`Imperial Criminal Court'
Opens Gates of Hell in Africa
by Lawrence K. Freeman
British imperialists escalated their ongoing destabilization of Africa on July 14, with the decision by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), to file charges of "genocide and crimes against humanity" against Sudanese President Gen. Omar al-Bashir. The British and their collaborators want to eliminate the sovereignty of African nations, so that Africa's population can be greatly reduced, thus ensuring that Africa does not "use up" its vast resource wealth for its own development, and for trade with Asia, China in particular. There is no mistake of the timing, the intent, and the forces behind this unprecedented action, which is premised on completely false charges. It is intended to blow apart Sudan's North-South peace settlement, plunging the country even deeper into civil war. The consequences of the ICC's decision, if not reversed, not only would be devastating to Sudan, and the stability of the Horn of Africa, but because of Sudan's strategic importance, the entire continent would bleed.
The hand of the British and the hypocrisy of the ICC's claims are revealed by the fact that one of the major funders and creators of the ICC is British agent, billionaire speculator, and former Nazi collaborator George Soros. Upon hearing of Soros's role in the formation of the ICC, through his Open Society Initiative and Justice Initiative networks, Lyndon LaRouche said: "If the International Criminal Court is to have any claim on credibility, let them take up the case of a real Nazi collaborator." If anyone should be put on trial before the ICC, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, it is George Soros (see Documentation, below).
The immediate danger to Sudan and Africa is that if the ICC is successful in de-legitimizing Bashir's Presidency, then negotiations between the government and opposition groups become impossible. As one African from the Washington diplomatic corps told me following the release of the ICC charges: "We have two options for Sudan. One is to maintain a positive peace process. The other is for chaos and the collapse into a failed state."
International opposition to the ICC move came swiftly. On July 14, in talks with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Paris, according to the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned that the ICC escalation threatens to foil negotiation efforts between the Sudan government and rebels in Darfur. Egypt has promised to do all it can to avert any measure against the Sudanese leader that could further destabilize the country.
The Africa Union (AU) also denounced the ICC move. "We would like ICC to suspend its decision to seek al-Bashir's arrest for a moment until we sort out the primary problems in Darfur and southern Sudan," Tanzanian Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Membe said, speaking on behalf of Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, who chairs the African Union. "If you arrest al-Bashir," he continued, "you will create a leadership vacuum in Sudan. The outcome could be equal to that of Iraq. There would be an increase in anarchy, there would be an increase in civil war. Fighting between Chad and Sudan would increase."
The 22-member Arab League called for a July 19 emergency meeting of its foreign ministers, at the request of the Sudan government, to discuss how to diplomatically foil the ICC provocation. Arab League chief Amr Moussa was to travel to Sudan July 20, to report to President al-Bashir.
According to the Middle East Times on July 15, China, which is one of Sudan's major investors and buyers of its oil, expressed deep "concern and worry." The ICC "should be conducive to maintaining the stability of the Sudanese situation, and to the proper resolution of the problems of Darfur, not the contrary," a Chinese government statement said.
Russia's Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, called on the UN to "exercise restraint and find solutions that will help the people of Sudan and resolve the crisis in Darfur."
The Times added that Sudan's main opposition parties and critics of the Bashir regime have united with the government in rejecting the ICC decision, and vowed to prevent the President from being prosecuted in the international court, calling this a violation of the country's sovereignty and independence.
Blowing Up the Peace Process
Andrew Natsios, former U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan (2005-07), responded immediately to the indictment by the ICC with a statement entitled "A Disaster in the Making." After cautioning human rights groups focussed on Darfur against applauding the ICC's decision, he warned them "to think again about their enthusiasm." Natsios went on to say: "The question all of us must ask who care about what happens to the long-suffering Sudanese people is this: what are the peaceful options for a way out of the crisis facing the country and what measures are likely to move the country closer to that way out rather than further away? Without a political settlement Sudan may go the way of Somalia, pre-genocide Rwanda, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo." He concludes: "This indictment may well shut off the last remaining hope for a political settlement for the country."
Over recent months, saner forces in the Untied States, including Natsios, have been working with leaders in Sudan to prevent the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) from failing. The CPA ended 20 years of bloodshed between the North and the South, and led to the formation of a Unity Government composed of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement representing the South, and the National Congress Party for the North. Despite difficult moments, the CPA has prevented the country from returning to North-South war, and it is hoped that it will serve as a model to solve other conflicts in Sudan, including that in Darfur.
After fighting broke out between soldiers from both sides in Abyei (an oil-producing region whose boundaries are in dispute) earlier this year, concerned people recognized that if the CPA were allowed to go down, all of Sudan would go down with it. After the signing of the CPA in January 2005, international attention and money were diverted from the full implementation of the agreement, into the Darfur crisis, which has only become more intractable. Allegations of genocide against the Bashir government, promoted by the media, Hollywood celebrities, and former and current British, U.S., and European government officials, has been part of the dangerous and failed policy of "regime change." The claim that the Bashir government is pursuing a so-called Arab cleansing of the so-called Africans in the Darfur region is simplistically untrue, meant for simpletons who are willing victims of "group think" propaganda. In Darfur, almost all the people doing the killing and being killed are Muslims, in a complex, multi-nation war that involves Chad, Libya, the Central African Republic, and other countries not in the immediate conflict zone.
Sudan's Strategic Value
To understand the strategic importance of Sudan, start with the mighty Nile River, which flows north from Sudan through Egypt before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. Think about what would happen to the 80 million Egyptians, 25% of whom inhabit Cairo, and who depend on the Nile for their very existence, if Sudan implodes through internecine warfare. Who will honor the 1959 water agreement between Egypt and Sudan? What will the Egyptian government do if the flow of water from the Nile is interrupted? Will they not be forced to act, militarily if necessary? Now, think about the countries that border Sudan, all of which are suffering from severe political and economic troubles: Chad, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Who benefits, and who will suffer from the decision made by Soros's ICC, acting as a "world court" over and above the interest of the nation-state?
Now think about what Sudan could be for Africa. It is the largest nation on the continent, with the proven potential to feed all of Africa, if it were assisted in managing its water systems, mechanizing its agriculture, and providing irrigation. Instead of sliding into chaos, Sudan could become the "breadbasket" of Africa. The completion of the Merowe Dam, in collaboration with China, provides a glimpse of the potential for food production that is possible with basic infrastructure. (See "Defying Britain's Genocide System: Sudan's Great Project in Agriculture," EIR, July 18, 2008). What is the true potential of Sudan and Africa, if credits for long-term investments in water systems, high-speed rail transportation, and nuclear power were extended by the West, instead of formenting wars and destabilizing poor nations? Sudan with its size, location, and agricultural potential can play a central role in the development of Africa, if we are wise enough to assist it for that purpose.
Why Africa Is Targeted
Look at a map of Africa. Start in Nigeria and let your eyes move east across Sudan to Ethiopia and Somalia. Then look south from Sudan through Kenya, to Tanzania, across Zambia, to Zimbabwe, and finally to South Africa, which represents a portion of Britain's old colonial empire. Now look at the destabilization of these former colonies, including the recent elections: Nigeria's flawed Presidential election in April 2007, the organized mayhem that followed Kenya's December 2007 Presidential election, and the crisis organized from outside following Zimbabwe's March 2008 Presidential election. And what do you think is being planned for South Africa's Presidential election in 2009? Will there even be a Sudan in which to have national elections that are presently scheduled for the Spring of 2009?
The British imperialists have never given up their desire to eliminate even the semblance of an independent nation in Africa, that could offer resistance to their policy of controlling the abundant, rich land, and vast resource wealth. To this very day, British Labour Party leader and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, like his predecessor, Tony Blair, cannot accept the fact that Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and millions of courageous Zimbabweans will not submit to British control of their nation, and will not return the land that rightfully belongs to them. The people of Zimbabwe have fought longer and harder than any other African nation against the heirs of Cecil Rhodes, the founder of British imperialism in Africa; and Zimbabwe still today represents a bulwark against British re-colonialization. Many otherwise thoughtful people refuse to understand that the British oligarchy still functions as an empire, but an empire whose power comes from an international financial syndicate, known as the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy.
This British policy of treating Africans as chattel, wiping out their people, and looting their resources became the official, although not public policy of the United States, under President Richard Nixon, with Henry Kissinger's 1974 National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200). This report targeted the fastest-growing populations in the "Third World" for population reduction—i.e., genocide. It also sought to prevent those nations from expending their natural resources for their own benefit, when these resources were deemed vital to the Western financial cartels. NSSM 200 was a Malthusian tirade against population growth, especially that of non-Caucasian people, but also included the importance of the "advanced sector" having a continuous flow of "mineral supplies" from developing countries which had high rates of population growth.
In its Executive Summary, under the subhead, "Minerals and Fuels," Kissinger's report states: "Rapid population growth is not in itself a major factor in pressure in depletable resources (fossil fuels and other minerals), since demand for them depends more on levels of industrial output than on numbers of people. On the other hand, the world is increasingly dependent on mineral supplies from developing countries, and if rapid population growth frustrates their prospects for economic development and social progress, the resulting instability may undermine conditions for expanded output and sustained flows of such resources" (emphasis added).
If one truly desires to understand why people are suffering in such horrible conditions today, and why countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and South Africa are under attack, one need only refer to NSSM 200.