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Oil Money Paid for Sudan's Genocide

Sudan-expert: Directors Ian and Lukas Lundin are misleading the Swedish people

Russian-built Hind Mi-24V attack helicopters were used to clear tens of thousands of Sudanese away from the oil fields of South Sudan and the villages of Darfur. Defenseless civilians were strafed from the air as they fled their burning houses, and from 1999 to 2006 over 2 million people were forced out of their homes and pushed off their land.

Helicopter gunships massively altered the dynamics of war in Sudan, thanks to the oil money that was used to pay for them. Yet in a letter to Dagens Nyheter on the 18th March, brothers Ian and Lukas Lundin claim that oil and mineral exploration help bring peace to dictatorships and war-torn countries by stimulating economic growth and ending poverty.

Their claim is made despite a detailed report published in 2010 by the pan-European organization ECOS (European Coalition on Oil in Sudan) where satellite photos, backed by detailed evidence from numerous sources, demonstrate that 160,000 people were driven off their land in Lundin’s Block 5a oil concession.

The same claim that oil is good for development has been repeatedly used by Lundin’s directors and management, including former board member and current foreign minister Carl Bildt, since news about atrocities against civilians in their Block 5a oilfield concession first reached the Swedish media in the year 2000. Yet contrary to their claims, there is no evidence that oil benefited the ordinary people of Sudan during the war years.

A detailed study of multiple sources demonstrates that Sudan started to produce oil in 1996. By 1999 oil provided 34% of Sudan’s foreign exchange earnings. Oil earnings climbed to 81% in 2001, reaching 88% of Sudan’s foreign exchange earnings in 2005. Yet the government’s spending on services stayed the same.

So where did the extra money go? On the war! Half of the Sudanese government’s total budget in 1999 and 2000 went to the military, whose spending increased sixfold from 1998 (the years before Sudan started exporting oil) to 2004 when peace was signed with southern rebels.

The massive increase in foreign exchange funds enabled the government of Sudan to buy more and better weapons. Six Russian-built Hind Mi-24V helicopter gunships were bought in 1996, the same year that Sudan started to produce oil. 16 more Mi-24V attack helicopters were bought 2001–2002.

Those Hind gunships were used to clear the oilfields in South Sudan - pushing 160,000 people off their land in Lundin's Block 5a. The same helicopters attacked the people of Darfur from 2003 onwards. Some 2 million people were displaced in that conflict, and some 80,000 died violent deaths during 2003 to 2005. A number of those were killed by helicopter gunships, which were primarily paid for with the foreign exchange earnings from oil.

Developing oil and mineral resources in a dictatorship that is fighting its own population in a civil war does contribute to development, as shown by the case of Sudan. Instead it provides the government with extra funds to buy weapons, which can be used to wage war, and to perpetrate atrocities against the local population. Ian and Lukas Lundin should have known that.

Their claim that oil is good for development seems then to be a deliberate attempt to mislead the people of Sweden as to the true consequences of Lundin’s strategy of developing oil and mineral concessions in areas that most other companies deliberately avoid.

Sources include: Dr. Leben Moro (2009) Oil Development Induced Displacement in the Sudan; Human Rights Watch (2003) Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights; ECOS (2010) Unpaid Debt; Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft 2001; Stockholm International Peace Research Institute; Bloodhound (2006) The Scorched Earth of Darfur. 

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