Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com has been doing more or less daily posts on Darfur Sudan and the genocide. Today he and the ever comprehensive and insightful Rajan Rishyakaran focus on why the French and the Chinese are blocking
UN sanctions on Sudan–and why, I might ad, they are also blocking
sending a military peacekeeping force: Oil.
Please read Rajan Rishyakaran’s SUDAN GENOCIDE ROUNDUP which focuses on why oil clients of Sudan are shielding the regime.
Here is an except:
International community and genocide
held sanctions on Sudan since October 2002], however (unsuprisingly for
some) France and China, along with fellow Muslim brothers Pakistan and
Algeria, oh, and Brazil, seems very opposed to it.
No blood for oil!
you’re guessing: why is France and China (both veto-yielding permanent
members of the UNSC) opposes sanctions and other actions on Sudan? In a
couple of words: Oil Concessionaires
Gives new meaning to “No Blood for Oil” ehh?
Please read Glenn’s entry at Instapundit.com.
Here is an excerpt:
And in response to an earlier Darfur post mentioning this, reader Ryan Jordan emails:
Looking at the map linked to in the reader email of Sudanese
concessions, I note that there are a few companies from countries we
would expect to support that sort of thing (China, the Sudan of course,
and Qatar) but there are also concessions to companies from Canada,
Austria, and Sweden, besides TotalFinaElf from France. Perhaps a
boycott or some massive negative publicity is called for?
Sounds good to me.
UPDATE: Reader Patrick Hall notes this map from the Chinese — “the graphic pretty much tells the whole story.
“Nothing wrong with drilling for oil, of course — but if the Chinese
join the French in trying to block action against the genocide there,
we’ll have a pretty good idea of why.
