Blood in the oil

David Morse for Common Dreams:

The ink is scarcely dry on oil deals signed between the Islamist dictatorship that rules Sudan from the northern capital, Khartoum, and an eager bevy of oil companies from China, India, Japan, and Britain - even as the genocide continues full tilt in the western region known as Darfur. ...

Oil rigs are now drilling on land seized from black African farmers - who have been killed, raped, and driven off their land by their own government through its proxy militias, known as Janjaweed, in a campaign of ethnic cleansing now in its third year. ...

Oil companies are deeply complicit. Attacks by Janjaweed, often with aerial support from Sudan government forces, have cleared the way for pipelines and drilling. Oil company roads and bridges are used by government troops to carry the genocide into more remote communities in Darfur. ...

American oil companies are not visibly part of the scramble, because in 1997 the Clinton administration added Sudan to the list of states sponsoring terrorism ....

The article continues to describe how Sudan oil is the reason why the Bush administration Bush administration lobbied to weaken the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, so that U.S. oil companies can get into the action.

Unfortunately:

The only thing standing in the president's way is the ugly fact of genocide and the ability of the American people to make it politically unacceptable for our president to avert his eyes from what is happening in Darfur.