Faced with a rebellion in Darfur in 2003, the Sudanese Government resorted to its favoured strategy of “counter-insurgency by genocide”. Khartoum appointed Ahmed Haroun, the “Eichmann of Africa”, to take charge. As head of the Darfur Security Desk, he co-ordinated a spider’s web of security services, police, military and militia units.

Fond of citing Mao’s dictum that “the people are like water and the army is like fish”, Haroun directed attack after attack not on the rebels but against the civilians of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes. The pattern became routine: the Sudanese Air Force would bomb the village; army or police units would form a cordon around the perimeter; and then the Janjawid militia would enter, killing the able-bodied men, raping women and driving survivors into refugee camps. Haroun personally recruited, paid and armed the militia: witnesses saw him delivering planeloads of weapons and boxes of cash.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) recently issued arrest warrants for Haroun. But he was not alone. He reported to the Minister of the Interior (and current Defence Minister) Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein, and through him to the President, Omar al-Bashir, Vice-President Taha and the head of security, Saleh Ghosh. He liaised with the Sudanese military and security forces. He gave orders to the governors of Darfur to recruit more Janjawid. Eventually the ICC indictments and trials will reveal these men as involved in nothing less than a criminal conspiracy to commit mass murder. So far they have killed between 200,000 and 450,000 people.

The Sudanese Government has been resisting the imposition of UN peacekeepers for four years now. Estimates of the numbers of troops needed range from 21,000 to 44,000: presently the African Union has only 5,000 troops on the ground – confined to barracks at night and lacking the mandate to protect civilians. In August 2006 UN Resolution 1706 invited Sudanese consent for a force of 20,000 UN peacekeepers. The Sudanese Government has refused, instead restarting its aerial bombardment in Darfur and inciting violence in neighbouring Chad.

The security cabal who rule Khartoum are desiccated calculators of power: they chose mass killings as their strategy in the counter-insurgency because it was cost-effective; they will choose to stop this campaign if faced with the right incentives.

An oil embargo should be implemented immediately, and not withdrawn until the crisis is resolved. From 1999 to 2005 there was a 40-fold increase in Sudanese oil revenues. This paid for a $350 million increase in military expenditure, and provided the cash that Haroun funnelled to the Janjawid footsoldiers – paying each of them $117 per month. Oil sales now contribute up to 50 per cent of Khartoum’s annual revenue.

Faced with an oil embargo Khartoum would be forced to allow UN peacekeepers to enter. Yet sanctions are blocked by China, India, Malaysia and other countries who import Sudanese oil.

The way forward is an oil trust fund. This would distribute oil revenues for the provision of education, health and development projects and to the government of southern Sudan. A portion of any oil revenues could be held in reserve to act as a stabilisation fund and to pay reparations to Darfuri victims. The oil trust fund would secure oil supplies for India, Malaysia, China and others, and would preserve their lucrative contracts in the Sudanese oil industry. The only purpose of the programme would be to keep money away from the Sudanese military and Janjawid.

The Oil-for-Food programme in Iraq provides the international community with a lesson in how not to do things. After the original blanket sanctions policy was abandoned in 1996 because of its cruel effect on Iraqi civilians, the UN came up with the Oil-for-Food programme. The implementation of the programme was appalling. Yet it was also a partial success in keeping oil revenues away from the Iraqi regime. The independent inquiry into the programme found that $64 billion of oil was sold. Proceeds were used largely to pay for humanitarian needs, with some going for war reparations and some to pay for the UN weapons inspectorate. Iraqi government officials received $1.8 billion in illegal kickbacks and, outside the scheme, another $11 billion is estimated to have reached the Iraqi regime via oil smuggling. Thus the programme successfully diverted more than three quarters of the $75 billion in potential oil revenues away from Saddam.

If we in the international community learn from the mistakes of the past, we could successfully implement such a programme for Sudan.

Without such a programme threatening to divert three quarters of their oil revenues, the Sudanese face no real pressure to let in the UN peacekeepers. After all, where is Ahmed Haroun now? After his role in Darfur, President al-Bashir promoted him to Minister of Humanitarian Affairs. Thus one of the architects of the killings is now responsible for coordinating the rescue efforts for the survivors. This is a grotesque joke. The Sudanese Government is laughing at the world. The time for oil sanctions has come.

Nick Donovan is head of research and policy at the Aegis Trust

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