The Road to the Two Sudans
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars
Author(s): Souad T. Ali, Stephanie Beswick, Richard Lobban, Jay Spaulding
Date: 2014
Topics: Economic Recovery, Extractive Resources, Governance, Livelihoods, Programming
Countries: South Sudan, Sudan
One chapter of this volume, by Sam L. Laki, titled “The Role of Oil in the Sudanese Civil War,” explores the impact of the discovery of oil in Sudan. Laki, a professor of resource economics at the International Center for Water Resources Management, Central State University, Wilberforce, Ohio, who earned his bachelors degree from the University of Khartoum, writes that “during the colonial period (1898-1956), very little exploration for oil was done in the Sudan due to low oil prices and an oversupply of oil in the world.”
But in 1978, he notes, “Oil was discovered at Bentiu, Upper Nile region of South Sudan by Chevron, an American oil company. Former Sudanese President Jafaar Nimeiri intended to exploit the oil without acknowledgement of the fact that it was discovered in South Sudan.”
In 1989, when the Islamic fundamentalist regime of general Omer Bashir came to power through a bloody military coup, the regime soon began exploiting the country’s oil, according to Laki. “The junta used scorched earth policies to secure the area for oil development. The atrocities committed against the Dinka and Nuer people included burning of houses, bombing of defenseless civilians, raping of women and the abduction of boys and girls into slavery.
“These policies led to the depopulation and the displacement of people from their ancestral homes. The oil revenue was used to purchase arms, Mig fighters and helicopter gunships from Ukraine, Russia and China to persecute the bloody war. This tipped the war in favor of the pariah regime of Omer Bashir.”
Though a National Petroleum Commission was set up to monitor the petroleum industry of the two Sudans, Laki says that the amount of revenue going to South Sudan has never been close to “the amount stipulated in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and that there was a big discrepancy between the revenue reported by the government and that reported by the foreign oil companies.”