The Globe and Mail
Thursday, March 23, 2000

By Roger Winter

How dare we propose sanctions against Angola considering our record in Sudan, argues the head of a U.S. refugee organization.

Last week Canadian ambassador to the UN Robert Fowler called for sanctions in connection with a deadly conflict in Africa. The principle behind his desire to impose sanctions, including a possible arms embargo, was that Western nations have a responsibility to insure they are not sustaining conflict in Africa. Mr. Fowler evidently sees economic sanctions as a means of preventing countries from exacerbating the conflicts that have torn so many nations on that troubled continent.

But for Canadians weary of hearing about Talisman Energy's complicity in the continuing destruction of Sudan, have no fear. Mr. Fowler wasn't speaking about Sudan, or about the brutal National Islamic Front (NIF) regime in Khartoum. His mind wasn't on the genocidally destructive war on the peoples of southern Sudan, or the relentless bombing campaign against civilian targets, such as a primary school near Upper Kauda or the Samaritan's Purse hospital in Lui. Nor, in speaking about sanctions, did he have Talisman Energy in mind, despite the unambiguous findings of the Harker Report, which makes painfully clear Canadian corporate complicity in Sudan's agony.

Sanctions were contemplated only with respect to the UNITA rebels in Angola. And the only country singled out for sanctions punishment according to the Associated Press report on the matter was Bulgaria.

The Angolan conflict is undeniably a matter of the gravest concern. And all possible efforts to force the UNITA rebels to enter into good-faith negotiations should be made — including sanctions against those who would buy diamonds that enable the rebels to purchase war-sustaining weaponry.

But it is the height of hypocrisy for Canada to be demanding sanctions in the context of the conflict in Angola, while its own Talisman Energy directly, unambiguously, and massively sustains the world's greatest civil conflict — indeed, one of the greatest civilian-killing conflict since the Second World War. Before seeking to punish Bulgaria, Canada should ask what conceivable principle distinguishes the situation in Sudan from that in Angola, at least on the score of sanctions.

Is it because the UNITA rebels are somehow more vicious or destructive than the regime that rules in Khartoum? Perhaps the question might be asked of the survivors of the bombing of the primary school at Upper Kauda. Fourteen children under the age of 16 were killed in this bombing. Is it possible to imagine savagery or cruelty greater than deliberately dropping a dozen shrapnel-loaded bombs in the midst of a primary school?

However weary Canadians are of hearing about Sudan and Talisman, that weariness can't possibly compare to the war-weariness of the people of Sudan. Two million Sudanese have died in this conflict. As many as five million more have been forced to flee their homes — an increasing number as a result of Talisman's need for a "sanitized" security corridor for its operations. In the famine of 1998, the Khartoum regime bore overwhelming responsibility for bringing 2.6 million people to the verge of starvation.

UNITA has done truly terrible things, and the Angolan conflict is a deeply festering sore on the African continent. But Sudan is the gaping wound, an unfolding of genocidal ambitions by a recognized government, the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time. For a Canadian official to speak of the need for sanctions in one context, while ignoring the crying need in the other is shamefully, appallingly hypocritical.

Nor should Canadians seek to find any justification in the relative status of the two potential targets of sanctions. UNITA is indeed a rebel organization. But the National Islamic Front is a completely illegitimate government. It came to power by coup in June of 1989, deposing an elected government. Moreover, and more disturbingly, it came to power to abort a nascent move toward national reconciliation that the NIF thought injurious to its own cruel ambitions for a radical and compulsorily Islamic Sudan. The NIF is no more legitimate than UNITA. They've simply come out on top in the power struggle, and subsequently deployed all despotic means necessary to survive.

Canada has long been admired for its ability to steer an independent course in foreign policy, an ability especially admirable given the power of its southern neighbour, the United States. But the failure of Canada to impose sanctions on Talisman Energy reveals a dismaying inability to sustain a foreign policy independent of the forces of narrowly conceived political and economic self-interest. It is a sad episode for a country that has been a beacon of humane concern on so many other occasions.

Roger Winter is the executive director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees in Washington.

The Globe and Mail, Thursday, March 23, 2000

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