LONDON (AlertNet) - More than 60 NGOs active in Sudan have signed up so far for the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan (ECOS), and campaign coordinator Egbert Wesselink says he has received expressions of support from at least 20 more who do not want to endanger their work in northern Sudan by publicly backing the campaign.

The long-running civil war is sometimes depicted as a religious struggle between southern Christians and northern Moslems, but Wesselink told AlertNet this was inaccurate and simplistic. "This war is not about persecution of Christians," he said. "It’s an economic war."

Some Christian organisations, especially in the United States, have used the religious angle to mobilise support for their campaigns and the Khartoum government has sometimes used Islam as a legitimising and mobilising factor. Wesselink said he estimated that the ECOS signatories were about 60 percent Christian and 40 percent secular, reflecting the balance of NGOs active in southern Sudan.

The organisations involved are all active in the humanitarian field in southern Sudan and thus have knowledge of the issues involved. Wesselink said he had refused affiliation requests from certain applicants whose campaigns did not fit with ECOS’s view. "We don’t agree with their analysis of the problem," he said.

U.S. groups ranging from right-wing Christian fundamentalists through mainstream churches and human rights groups to African-American and anti-slavery organisations have been campaigning for some time against the National Islamic Front government in Khartoum.

European interest was sparked by a report by Christian Aid published in March which described the clearing of villages along an 80-km road in a concession area operated by Sweden’s Lundin Oil and the use of corporate airstrips and oil roads to transport government troops.

Christian Aid said that, in visits to Western Upper Nile in August and November last year, its researchers found thousands of Nuer civilians displaced from villages along the Lundin road, hundreds of kilometres away in Dinka Bahr el-Ghazal. They all described how Antonov aircraft had bombed the villages to scatter the people, then government troops arrived by truck and helicopter to burn the settlements and kill anyone unable to flee.

UNBIASED INFORMATION DIFFICULT TO OBTAIN

Lundin Oil denied the allegations, saying that, far from being driven away, people had been attracted to the area by the security it offered. The company said it regretted that the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan had not visited the oil areas. A serious problem is the remoteness of the area and the difficulty of obtaining unbiased information. Visitors are taken by the oil companies, the government or aid organisations, all of which have their own agendas.

However, recent reports by U.N., Canadian government and other assessment missions have concluded that oil is aggravating the conflict in Sudan. They cite major displacement of civilian populations to create a cordon sanitaire around the oilfields and the use of oil industry airstrips for military purposes. Campaigners are urging oil companies to suspend their operations until there is a just and lasting peace that can provide the conditions for a fair distribution of oil revenues.

The government has made no secret of its use of oil money to buy arms, and Human Rights Watch says that defence spending in dollar terms increased by 96 percent between 1998 and 2000. Skilled workers and security staff on the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company fields are brought in from the north, and hardly any southerners are employed on the concessions.

Wesselink said one dilemma for ECOS was that Western companies with high standards of transparency and accountability are susceptible to pressure groups and a successful campaign could simply hand Sudan’s oil operations entirely to Malaysian, Chinese and Gulf Arab companies.

Campaigns in North America have concentrated on Canada’s Talisman Energy, which now appears to be planning an exit from Sudan with the acquisition on June 21 from Lundin Oil of substantial interests in Malaysia as well as the North Sea and Papua New Guinea. The other main companies active in Sudan are Austria’s OMV, Malaysia’s Petronas and China National Petroleum Corporation.

The latest technologies for extracting oil are creating new oil provinces in extremely poor countries, where the authorities may not be able to use their new-found wealth wisely.

Similar concerns have been expressed about Sudan’s neighbour Chad, where a World Bank-backed oil pipeline project included a number of safeguards but the government of President Idriss Deby spent part of the signature bonus on arms before an international oversight committee had even been set up.

GOVERNANCE AND TRANSPARENCY ISSUES

Troubled Sierra Leone and Liberia are preparing to offer offshore acreage to foreign oil companies in licensing rounds scheduled for late this year or early next year.

While such countries desperately need an influx of foreign investment, oil wealth brings with it a host of governance and transparency issues that could crop up all along Africa’s west coast as the Gulf of Guinea oil boom heats up.

Even if NGOs such as Pax Christi are successful in scaring off large multinationals with high standards of transparency and accountability, there are a host of small, niche operators waiting to step in.

The mining sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a high risk area involving some unusual partnerships on the ground, but a number of small European or north American firms are active in the vast, war-torn country.

Some companies are more susceptible than others to public pressure. Shell, badly burned by its experience in Nigeria, holds regular consultations with NGOs on the human rights situation in its areas of operation.

Talisman has been jolted into action by a high-profile campaign, though its president Jim Buckee insists that Talisman is helping the people of Sudan by developing the economy. Both Lundin and Talisman have development and humanitarian programmes in their areas of operation.

With new oil finds substantially raising the stakes for both sides in the conflict, the prospects for peace look poor. An East African regional grouping, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has been mediating for many years to little effect.

Libya and Egypt recently weighed in with a nine-point agenda calling for the recognition of racial, religious and cultural diversity of the Sudanese people, democratic pluralism, respect for human rights and a just distribution of wealth and power. The Khartoum government on announced plans on June 29 to establish a national council to evaluate the various peace initiatives and put forward its own.

Wesselink said his campaign was trying to identify the European financial interests involved in Sudanese oil production. The campaign aims to target oil companies and public opinion, but also governments at national and European level.

Official European policy on Sudan is to seek "critical dialogue" with the aim of normalising relations, and the British and French ambassadors in Khartoum are keen to encourage investment.

In the United States, an amendment was passed in the House of Representatives on June 13 that would prevent oil companies operating in Sudan from trading their shares in U.S. markets. The bill needs Senate and presidential approval and is not expected to become law, but Talisman was rattled enough to start implementing its exit strategy and there will be plenty of takers for its Sudan acreage should the Canadian company decide to sell.