Welcome to Talk Nation Radio, a half hour discussion on politics, human rights, and the environment. I’m Dori Smith
Matthew Conway of UNHCR on a massacre in South-Eastern Chad and Graham Saul on oil related problems in Chad plus the down side of the Ethanol boom.
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The UN is reporting 65 people dead and dozens more wounded in South-eastern Chad. We were able to reach Matthew Conway with the UN High Commission on Refugees in Abache by phone Tuesday. Matthew Conway is UNHCR’s information officer. I asked him to talk about
the latest reports on this massacre.
Matthew Conway: Yeah I’m afraid it is shaping up to be a bit of a massacre unfortunately. It appears from the information we have been able to gather so far that early Saturday morning March 31st the villages of Tiero and Moreno were surrounded by attackers on horseback, camel back, on foot, and also in vehicles with heavy weaponry. The villages of course were caught entirely by surprise and they were targeted by these attackers that many people are referring to as “Janjaweed†militias. This has caused the displacement of several thousand people and we know that there are at least dozens dead and many dozens more injured.
Dori Smith: The violence going on about 45 km east of Koukou in South-eastern Chad. Up to 3,000 people arriving in the Goz Amir camp. Just talk about what this new flight of Chadians means and what UNHCR is doing to help. (pdf Map illustrates where refugee populations are in the region of Eastern Chad.)
Matthew Conway: We are already dealing with several thousands displaced Chadians, many of them were among the first people to welcome the Sudanese refugees from neighboring Darfur when they fled hostilities in their own country. So what we are really concerned about now is just the carrying capacity to deal with this influx of people in terms of sufficient water, food, sufficient non-food items such as jerry-cans, mats, plastic sheeting, soap, it’s really a very big concern because we still don’t know how many new people we are going to be dealing with. People continue to arrive.
Dori Smith: So thus far we are talking about roughly seventy wounded, thirty four badly enough to be evacuated to a hospital. 65 dead. What else do you know about the extent of this massacre and will the refugees be able to get any kind of immediate medical care when they arrive in I guess you are calling this a “displacement site†Aradif near Goz Amir refugee camp?
Matthew Conway: That’s right. I should point out that we are talking now about not refugees, which has a legal implication. The refugees we are dealing with are people who have fled from the Darfur region of neighboring Sudan. And in the Goz Amir camp we have got about 20,000 of them that we are caring for. We’re talking about now Chadians themselves who have been displaced from their homes in Chad. They don’t have any special recognition in terms of international law. But it certainly is an imperative of humanitarian agencies to give whatever assistance they can to these people.
Dori Smith: What if anything do you expect the Chad government to do?
Matthew Conway: It has to be said that the Chadian Government has been and continues to be a very good partner for us in facilitating the work we are all trying to do out here in cooperation. The military has deployed to restore some order in there. It appears they succeeded in repelling this so-called Janjaweed attack. Unfortunately it appears that some fighting is continuing. Our teams in the field are reporting sporadic gun fire. I’m not sure what that involves exactly but the Chadian Military has deployed to restore order but I think in addition to that we really need to start looking at inter-communal peace building initiatives and conflict resolution. Otherwise this already desperate situation really could spiral out of control.
Dori Smith: Apparently residents of the camp at Goz Amir could hear heavy weaponry, explosions during the fighting. How typical is that of what we often hear as related to these Janjaweed attacks?
Matthew Conway: Well what sort of surprised us about this one was the use, the involvement of heavy weaponry. I can’t say that this is the first time we’ve heard it but it is particularly concerning that such heavy weaponry would be used against a civilian population. We are hoping to have more details about what exactly might have been involved in the coming hours. But a lot of those areas we would need to get access to are still no go zones for us.
Dori Smith: Is there a chance that an investigation could be done to learn what kind of weapons were used and whether or not there were perhaps air attacks or what exactly went on here?
Matthew Conway: In fact I’m sure that’s actually going on right now. We, because of security concerns, haven’t had access to the region but I’m sure in the coming days we are going to have a clearer picture of what kind of weaponry was involved and what the unfortunate consequences were in terms of loss of human life.
Dori Smith: What kinds of policies is UNHCR looking at to diffuse the violence and help the displaced people?
Matthew Conway: Well the High Commissioner himself during a visit here at the end of last year called for some kind of international presence to be deployed here in Eastern Chad. What form that may take exactly is certainly open for discussion. But it has to be noted that this is a very vast and uncontrolled region and some kind of force is needed in the region to protect the population, not just the refugees but the Chadian host populations and the thousands, the tens of thousands of Chadians who have been displaced in their own country.
Dori Smith: We have heard critics warning of the potential outcomes if the US leaders start using language about regime change and sending a military into this region. What are your thoughts on that idea.
Matthew Conway: Well I think certainly from HUR’s perspective we would always look for the most peaceful means of reconciling differences. I think there is a lot of work that could be done at grass roots level just to promote peace building initiatives between the communities which are now unfortunately turning against one another. We would like to see a political solution rather than a military solution to the situation that’s currently going on but in the interim it might be advisable to have some kind of international presence here that could insure the security of these civilians until that kind of solution is found.
Dori Smith: What about the effectiveness of sanctions that have been tried?
Matthew Conway: There is always a debate about sanctions and making sure they are targeted at not hurting the people that they are meant to help. It should also be noted that the International Criminal Court has been very active out here in studying the situation and building a case that they are going to bring before a prosecutor about some of the atrocities that have been committed out here. Whether stronger sanctions are needed or whether they have failed I’m really not in a position to say yes or no.
Dori Smith: Tell us finally about what else the United Nations High Commission on Refugees intends to do in the next few days for the displaced in Eastern Chad and also internationally to call further attention to all of this.
Matthew Conway: Certainly here in Chad we will be working with many many humanitarian partners and government authorities as well in addressing the immediate needs of the tens of thousands of people who have been displaced from their homes within their own country. There are numerous UN agencies present on the ground, NGOs, and there is also, of course, the International Community for the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, all doing spectacular work in a very difficult environment to bring aid to these people. On a larger level, more macro, UNHCR is going to be involved in certainly trying to promote a peaceful solution to the crisis here. But in the interim time advocating for some kind of international presence to protect the civilians on the ground.
Dori Smith: Matthew Conway is the public information officer for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, UNHCR. He is based in Abache, Chad. Matthew Conway thank you so much for joining us.
Matthew Conway: Thank you for bringing attention to the issue. We are grateful for any attention we can bring to the suffering of the people here.
Dori Smith: We turn now to US Energy Policy and George W. Bush on Ethanol development:
George W. Bush : You know I have said that it is a serious problem; I recognize that Man is contributing greenhouse gases. Here are the principles by which I think we can get a good deal. One, anything that happens cannot hurt economic growth. I say that because one I care about the working people in the country but also because in order to solve the greenhouse gas issue over a longer period of time its gonna require new technologies which tend to be expensive and its easier to afford expensive technologies if you are prosperous.
Dori Smith: Bush was speaking at a press conference April 3rd. He had been asked if further regulations on auto emissions were inevitable. Graham Saul joins us next. He is International Programs Director at Oil Change International. They expose the true cost of oil and facilitate the coming transition towards clean energy in a way that identifies political barriers. As part of their efforts they set up a campaign they call, ‘Separation of Oil and State’. It’s designed to get oil money out of politics. In light of George Bush’s most recent proposals to increase Ethanol production we wanted the experts at Oil Change International to tell us if another campaign should be waged to separate Ethanol and State. But first we wanted to know more about a story Graham Saul wrote back in November of 2005 on assistance projects for Africa. He pointed out that the World Bank had fueled a project led by ExxonMobil that wound up exacerbating conflict and poverty. I asked him to go over what he had learned about the Chadian Government, big oil, and conflict.
Graham Saul: Yeah the project you are referring to is called the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project. Basically it’s a massive investment from ExxonMobil in a pipeline coming out of Chad through Cameroon to the coast of Africa for export to the North. And it falls within kind of a broader pattern of the World Bank’s engagement in the oil sector over the past 20 years. Ever since the oil shocks of the 1970s the World Bank has been actively engaged in working with Western governments most notably the United States in diversifying the supply of US access to oil around the world. One of the impacts that this has had is that often the bank has been prepared to enter into relationships with dictatorial regimes in ways that only serve to increase the level of oppression and conflict within a country. So it has become quite clear, for instance, that many World Bank investments have made conflict worse and oppression and human rights violations in countries worse rather than better. And the Chad-Cameroon pipeline is kind of an interesting example of that where the World Bank working with ExxonMobil in a wide variety of other public institutions with the support of the United States chose to make an investment in a country that was essentially ruled by a brutal dictatorship over the objections of civil society organizations and groups from Chad and Cameroon and from around the world who were calling on the Bank to have a moratorium on the project until certain governance and human rights issues were addressed.
Instead the bank chose to blaze forward irrespective of those concerned and what we have seen is that the Debi regime which is the government that controls Chad actually quite quickly began breaking the agreement that the World Bank entered into with the Chadian government and rather than using resources to reinvest in poverty alleviation in the country the Deby regime (Prime Minister Idriss Deby) has been using resources to purchase weapons to increase its security apparatus, and to effectively fuel the various tools for repression and control within Chad. So it is yet another example of the World Bank investing in oil basically at the behest of the United States and other Western governments for the purpose of extracting that oil to fuel consumption in the North. But actually serving to retrench and complicate conditions on the ground for civil society organizations and people that are struggling to try to address democracy and human rights and governance concerns in their own country.
There have been steady calls for peace keepers for the region of the Sudan, Darfur and even Chad now, and this sounds good in theory but the Bush administration and the State Department have set up a US Military force for the region that would be based in the Horn of Africa, that’s AFRICOM. Couldn’t AFRICOM be more set up to protect corporate interests than societal ones?
Graham Saul: Yeah in many ways the Gulf of Guinea, the area in the West Coast of Africa is the next big oil region. There already is a lot of oil coming out of there, whether it’s through Angola down in the South of the Gulf of Guinea or Nigeria further to the North of it but there are expectations or thoughts that there is more oil off the coast that has not yet been harnessed. And there are real concerns within Africa and beyond that what’s happening is that the Bush administration is effectively militarizing the region through the establishment of AFRICOM as kind of a prelude to insuring through force and diplomatic and financial means, but AFRICOM obviously would be with the former in mind, insuring that there is a steady supply of oil coming out of the region. And as I said earlier the concern is that oil often has quite a direct relationship with conflict, whether it’s exacerbating the likelihood of civil unrest within a country as we have seen in places like Nigeria or whether the insecurities associated with access to oil has the potential to fuel or make more likely interstate conflict like we have seen with relation to Iraq. So groups in Africa and around the world are increasingly concerned that AFRICOM represents sort of the next phase in what has been a long history of the militarization of oil and suddenly we have seen from the Bush administration a willingness to go to unprecedented lengths to secure access and to maintain that access.
Dori Smith: Your web site, http://www.priceofoil.org www.priceofoil.org describes the separation of oil and state campaign. Describe what that is.
Graham Saul: We have seen vicious cycle over the past 100 years in terms of the relationship of the growth of the oil industry and governments. On the one hand the oil industry, especially in places like the United States, have been pumping huge amounts of money into the electoral process in support of individual candidates. And on the other hand public institutions and governments have been going to great lengths to support the expansion of the international oil industry and this has led to a patronage relationship, a vicious cycle, where the worst of both worlds end up emerging.
Oil Change International is basically calling for an end to this patronage relationship. We think we need a separation of oil and state, we don’t think that governments, especially today, should be in the business of subsidizing and encouraging the expansion of the international oil industry. It’s time for them to start refusing to take money from the oil industry and refusing to provide the kinds of lavish subsidies that we have seen over the past 30 or 50 years. So that’s basically what we mean by a separation of oil and state and we think it’s a necessary precondition to an effective transition away from our dependence on oil. Until our politicians stop being beholden to the oil industry, and until they stop actively strategizing about how to expand the industry and meet its interests we are never going to really be able to get beyond the addiction that pretty much everybody has identified. And we are also not going to be able to deal with the growing problem of climate change.
Dori Smith: The former Governor of Florida Jeb Bush is positioned to play a key role in bringing the US and Brazil together on Ethanol development. He was named co-chair of the year old Inter-American Bank Commission on Ethanol and C-span aired their April 2nd 2007 event designed to pave the way for private investment and international development. URL
Jeb Bush: Just as protectionism is not the answer neither is isolationism. In creating a national energy strategy we should not confuse energy independence with energy autonomy. The United States imports 4.9 billion barrels of crude oil, nearly 2/3rds of our total annual consumption and that number as we grow as our economy grows that number as a percentage grows even more. Attempting to eliminate all imports is unrealistic. Nor is it necessary in my opinion. Instead we should reduce our dependence on energy from countries that are politically unstable or downright hostile.
Dori Smith: Former Governor Jeb Bush not talking about oil there but Ethanol and the setting up of what sounded like an Ethanol cartel run by the U.S., Brazil and the Inter-American Development Bank.
Graham Saul: My first reaction is that what Bush is once again doing is ignoring the fact that the first objective needs to be reducing our energy use in general. We are consuming at essentially an unsustainable rate and we can’t replace one form of fuel for another at the same levels of production that we currently have. So the first step, and we need to constantly emphasize the importance of reducing our energy use in general.
The second thing is in relation to the Ethanol boom there is a real and growing danger that the Ethanol boom becomes a biodiversity nightmare and we need to do what we can to avoid that both from the perspective of insuring that we are not fueling a process of crop expansion into pristine rain forests and other areas of high biodiversity value. And also in a way of insuring that the Ethanol boom doesn’t drive food prices to unsustainable levels in ways that effect people’s capacity to meet their basic needs.
The thing that worries me most about the way the Bush administration talks about the Ethanol boom is that it sounds like what they are trying to do is build corporate power rather than community power. And when we look at a future sustainable energy strategy and energy system Oil Change International would like to see a distributed energy system that’s fed locally that is both driven by and responds to the needs of communities. We would like to see Ethanol play a small role in an energy mix but ultimately we need to find a way of approaching the energy question in a way that builds community power rather than building corporate power.
Dori Smith: As we listen to another segment from the April 2nd C-span broadcast we can hear how Jeb Bush Co-Chair of the Inter-American Development Bank Commission on Ethanol and fellow Commission member Roberto Rodrigues of Brazil discuss how to set up an Ethanol deal. First you will hear Rodrigues answering a question about getting rid of the 54 cent tariff on Ethanol in order to invite investment and then Jeb Bush interrupts the host of the event to spontaneously award big Ethanol contracts to his favorite US companies.
Roberto Rodrigues: This is the money that could belong to Ethanol producers in Brazil I guess. So why don’t we realize under our understanding in this commission, why don’t you propose to our governments, the United States and Brazilian Governments: Ambassador Sobel I ask you to work on that, Ambassador Sobel is a very good friend of Brazilian producers of Ethanol and working hard in favor of this commission also, why don’t you use this money to develop research in both countries in a kind of synergetic activities. Let’s research together with Brazilian money and North American….(unclear because he was interrupted by loud laughter and applause).
Thank you Minister for your usual candid and passionate response to…(he is interrupted by Jeb Bush)
Jeb Bush: Can I just respond. I just, I think it’s important, I’ll do that deal with you as long as John Deer and International Harvester sell the harvesting machines in the expansion of the production.
Roberto Rodrigues: With Brazilian jobs! (More laughter and applause.)
Jeb Bush: We’ve got a deal.
Roberto Rodrigues: Done!
Dori Smith: Now we heard Roberto Rodrigues mention Ambassador Sobel, that’s Clifford Sobel, the U.S. Ambassador to Brazil. According to the web site Open Secrets Sobel was also chief fundraiser for New Jersey Republicans including Christine Todd Whitman, the former head of the EPA, when she was running for the office of Governor of New Jersey. A lot of opportunity in that room certainly to at least understand how to manage what they hope will be this booming new Ethanol industry.
In terms of Congressional regulation or oversight George W. Bush has outlined a plan to use 35 billion liters of biofuels by 2017 and brother Jeb Bush seems to think that the plan will go through in a very similar way to the way the Vice President’s Energy Bill went through; in other words it will be a slam dunk.
Jeb Bush: I don’t think it requires legislation but if it did as was the case with the Energy Bill of several years ago, there was a goal that was significantly smaller, my guess is if it was presented to the Congress today it would uh it would pass.
Dori Smith: Graham Saul let’s start with the way Jeb Bush and Rodrigues set up business to include John Deer and International Harvester. Is that something of a look at the way these deals are actually done?
Graham Saul: Well unfortunately it sounds like its business as usual in the house of Bush and that the Ethanol industry is shaping up to be a giant cash cow for many large corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland with billions of dollars in public subsidies flowing into it every year. And its not surprising unfortunately that the Bush family and their allies are trying to insure that there is a piece of the pie that feeds into the industries and corporations that they are very actively associated with. And as I said earlier this is one of the things we definitely need to be aware of. That if we just reproduce a model of production that has been really problematic in other sectors of the energy industry; if we just reproduce it in the Ethanol sector we are asking for more troubles than we are going solve. We need to be wary that we are not reducing one form of destructive dependence for another form of destructing dependence.
Dori Smith: And they did mention this concept of changing Ethanol from a setting of agro energy to a setting of just energy and sort of writing this energy plan. What could this mean? I mean we are already living with the plan that gave these big give aways to the oil industry and now we are going to see the same thing for Ethanol?
Graham Saul: I think it’s conceivable that Ethanol can have a positive role to play in our energy mix at a very modest level but it’s important to keep that level in mind. What’s happened now is that because this offers an opportunity to subsidize the US farming industry, and because it also offers an opportunity for many large corporations to receive subsidies for their ongoing agriculture, there has been an enthusiasm that has developed around Ethanol that is totally out of proportion to the degree that it actually represents a solution. We just don’t have enough land to fuel our cars at the level of consumption we are currently using. It would not only be a biodiversity nightmare in the sense of whatever remaining pristine forests and unused land that is currently supporting life on earth would suddenly become much more vulnerable to encroachment from various different crops. But it could also be quite a big problem from the perspective of people being able to afford basic necessities in many parts of the world; that rather than going to put food on the table for people for people that currently don’t have it, that food is going to be turned into fuel that is going to go into the gas tanks of gas guzzling SUVs in the North in families that are much better placed to pay for it.
So we do need to look at all of the options we have in terms of where we can get alternatives to our dependence on oil and Ethanol and Biodiesel and biogas and other kinds of ways of harnessing organic matter to create energy do need to be part of the energy mix but we can’t rely on them to the degree that many people seem to want to rely on them and we have to be very suspicious of some of the motivations involved here and I think the references you have been making to Sobel and Jeb Bush and others are a perfect example of why we need to be wary of what we are getting ourselves into and where all of these public subsidies are going.
Dori Smith: Then there is the implication here that just as we saw new oil laws being written for Iraq from Washington we could start to see new Ethanol laws being written for any number of countries both in Latin America and abroad and they could find themselves having their policies and their laws dictated from Washington.
Graham Saul: It’s certainly the case that the development of the legal and regulatory frameworks that govern the oil sector in many countries of the world have been shaped by not only military and diplomatic pressure but also wealthy countries using foreign assistance to both subsidize the expansion of their own oil industry and to reform or force countries to adopt legal and regulatory frameworks for their own oil industries that are conducive to the industries of the North. So for instance ever since the oil shocks of the 1970s countries like the United States have been using international institutions like the World Bank to both finance oil corporations in their expansion in countries around the world, in Africa, Asia and South and Central America, but also to use the financial power that institutions like the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank have over many poor countries to force countries to reform their energy sectors in ways that meet the interests, that facilitate access for major oil companies. And there is no reason to think that that same model wouldn’t be reproduced in other sectors I mean it’s not just the oil sector where that approach has been used. There are similar approaches in a variety of sectors and there is no reason to think it wouldn’t expand into the Ethanol one.
The point is that wealthy countries are using a totally unsustainable amount of energy have for the past 25 years been cynically using foreign assistance including aid and development assistance to shape the energy sectors of countries around the world in ways that meet their interests. And Ethanol won’t be an exception to that.
Dori Smith: Graham Saul thanks so much for joining us.
Graham Saul: Thank you very much.
Dori Smith: Graham Saul is International Programs Director at Oil Change International, the web page is priceofoil.org You can find his November 22, 2006 report ‘Ending Big Oil Aid to Africa’ co-written by Debayani Kar at TomPaine.org For Talk Nation Radio I’m Dori Smith. Talk Nation Radio is produced in the studios of WHUS at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut. WHUS.org to listen live Wed. at 5 PM. Talknation.org and talknationradio.org for transcripts and discussions.
http://english.aljazeera.net/English/archive/archive?ArchiveId=35557
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