he prefers the word persecution) “in Darfur has become more complex as times goes by”.  Those complexities include the often overlooked fact (which was recently highlighted by Ban Ki Moon in a seminal article) that the main root-cause of the crisis is desertification and climate change.  Both precede the discovery of oil in Sudan. 

Moreover, Sudan’s main challenges are poverty and lack of extensive development, both of which have started long before the present government came to power.  Oil is key to alleviating both and implementing the UN’s millennium goals.  This is specially true because the international community has, unfortunately, not lived up to the promises it made in the donors’ conference in Oslo (05).  I was there when the late Dr. J. Garang appealed to the donors NOT to link their donations to the Darfur crisis.  That is exactly what they have done!.  Without the extra income which comes from oil, the National Unity Government would not have been able to meet both its commitments and those unfulfilled promises regarding the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (05) and the Darfur Agreement (06). In the light of these remarks, oil should not be seen as a curse in Sudan’s complex situation.

Dr. Khalid Al Mubarak
Media Counsellor

Friday June 1, 2007

The Letters Editor
The Daily Telegraph

Dear Sir,

Con Coughlin’s unfair and misleading article about Sudan (D.T. 1 June 2007) is an attempt to escalate the anti-Sudanese campaign which has very little to do with humanitarian motives.  Like the rest of the well-orchestrated articles, it plays on anti-Arab prejudice and is not separable from the scramble for African oil.  The article is full of inaccuracies.

1. It begins with a grave accusation implying that the Sudanese nation is “deemed to pose the gravest threat to world peace.”  This is soon diluted to “the countries that appear to delight in outraging world opinion!.  Some lines later, comes the admission which demolishes the opening statement, “Sudan, so far as is known, is not developing nuclear weapons.”
 
2. The writer refers to an incident which undermines his flawed and not well researched article.  The missile attack during President Clinton’s administration was based on rumours.  It deprived the country of a main source of medicine and was proven to be an error.  The writer refers to the factory as “on the outskirts of Khartoum.”  In fact, it was in an adjacent town called Khartoum North (Bahri).  The writer goes on to add another rumour saying “rumours have persisted that Sudanese forces have used chemical weapons!.”

3. The so-called “well documented” Sudanese sponsorship of terrorism turns out to be Osama bin Laden’s stay in the country.  Bin Laden left Sudan in1996 and the USA missed a chance (according to some rumours!) of getting hold of him before he plotted the September 11 terror.  Apparently, Mr. Con (what an apt name) does not know that the Americans have acknowledged openly that Sudan is an ally in the war against terror.  It is up to them to explain how a country can be an ally in the war against terror and be retained on the terror sponsoring list!.

4. Sudan has now signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement which stopped the war
in the South.  It has signed (responding to US and British mediation) a Darfur Peace Agreement in Abuja, Nigeria.  The bloodshed continues because the rebels who refused to sign are pampered and encouraged by outsiders, including members of the “con club” of journalists.

Dr. Khalid Al Mubarak
Media Counsellor
Sudan Embassy
 

The above  letters were sent to The Daily Telegraph.  They were NOT published