I remember the grass fires far off in the distance.
Baggara nomads would ignite the dense elephant grass before them to ease their seasonal journey between the arid north, the “Sahel,” to the “Sudd,” the largest swamp in the world, where succulent grasses would sustain their cattle herds for the next six months. It was a natural and timeless passage cast centuries ago, marking the transition from rainy to dry season.
After three years of thundering across vast tracts of neem and pepper trees (with the surprisingly resilient and flame resistant bark), I knew their leaves would remain green for a few more weeks, then slowly bake and crisp in the sun. No one really needed a calendar to know when the seasons changed.
As I approached the smoke and flames from above, snowy egrets, white-crowned shrikes and sharp-tailed hawks spiraled upward like ashes, enjoying a feast of insects fleeing the fire. Behind the arc of orange flames, the blackened ground still smoldered as a half-dozen men led camels by their halters. Behind followed an orderly file of cattle and goats.
These long-horned cattle strolled easily beside the flames, sometimes completely engulfed in the smoke—brief respites from the thick clouds of flies that bred and co-existed with the nomads. The goats, I imagined, bleeted their complaints, but stayed in line. The alternative was not pleasant.
Unquestionably the fires provided protection from the lions and hyenas lying in wait in the tall, undisturbed grass only metres away. I’ve seen these wondrous beasts from the air, patiently stalking the next meal. A domestic cow or goat would be easy prey, and burning a wide swath is wise in order to traverse the hundreds of miles through 10-foot tall grass.
When the fires were within sight of the major oil camp known as Heglig, where I was stationed, the local workers puzzled over management’s decision to bulldoze wide fire-breaks around the pumping stations and oil wells.
We launched our shiny helicopter daily to patrol the hundreds of miles of power lines. We watched as the flames shot up 30 or 40 feet and singed the wires, causing brownouts and, sometimes, complete power outages. Repair teams were dispatched in vehicles, and some pumping stations had to be shut down, temporarily suspending the flow of oil.
But no one ever intervened with the progress of the nomads. No one ever suggested changing the path they travelled. After all, it was their land.
When I first came to Sudan in 1997, I worked 120 km south of Heglig near the village of Bentui. We lived aboard renovated sea-containers stacked atop one another on four steel barges linked together and moored next to the papyrus shoreline of the Nile River. Two helicopters were under contract to a Chinese seismic company working in the Sudd.
The next year the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC) hired one of our helicopters to support the Heglig oil field, and we looked forward to an operation with senior management people from Canada. The local Sudanese were happy to have a Canadian company involved — Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc.
We took great pride in being involved with Talisman’s numerous humanitarian projects. We frequently delivered medicine to outlying clinics built and maintained by the oil company. We delivered notebooks and pencils to village schools, flew in tons of food to an isolated and inaccessible small hamlet because of flooding. We supported a crew drilling water wells for small towns located near an exploratory oil rig. We transported the management team to villages to discuss with local officials payment for building roads through farmers’ fields. We delivered soccer balls to schoolchildren, and goodwill to each and every Sudanese we met. As a team of caring Canadians, we were achieving some small steps to improve the life of the local people.
But our friends and families back in Canada were reading horror stories in the media about a Canadian oil corporation blinded by greed and directed by a rape and pillage mentality to boost its share prices. According to our nation’s finest media monopolies, Talisman’s involvement in Sudan — a country besieged by civil war since the 1980s — was directly responsible for every atrocity ever committed.
The Canadian oil workers were portrayed by a number of newspapers as jack-booted Nazis issuing orders to the government forces to drive women and children from their huts, allegedly sanctioning the destruction of villages and crops so bulldozers and trucks could bring in tons of heavy equipment needed to suck the wealth out of the land.
And the burning grass fires of the nomads became a “scorched-earth” policy.
This “fact” became headline news in the western media, and their “definitive” source was someone associated with the Crossroads Ministry — a marginal NGO in Sudan with a mission “to dismantle systemic racism and build anti-racist multicultural diversity within institutions and communities.” Yeah, right.
Flying overhead in a fixed-wing aircraft at 20,000 feet, this “expert” source told the Calgary Sun that on November 3, 1999 he “saw evidence of a ‘scorched-earth’ policy around the oil fields.”
That would have been the burned grassland that granted safe passage to thousands of nomads and cattle.
That same reliable source also told the newspaper that the village of Bentui had been bombed, so that oil exploration plans could proceed unimpeded by people.
I lived near Bentui for almost a year, a village of 20,000 Nuer — cattle herders and fishermen living in round mud and grass huts spread across the landscape like chocolate kisses. During particularly heavy rains, many displaced flood victims would come to the marginally higher ground of Bentui and build temporary dwellings, sometimes adding as many as 10,000 extra people to the village.
The dirt floors of the huts would become well worn and compacted. At the end of the rainy season, around November, they would dismantle the small sub-division and move back to their fields and fishing villages, leaving the landscape around Bentui appear pockmarked.
This was the “evidence” of bombing — not an eyewitness account of actual aircraft dropping bombs, but a quick, uneducated assumption.
Coincidentally, I flew to Bentui the day after that report and met with the local governor, the Red Cross representative, and enjoyed a sweet carkaday tea underneath the giant neem tree in the centre of town with Elizabeth, the tea lady.
All was well and not a bomb in sight.
Photo Credits
“Kurmuk Blue Nike Sudan: sidelife @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.
“Children Bor Jonglai Sudan” sidelife @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.
Allan,
Obviously the term “scorched earth” is metaphorical……not for burning everything, but for killing and forcibly displacing everyone not sympathetic to the regime’s genocidal ambitions. You can’t see that flying in the air. And block 5A was well under the control of Sudan military forces and their Nuer and other tribal allies during the time you were there. But I can assure you there was massive scorched earth polices prior to that, and during the time you were there in Block 4, and also parts of Block 5. Have you read the reports of Amnesty INternational? Christian Aid? Human Rights Watch? (Not to mention the Canadian gov’t’s own Harker Commission Report. The last major massacre in Ruweng County took place in October,2002, several months before Talisman Energy pulled out. I investigated the evidence of that massacre later, and can assure you that it took place within 15 k or one of their oil wells. The local villagers also reportd that oil company workers (they didn’t know the nationality) took part in the disposal of the bodies….using gasoline and burning them all in piles.
There has been an ongoing court case in the US over this. (In Canada there is no specific law governing what corporations can do when they operate extra-territorially — a Canadian company could profit from building another “Hitler’s” gas chambers and there’s no law to stop them). And it is going all the way to the Supreme court. The prosecutors (against Talisman and the Sudan government) over 1 million pages of evidence against the company and regime of massacres and crimes against humanity. The courts so far have not allowed this evidence to be brought forward based strictly on an incorrect definition of the term “complicity”. The appeals court ruled that as long as Talisman did not “intend” for its partnership to cause crimes against humanity, they can not be held complicit — even though they knew full well that it would. That’s like saying you can sell ammunition to a teen ager high on drugs carrying a machine gun and wearing a trench coat, when his friend has just informed you that this guy plans to shoot up his school…..just as long as you yourself don’t “intend” for that to happen. I hope the Supreme Court wades through that smoke. But as far as “scorched earth” goes, there were 10s of thousands killed and hundreds of thousands forced off their lands.
Also your assertion that the Sudan gov’t only got 5 per cent of the oil revenues… that is not entirely accurate. That agreement was only to cover the time period when Talisman and the other partners recouped their investment (a couple of years, and that did not include a lot of in-kind support and capital investment). After that, the per centage going to Sudan’s fascist government increased considerably. Yes, it was a very lucrative deal for all of them. And it insured that a government which supports international terrorism and is committed to radical Islamic genocide of its moderate Muslim population in Darfur, and its non Muslim population elsewhere remains firmly entrenched in power.
If you will recall, many German civilians were shocked to learn about the gas chambers and holocaust — which was taking place, sometimes in their very neighbourhoods.
From your article above, you made it sound like all was well in Sudan, and those decrying the brutality of the regime and their oil company cohorts were making it all up. What happened in Sudan during those years was one of the most outrageous examples of corporate irresponsibility since the Swiss and Austrian banks used gold from the teeth of Hilter’s victims as collateral.
You may have only seen what you saw. And you are free to report on it. Please believe me, you did not see very much of what was really happening.
Mel
Its sad that the author fails to mention that the “scorched earth” policies of the NIF government (with which Talisman was engaged in a lucrative partnership) were thoroughly documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Christian Aid, the Canadian mainline church coalition KAIROS, World Vision, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, the Steelworkers Humanitarian Fund, the Sudan Inter-Agency Reference Group, Freedom Quest International and numerous independent researchers and journalists. The source of documentation was not, as the author alleges, merely someone associated with Crossroads. I myself interviewed scores of displaced victims of this scorched earth policy…..people who had been forced off their lands by real bombing raids carried out by Antonovs and helicopter gunships. Tens of thousands of people were displaced…many forced to flee from these attacks. Thousands died of starvation and disease from this forced displacement. This forced displacement began long before this author ever stepped foot into Sudan, but continued well into the years when Talisman was fully operational.
Even the Canadian government’s own fact finding team led by John Harker (documented in the Canadian government’s “Harker Commission Report”, investigated the situation thoroughly and came to the same conclusion — that the presence of a Canadian oil company in this environement was “adding to the suffering” of the people.
This report is a tragic attempt at a white-wash, and is a knife in the back to the tens of thousands of victims of Talisman Energy’s complicity in genocide in Sudan.
Mr. Middleton,
You miss the point entirely–the source of documentation for the article printed in a Calgary newspaper was from someone association with the Crossroads. I was there as he was flying overhead and reported what he thought he saw.
I have no affiliation with any “Christian” activist group, unlike yourself. I was there as a commercial pilot and I flew oil workers, management and occasionally Sudanese military leaders to have meetings in villages. I was in Sudan for three years and flew every inch of Block 5A, the area of concern while Talisman was involved with the consortium, of which Sudan received 5% of oil revenues–hardly the “lucrative” agreement you mention.
From my vantage point of flying around at 6000 feet I can see about 50 miles in all directions, and never saw any evidence of a scorched earth policy. Since I spent the first 20 years of my aviation career fighting forest fires in Canada, I can say with confidence that I have a keen eye for spotting smoke. The fires I did see, I mentioned in my post.
Oil exploration in Sudan began in the late 70’s or early 80’s. A Canadian helicopter company was working there then, and I was scheduled to go over to work. The rebels had a different plan though–they killed several civilian engineers and the oil companies shut down the operations before I got there.
Many years later I went to Sudan before Talisman was involved, and I flew local workers out to the field in the morning and back to camp in the afternoon. I flew one worker to his village so he could attend the funeral of his daughter. No one who worked there ever mentioned being “forced” to work, being “forced” to leave their home.
Of course displacement of villagers was happening in Sudan–far to the south in rebel-held territory, and in the Darfur region. I would never dispute that. Both of these areas were far from our operating area. To make a tragic connection between where we were working and that displacement is what my post was all about–to offer a “practical” view of what we were doing in that particular area.
No white-wash, just honesty. And when we brought gifts for the local workers, there were no strings attached.
Hello Allen, I have been enjoying your stories and can relate as a pilot and a oil worker. I have worked in sudan near Hegleg and to the south Bentui with Al Hassadie, we came over from yeman. Again doing the same around marb working with Hunt oil.
Before that we were with Peter Baudin drilling in Somalia. Then got the boot when the Bad people over threw our camp. Interesting times.
Been other places too over there.some scary and some not.Keep them coming.
Cheers
Kevin
PS maybe if you back in the land of the living you can stop over for some chai/ insahla
I’m enjoying your adventures, Allan, and looking forward to Sudan Pt 2.