Sudan: Diversionary Bombing

Sudan: Diversionary Bombing by Richard Becker, Sara Flounders, and John Parker     In August 20, 1998, without warning, U.S. military forces launched 16 Tomahawk cruise missiles that slammed into Khartoum, Sudan, demolishing the El Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries plant, which had provided over 50 percent of Sudan's medicine, including 90 percent of the most critically needed drugs. The attack killed one and wounded many others, some critically.     More significantly, the bombing will inexorably cause the suffering and death of tens of thousands of innocent people all over Africa, many of them children, by depriving them of basic medicines against malaria, tuberculosis, and other easily curable diseases.     Secretary Albright's statement (at right) was most revealing.1 The missile attack on a pharmaceutical plant may well be an example of future U.S. wars. The attack involved a military strike against the most vital, life-sustaining facility in the Sudan. The bombing was justified by wild, unsubstantiated charges of weapons of mass destruction. It followed years of sanctions that have cut development of basic infrastructure and even the purchase of needed medicines. It is part of a policy that includes U.S. bans on loans and trade, the funding of a ‘contra' army to destabilize the Sudanese government, and the demonization of its leadership as "terrorists." The Rationale     The Clinton administration's rationale for the bombing of Khartoum (and the simultaneous attack on a remote region of Afghanistan) was simple: A few weeks earlier, the U.S. embassies in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, had been bombed. Those bombings had been coordinated by Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was the real owner of the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant. And El Shifa was a secret chemical weapons factory. Simple, yes, but while the first statement was true-the embassies had indeed been bombed-the connection to bin Laden has not, to this day, been proved, and the characterization of the El Shifa plant is an outright lie.     The New York Times put it more diplomatically: "American officials continue to say they struck a facility that produces a key ingredient for a deadly nerve agent. But their descriptions of the plant as a highly secretive, tightly secured military-industrial site, their initial statement that the plant produced no commercial products, and their statements that the exiled Saudi millionaire, Osama bin Laden, directly financed the plant, do not appear to be factual."2     Immediately after the bombings had been announced, President Clinton described the plant as an "imminent threat...to our national security." National security adviser Sandy Berger stated, "Let me be very clear about this.... This was a plant that was producing chemical-warfare-related weapons, and we have physical evidence of that fact."3 The chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Henry Shelton, said that the "intelligence community is confident that this facility is involved in the production of chemical weapons agents."4     At a briefing hours after the attack, a "senior intelligence official" said, "We have no evidence-or have seen no products, commercial products that are sold out of this facility."5 Washington claimed this strike was simply part of its policy to stop the spread of "weapons of mass destruction"- chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, a policy that is, at best, selectively enforced. The Israeli regime, for example, has developed a major chemical weapons industry without incurring Washington's wrath. (See sidebar.) Backtracking     The coverage of the bombing was replete with media self-censorship. Criticism of the bombing suggested that it was an effort by the Clinton administration to divert attention from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. While that may be true, what was absolutely absent from the extensive media coverage was any discussion or debate on the implication of destroying more than half the medicine in a desperately poor country. And the "irrefutable evidence" crumbled before reporters' eyes.     Within a month, U.S. officials were admitting they had no solid evidence the plant produced anything but pharmaceuticals. "As an American citizen, I am not convinced of the evidence," said one administration official, "who says the United States may have made a mistake."6     The shocking suggestion, "whether questionable intelligence had prompted the United States to blow up the wrong building,"7 appeared one day before the scheduled return from Sudan of a six-member team organized by the International Action Center and led by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. The team had investigated the plant's ruins on a September 18-21 trip and scheduled a September 22 news conference.     After combing through the plant itself, official U.N. and U.S. government documents, U.S. manufacturers' letters, and reports from U.S. government agencies, in addition to various official and unofficial meetings with Sudanese citizens and government representatives, the delegation concluded that the plant was solely a medicine factory whose bombing falls under the definition of a "war crime"; and, further, the bombing was an attempt to intensify the destabilizing effect on Sudan of existing U.S. sanctions and U.S.-armed rebels there in order to destroy Sudan's independence.     Administration officials openly questioned the U.S. government's explanations. "One said: ‘The decision to target El Shifa continues a tradition of operating on inadequate intelligence about Sudan.' That pattern of policies shaped by questionable intelligence reports about Sudan, these skeptical officials say, is at least three years old."8     Hours after the missile launch, senior national security advisers described El Shifa as a secret chemical weapons factory financed by bin Laden. But a month after the attack, those same officials conceded that they had no evidence directly linking Mr. bin Laden to the factory at the time the President ordered the strike. "We were not accurate," a senior administration official said. "That was a mistake."9     Even an after-the-fact justification was questionable. Although the intelligence officials did not know who owned the plant at the time of the attack, they now say its nominal owner, Salih Idris, is a front man for Mr. bin Laden. But a lawyer for Mr. Idris, an adviser to Saudi Arabia's largest bank, says Mr. Idris has never met Mr. bin Laden.10 The "Physical Evidence"     Not only is the connection of bin Laden to the plant questionable, the "evidence" that the plant produced chemical weapons, the sole basis for its having been targeted, is fatally flawed.     The "physical evidence" that Sandy Berger referred to was later "revealed" to the press, which was "told that a CIA operative had obtained a soil sample outside the El Shifa plant which contained Empta, a key ingredient in the production of the nerve gas [VX]."11 For one thing, the presence of Empta at a given location obviously does not necessarily imply its production at that location. More to the point, the presence of the chemical does not necessarily involve the production of chemical weapons at all.     One producer of Empta is the Aldrich Chemical Co., in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a subsidiary of Sigma-Aldrich Corp. Its web site says Aldrich is "a global company dedicated to producing products that contribute to the quality of life." It mentions its "quality products at competitive prices, unsurpassed service and the convenience of one-stop-shopping."     In a phone interview two days after the attack, Clint Lane of the technical support and sales staff at Aldrich said that the chemical is produced for laboratory research and could be studied for various purposes. "It's not an ingredient for a nerve gas," Lane added; "It could be the result of a decomposition of nerve gas but it could also be a decomposition of a pesticide."     And, according to Seymour Hersh's investigations, the accidental presence of Empta in the soil outside a chemical weapons production facility is highly unlikely. An international weapons inspector he interviewed "pointed out that the chemical was unlikely to have been found, unaltered, in the ground, as the CIA had told journalists, for the simple reason that it is highly reactive and, once in the earth, would react with other chemicals and begin to break down.... Given Empta's reactive nature, the inspector said, the possibility of isolating it from a sample taken from the soil outside El Shifa didn't seem credible. ‘No way it came out of a smokestack or in the effluent,' he said. ‘The only way this material could be in the ground is if somebody had emptied a flask...and then taken a sample. That's credible.'"12     Moreover, as the New York Times suggested, the identification of the chemical was more than shaky:     Several chemical-weapons experts outside the government say the single soil sample, if it was not carefully preserved and quickly tested, could have misidentified the key ingredient. They said Empta is chemically similar to several commercially available pesticides and herbicides, including the commercially available weed killer called Round-Up.13 El Shifa     What seems most incredible are the claims by U.S. officials that they knew nothing about the plant. It was, in fact, promoted and treasured by the Sudanese government as the "pride of Africa." The plant opened, in June 1997, with fanfare, in the presence of heads of state, foreign ministers. and ambassadors. It was visited by international guests including the president of the Republic of Niger, the World Health Organization's director for the Mediterranean Region, the British and German ambassadors to Khartoum, students of pharmacology, including Sudanese school children, pharmacists from Switzerland, Britain, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.14     In fact, the plant had received United Nations authorization to provide badly needed medicine to Iraq, a contract of which the U.S. government was surely aware. Indeed, given U.S. involvement for years in Sudan's internal affairs, and its high-tech intelligence, it is hard to imagine how U.S. officials could not have known just what the El Shifa plant was, despite all its protestations to the contrary.     The International Action Committee delegation was the first human rights organization to visit the site after the bombing.15 In addition to extensive tours of the bomb site, the group visited hospitals, a university, a displaced person's camp, communities and marketplaces, and met with doctors, health officials, the Ministers of Health, Information, and Justice, and President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.     As the delegation approached the "heavily guarded" "secret facility" in Khartoum North, we began seeing large "El Shifa Pharmaceutical Plant" signs with directional arrows at least a mile from the plant gate. We toured the site with video and still cameras, for about three hours, and were allowed to go anywhere on the grounds, even into areas that probably posed a safety risk, like structurally unsound buildings. All that was visible was machinery that looked new, jutting out of the rubble of near-totally destroyed buildings.     "El Shifa was really a sophisticated packaging plant," said delegation member Dr. Mohammed Haque. "It did not even use raw materials, but instead imported and repackaged processed materials. The loss of the plant is a real tragedy for them." Sudanese health officials provided detailed documentation of the plant's history, its machinery and equipment, and the products it packaged, such as tablets, capsules and syrups. As Dr. K.H. Shibeka, director of the pharmaceutical industry department, said: "This was a packaging facility. It didn't even have equipment to synthesize milk into cheese, much less make nerve gas."     Scattered throughout the wreckage of the plant were thousands upon thousands of blister packs of antibiotics, empty glass bottles and plastic containers filled with veterinary medicines. Names on packages included Amoxonil, Shifatyp, Sifazole and many others, but nothing other than medicine. American plant designer Henry R. Jobe, British technical manager Tom Carnaffin, who supervised construction from 1992-96, and Jordanian engineer Mohammed Abdul Waheed, who supervised plant production in 1997, have all testified that it would have been impossible for this plant to have produced chemical weapons. Italian plant supplier Dino Romanetti, who said he had full access to the plant during visits in February and May 1998, said it was "absolutely incredible" to claim that the plant could have produced such weaponry.16     International media representatives began arriving on the scene the day after the missile attack. Some of them, like the reporters from the London Observer, spent days examining the site. They were joined by many Sudanese from surrounding neighborhoods in Khartoum. In the August 23 Observer, under the headline "The ‘secret' chemical factory that no one tried to hide," David Hirst wrote, "There is no sign amid the wreckage of anything sinister ...there is no sign of anyone trying to hide anything either. Access is easy. Much of Khartoum seems to have come to take a look." A retired chemical engineer, John S. Cornell, in a letter to the editor of USA Today, noted, "Nowhere in the video shown have I seen wreckage of even small-scale chemicals processing equipment."17 Meeting Critical Health Needs     The plant was privately owned and partly financed by the Eastern and Southern African Preferential Trade Association.18 It was extremely important to the Sudan: It had raised the country's self-sufficiency in medicine from about 3 percent to over 50 percent.19 It produced 90 percent of the drugs used to treat the Sudan's seven leading causes of death; malaria and tuberculosis are at the top of the list.20 El Shifa produced virtually all of the country's veterinary medicine. The Sudan has very large herds of camels, cattle, sheep, and goats which are vital to the economy and food supply. The herds are susceptible to treatable infestations of parasites and diseases.21 In addition, the plant was an important exporter of human and veterinary medicines to other African and Middle Eastern countries, and was authorized earlier this year by the United Nations Sanctions Committee to ship medical supplies to Iraq, under the "Oil for Food" program.22     What made El Shifa so vital was that it enabled the Sudan to obtain medicines at low cost. "The pharmaceuticals produced in El Shifa were sold at prices which averaged about 20 percent of the prices of the same products on the international market," said Ramsey Clark. "With government subsidy, 15 percent of the production was distributed free to the poor. Few in the Sudan can afford the high costs of foreign pharmaceutical products. We found that El Shifa was the single facility in all the Sudan that was most important in the provision of medicines to protect the lives and health of the people. Its destruction, far beyond the direct injuries from the missile attack, will have disastrous results, costing thousands of lives and injuring many more for want of needed medication, unless replacement drugs are found immediately."23 What Is Going On?     Sudan, with the largest territory of any African country, a population of approximately 32 million, and an average annual income of $310 a year,24 has been devastated by this attack, and meeting the even more pressing need for medicine is virtually out of reach.     What is really going on? Is it possible that in spite of this country's poverty, Sudan's military might threaten the U.S. or perhaps Sudan's neighbors? According to the Library of Congress country study, Sudan's "Naval forces, under army command, had some functioning river patrol boats but little or no capacity to patrol Red Sea coast. Much of armed forces equipment nonoperational because of poor maintenance and lack of spare parts."25 With a military budget estimated by the U.S. in 1989 at $610 million dollars, constituting only 7.2 percent of the gross national product,26 claims of Sudan's potential for international terror seem farfetched.     Indeed, given the lack of evidence that Sudan's famous pharmaceutical plant manufactured chemical weapons, one might have hoped that the Clinton administration would welcome further U.N. investigation to prove its allegations. Yet in spite of the Sudanese government's numerous calls on the U.N. Security Council for an independent investigation to put the U.S. allegations to rest (and similar calls by many nations and individuals, including former President Jimmy Carter), the U.S. has blocked any such investigation. The then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson said, "We don't think an investigation is needed. We don't think anything needs to be put to rest."27 His deputy, Peter Burleigh, put it this way: "I don't see what the purpose of a fact-finding study would be. We have credible information that fully justified the strike we made on that one facility in Khartoum."28     Ever since Sudan opposed the 1991 U.S.-led war against Iraq, U.S. policy has aimed at destabilizing the Sudan government. Washington has helped finance a secessionist civil war against the Khartoum government and imposed economic sanctions on Sudan. The missile attack came soon after Sudan took steps to access a 300-million-barrel reservoir of crude oil in the country's South. There is a clear relationship between U.S. oil policy and U.S. government hostility toward Sudan.     U.S. officials portray Sudan as an inflexible adversary refusing all former attempts at dialogue. Yet the New York Times article questioning the rationale for the attack also admitted the absurdity of these claims. It reported that, at the request of the U.S., Sudan had expelled Osama bin Laden and 100 of his operatives and their dependents. And Sudan, lest we forget, was the nation that arrested Carlos the Jackal and extradited him to France. In February 1997, "the Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, sent President Clinton a personal letter. It offered, among other things, to allow United States intelligence, law-enforcement and counter-terrorism personnel to enter the Sudan, and to go anywhere and see anything, to help stamp out terrorism. The United States never replied to that letter.... A senior Sudanese official made a similar offer directly to the F.B.I. six months ago: send a counter-terrorism team to the Sudan, and we will help in any way we can, it said. The F.B.I. wrote back in June, declining the opportunity."29     On the whole, U.S. intelligence regarding Sudan had incomprehensible gaps. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen admitted on September 2, two weeks after the strike, that the U.S. was "unaware" that the El Shifa plant manufactured medicines; but, he said, that was "irrelevant" to the decision to destroy it.30 As recently as January 1998, the CIA had formally withdrawn more than 100 of its intelligence reports on Sudan, after concluding that its source was a fabricator.31 U.S. Involvement     Some years after Sudanese independence in 1956, the U.S. began to get deeply involved in the country. According to Andrew and Leslie Cockburn's Dangerous Liaison, collaboration between the CIA and Israeli intelligence to support a secessionist movement in the Sudan can be traced back to at least 1968.32 And when the present government, which came to power in 1989, refused to support the bombing of Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, Washington's attitude towards Khartoum grew sharply hostile. In 1990, President Bush's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen, had praised the new regime. He remarked how, in comparison to the former government, it had done particularly better in relieving the suffering of victims of the civil war. He recommended political and economic support, tied to humanitarian aid.33 But that changed 180 degrees when, in 1991, Sudan opposed the Gulf War. And in mid-1992, as Sudanese forces regained much of the territory that had been controlled by rebels, the U.S. media began to report "ethnic cleansing" and other human rights violations, and, within days, the U.S. Congress voted sanctions against Sudan.34     Over the years since then, the U.S. has maintained a campaign to destabilize Sudan. On November 10, 1996, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. would send $20 million in military equipment to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda, even though these three countries were embroiled in the bloody war in southern Sudan. The paper said its congressional sources doubted the aid would be kept from rebel forces fighting the Sudanese government.35 Shortly thereafter, Africa Confidential reported, "It is clear the aid is for Sudan's armed opposition" and added that U.S. special forces were on "open-ended deployment" with the rebels.36 The day after the missile strike, the New York Times brought up the issue again:     The Clinton administration denies it supports the rebels directly, but it acknowledges giving military aid, not including weapons, to the neighboring countries of Uganda, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, which have in turn funneled arms, radios, and other equipment to the rebels.     American officials have also made it plain that the United States supports the rebellion's goals. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright even met with the main rebel leader, John Garang, last December during a visit to Uganda.37     The involvement with Garang is compelling. In 1997 the Sudanese government signed the Khartoum Peace Agreement with six of the seven rebel groups, all but the one led by Garang, the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM). This agreement confirms the federal nature of the government, accepts a referendum for self determination for the south, and offers amnesty to rebel groups that enter a political dialogue. Garang, the Sudanese insist, remains the "sole obstacle to peace."38     The irony is that while the U.S., since 1991, has attacked Sudan's human rights record, saying civilians are targeted in the war and slavery is practiced by the government, it is the SPLM that has been found to practice such gross abuses.     Even according to John Prendergast, the director of East African Affairs at the National Security Council, the SPLM "has attained possession of adequate means of coercion and has terrorized the southern population into passive compliance. The predominant instruments of the movement since 1983 have been and still are coercion and corruption. It has not managed to integrate society around any positive values."39 Prendergast's book cites many examples of terrorism by the SPLM, including massacres. Many of these have been documented both by Amnesty International and by the United Nations.40 Other horrors include the deliberate shooting down of civilian airliners, the indiscriminate use of land mines, and the kidnaping, torture, and murder of relief workers.41     The allegations of slave trading are also simplistic. To some extent, both sides have incited the tribal rivalries of those groups at the front, wherever it might at any moment be, and this "in effect renewed the culture of hostage taking, ransoming, and abduction, which unfortunately continues to this day despite attempts to stop it."42 But the charges against the SPLM have been far more comprehensive.     According to Africa Watch, "accounts of hostage-taking and forced labor suggest that the SPLM may be taking captives and civilians in occupied areas that can degenerate into slavery. There are also accounts of the treatment of captives that suggest a situation that has already degenerated into de facto slavery."43 Human Rights Watch/ Africa documented the SPLM's "use and abuse of boys as young as seven years of age. Thousands of these children were held in SPLM camps in Ethiopia and elsewhere." Human Rights Watch/Africa reported that "the conditions in some of these camps have been described as ‘heartrending': no schooling, no hygiene, few caretakers, ragged clothing, disease and little food."44     Ironically, it is clear that "humanitarian" aid, the bulk of it from the U.S., is all that has kept the war in southern Sudan alive for nearly a decade. Operation Lifeline Sudan, established in 1989, has pumped two billion dollars into the area, more than $700,000,000 from the United States. But the aid, many officials now agree, is helping to "perpetuate the fighting."45 John Garang recently rejected further peace talk initiatives and announced "The SPLM has decided to continue the war. It is up to the international community to provide humanitarian aid." A senior U.S. diplomat who had served in Sudan (but who asked not to be identified), told the Times, "What the hell has the SPLM done to help their people? Nothing."46 The Impact of Sanctions     U.N. sanctions were imposed on Sudan based on charges as flimsy as the charge that Sudan was producing Empta gas at a pharmaceutical plant. The U.S. claimed that Sudan was involved in the attempted assassination of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt when he was on a state visit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in June of 1995. It was claimed that these unsuccessful assassins, who were supposedly Egyptian, had traveled through the Sudan and then fled to Afghanistan. Sudan denied any involvement. Nevertheless, based on U.S. pressure in the Security Council, U.N. sanctions were imposed. As part of its destabilization campaign, the U.S. has imposed its own sanctions on Sudan for many years, tightening them in November 1997.     The impact of sanctions on Sudan is likely to be even more disruptive, because of poverty and underdevelopment, than that of those imposed on Iraq.47 In the Sudan the cut off of trade has included even basic medicines that have no conceivable military uses. The IAC delegation was shown the letter (reprinted at left) from the Eli Lilly company, in which it informed the Sudanese Central Medical Supplies company that the United States Treasury Department refused to allow it to sell insulin to Sudan. Similar denials of sutures to close wounds and of hemophilia medicine were also forced by the U.S. Oil Policy and the Sudan     As the intense and longstanding dispute over oil pipelines through the Caucasus demonstrates, the U.S. has always fought hard for the passage of oil through friendly nations, even when the cost of delivery is higher.48 A pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to the Black Sea would be cheapest, but the Clinton administration has supported a more expensive pipeline taking the oil instead into Turkey, a NATO country friendlier to U.S. (and Israeli) government interests. The U.S. also believes it is important to maintain ownership of the oil and avoid governments likely to nationalize their own resources. In Nigeria, for example, 60 percent of the oil is foreign owned by companies like Royal/Dutch Shell and Mobil, and the U.S. enjoys its relationship there, especially under the present leadership which is more willing to allow further exploitation by foreign oil interests.     These oil pacts based upon colonial relationships are what U.S. interests are building toward, even in Sudan. In 1984, after a decade of exploration, Chevron discovered two fields in southern Sudan containing an estimated 300 million barrels of oil.49 The company then began construction of a 940-mile pipeline costing $1 billion. The Chevron group included Royal Dutch/Shell and Total of France. But the Chevron consortium began to pull out of the deal after attacks from rebel forces left four of its employees dead.     Now, according to a report published just nine days before the U.S. missile attack,50 Sudan had moved ahead in development of its oil fields. With Malaysian, Canadian, British, Argentinean, and German companies investing as part of the consortium developing Sudan's oil, Khartoum expects to generate income from 150,000 barrels per day and soon do its own refining. Even relief from a $300 million annual energy bill could help Sudan end the civil war. As Riek Machar, a former SPLM commander now working with the government, explained, "If in the interim period we manage to use this oil to redress imbalances and create confidence, maybe the south would then vote for unity. The south would have made an economic leap forward and some of their fears would have eroded."51     The Canadian company that is part of the consortium announced plans for investing $300 million in Sudan just three days before the attack. Shares in the company, Talisman Energy Inc., lost one-third of their value in the week following the raid. "Cruise missile blasts," the Toronto Globe and Mail reported, "were the last thing investors wanted to hear."52 In addition, SPLM leader John Garang has already threatened to target the oil fields, warning the companies to pull out their staff.53     If Garang were to take over the government of Sudan, of course, everything would be different. Not Even An Apology     It has been months since the attack on the El Shifa plant and the Clinton administration has still not even apologized. No evidence of chemical weapons manufacture has ever materialized; virtually no one believes the cover story. The factory was completely destroyed. Damage was estimated at $100 million. More than 300 employees, with 3,000 dependents, were rendered jobless.54 The aggression has devastated a basic element of the Sudanese economy and set back Sudan's policy aimed at realizing the international slogan of "Health for All" by the year 2000, especially since thousands will die from lack of needed medicine. But the people of Sudan are strong, determined, and hardworking. In spite of poverty and U.S. sanctions blocking food and medicine from Sudan, the people are full of determination. A rally of thousands of young women and men denouncing the U.S. bombing, one month after the attack, showed this spirit of resistance. Despite U.S. support, the rebel war will end, and Sudan will be able to apply its resources to the benefit of its people. That the United States willfully draws out this conflict is shameful. Endnotes: Richard Becker, Sara Flounders, and John Parker, from the International Action Center in New York City, were members of a delegation led by Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark that traveled to the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan shortly after the U.S. bombing. The delegation gathered evidence refuting Washington's claim that the plant produced chemical weapons. 1. New York Times, Aug. 23, 1998, p. 1. 2. New York Times, Aug. 29, 1998, p. A1. 3. Quoted in Seymour M. Hersh, "The Missiles of August," The New Yorker, Oct. 12, 1998, p. 34. 4. Department of Defense news briefing, Aug. 20, 1998. 5. Op. cit., n. 2, pp. A1, A4. 6. New York Times, Sept. 21, 1998, pp. A1, A8. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., p. A8. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Hersh, op. cit., n. 3, pp. 34-35. 12. Ibid., p. 40. 13. Op. cit., n. 2, p. A4. 14. The American Bombardment of El Shifa Pharmaceutical, Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Sudan, Aug. 1998, p. 7. 15. The delegation was composed of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; Dr. Sapphire Ahmed, of Harlem Hospital in New York City, who had previously worked with refugees in Sudan; Dr. Mohammed Haque of Chicago, with American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice, who was also past president of the Islamic Medical Association; Sara Flounders and John Parker from the IAC in New York; and Richard Becker from the IAC in San Francisco. 16. Op. cit., n. 14, pp. 17-19; New York Times, Aug. 29, 1998, p. A4; Wall Street Journal, Aug. 28, 1998, p. 8. 17. "Public needs evidence of chemical production," USA Today, Aug. 28, 1998. 18. Op. cit., n. 14, p. 12. 19. This is El Shifa Pharmaceuticals Industries, Co., Federal Ministry of Health of the Republic of the Sudan, Aug. 1998, p. 5. 20. Interview, Khartoum, Sept. 20, with Minister of Health Mahadi Baba Nimir. 21. Ibid. 22. Op. cit., n. 19, pp. 48-50. 23. Press conference, New York City,  Sept. 22, 1998. 24. Helen Chapin Metz, ed., Sudan: A Country Study (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 4th ed. 1992), pp. xv, xvi, xxvi. 25. Ibid., p. xx. 26. Ibid., p. xxi. 27. "No International Probe Needed for Sudan Bombing: Richardson," Agence France Presse, Aug. 30, 1998. 28. New York Times, Aug. 25, 1998, p. A1. 29. Op. cit., n. 6, p. A8. The IAC delegation saw copies of Sudanese government letters sent to the U.S. months before the bombing pleading for dialogue and cooperation. The letters, as the Times reported, went unanswered. 30. New York Times, Sept. 3, 1998, p. A6. 31. Op.cit., n. 6, p. A1. 32. Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison (New York: Harper Collins, 1991). 33. "Series of Strikes Against Sudan," Sudanow magazine (Khartoum), Jan. 1998, p. 20. 34. Ibid. 35. Washington Post, Nov. 10, 1996. 36. Africa Confidential, Nov. 15, 1996. 37. New York Times, Aug. 21, 1998, p. A5. 38. "Tightening the Noose," op. cit., n. 33, p. 13. 39. John Prendergast, Crisis Response: Humanitarian Band-Aids in Sudan and Somalia (London: Pluto Press, 1997), p. 57, quoted in David Hoile, The SPLA: Fit to Govern? (London: British-Sudanese Public Affairs Council, 1998), p. 16. 40. See Amnesty International Report 1994 (London: Amnesty International, 1994), p. 275; and see Situation of Human Rights in the Sudan, U.N. Special Rapporteur Gaspar Biro, E/CN.4/1996/62, Feb. 20, 1996. 41. See, e.g., ‘The Tears of Orphans': No Future Without Human Rights (London: Amnesty International, 1995); op. cit., n. 40; Denying "The Honor of Living": Sudan A Human Rights Disaster (London: Africa Watch, 1989); and Sudan: The Ravages of War: Political Killings and Humanitarian Disaster (London: Amnesty International, 1993), AI Index: AFR 54/29/93, Sept. 29, 1993. 42. Hoile, op. cit., n. 39, p. 30. 43. Denying "The Honor of Living", op. cit., n. 41, p. 162. 44. Children of Sudan: Slaves, Street Children, and Child Soldiers (New York: Human Rights Watch/Africa, 1995), p. 75. 45. Raymond Bonner, "Aid for Sudan's Hungry Keeps War Well Fed," New York Times, Oct. 11, 1998, p. 20. 46. Ibid. 47. The devastating impact on the Iraqi civilian population of U.S and U.N. sanctions has been extensively documented by United Nations agencies such as UNICEF, the WHO, and the FAO. Iraq is a modern, developing country with a large number of highly trained doctors, scientists, and engineers. Yet according to numerous medical and nutritional reports, the sanctions have caused the death of over one and a half million Iraqis. 48. See, e.g., Dan Morgan and David B. Ottaway, "Vast Kazakh Field Stirs U.S.-Russian Rivalry; Pipelines Are Key to American Exports," Washington Post, October 6, 1998, p. A1. 49. Wall Street Journal, Nov. 1, 1984. 50. Financial Times (London), Aug. 11, 1998, p. 4. 51. Ibid., June 11, 1998, p. 4. 52. Globe and Mail (Toronto), Oct. 9, 1998, p. B25. 53. Voice of Sudan (SPLA) broadcast, Nov. 1, 1998, as reported by the BBC Worldwide Monitoring Service. 54. Op. cit., n. 14, pp. 20-21. Sidebars: Oops, Did We Just Bomb a Candy Factory? Whether the El Shifa Chemical factory is a noble medicine factory or an evil chemical weapons plant, one thing is certain: During the missile attack on the plant, some undisciplined Tomahawk missiles mistakenly hit a famous family-owned Sudanese candy factory next door. According to Newsday, Sudanese businessman Mustafa S. Ismail, who owns the candy factory and now lives in Orange County, California, is suing the U.S. government over the damage to his factory. "This is a sweets [candy] factory, and I am sure the U.S. government knows that," he said. The blast completely wrecked the candy factory, and one of his night-shift guards was killed. Ismail said he hopes the government can produce proof that his neighbors were indeed producing chemical weapons. But even if it does, Ismail said he'll still pursue legal action. -Lee Siu Hin Israel's Chemical Weapons: A Double Standard     Is the U.S. government so concerned about the existence of chemical weapons? If so, why has it contributed to the development and distribution of chemical weapons to Israel, a policy which, according to an article in the London Sunday Times (October 4, 1998), is responsible for an assassination attempt in Palestine and an environmentally hazardous accident in Amsterdam in 1992.     According to the article, Israel's F-16s are now equipped to carry chemical and biological weapons manufactured at a secret biological institute in the Tel Aviv suburb Nes Ziona. Dutch authorities recently confirmed that an El Al plane that crashed in Amsterdam in 1992 was carrying 42 gallons of a chemical used to make sarin nerve gas, the gas that wreaked havoc in Tokyo in 1995. Its destination was this secret plant in Israel.     "The Israeli plant," the article stated, "manufactures not only chemical and biological weapons for use in bombs, but more unusual arms as well. It supplied the poison for a bizarre attempt last year on the life of Khaled Meshal, a leader of the Hamas Islamic fundamentalist group.... Israel has accused Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iran of developing chemical and biological weapons, but has never acknowledged its own programs to develop weapons of mass destruction."     An unnamed biologist, a former high-ranking Israeli intelligence officer, was quoted: "There is hardly a single known or unknown form of chemical or biological weapon...which is not manufactured at the institute."     "The institute," the article notes, "is one of the most secretive in Israel. Founded in 1952 as a single building hidden in an orange grove, it now sprawls over several acres. It is surrounded by a 6-foot-high concrete wall topped with sensors that reveal the exact location of any intruder but is erased from local and aerial survey maps."     According to a London Times report (October 2, 1998), the Israeli government confirmed that the chemical, DMMP, used in the manufacture of sarin gas, was on the plane, along with two other sarin ingredients. There was enough on board, reportedly, to produce 594 pounds of sarin. The DMMP, in fact, came from a Pennsylvania company, Solkatronic Chemicals, Inc.     Of course, Washington does not threaten to bomb Nes Ziona, even though Israel will not allow inspection of its facilities, even though Israel has never ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, and even though Israel's military has the ability to deliver the weapons that could be produced there. The threats and the bombs are reserved for Sudan and Iraq, whose people now lack basic necessities to sustain the lives of the majority of their population. Sudan's Demands     Sudan's government has made the following demands upon the international community regarding the criminal U.S. attack (from "The American Bombardment of El Shifa Pharmaceutical," Documents Compiled by the Ministry of Culture and Information, the Republic of the Sudan, August 1998, pp. 22-23):     "[Sudan] calls upon the international community to condemn the American aggression which represents a flagrant violation of the Sudan's sovereignty and the international laws and customs, especially that the aggression did not depend on legal or scientific bases, but on the contrary the attack has been launched on the basis of deceptive and untrue information....     "Calls upon the United Nations to adopt measures for revealing the facts regarding the heinous American aggression on the Sudan by sending a fact-finding mission to investigate the American allegations as well as the nature of the destroyed factory and its production.     "Demands an official, public apology from the United States for its crime on Sudan.     "Demands a fair and adequate compensation from the United States for the harmed parties, including the factories' owners and individuals."

< Prev		Next >