Add Sudanese to Ottawa’s list of expendable people

Twenty-eight years ago today the US bombed a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant causing tens of thousands of deaths. Canada’s backing for that war crime and ongoing support for UAE highlights Ottawa’s indifference to Sudanese lives.

Canadian officials defended the illegal August 20, 1998, US bombing of the Al- Shifa pharmaceutical facility in Khartoum. Washington claimed the plant produced the deadly nerve agent VX. It didn’t.

In a rare move, CIA analyst Mary O’Neil McCarthy sent a letter to President Bill Clinton expressing doubts about the factory’s ties to chemical weapons production or Al Qaeda. “Eventually,” reported the New York Times, “Clinton administration officials conceded that the hardest evidence used to justify striking the plant was a single soil sample that seemed to indicate the presence of a chemical used in making VX gas.”

One employee was killed and 11 were wounded when US cruise missiles blasted through the factory. The Al-Shifa plant produced half of Sudan’s medicines and most of the country’s supplies of chloroquine, the standard treatment for malaria. The resulting lack of medicines is believed to have led to tens of thousands of preventable deaths

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy immediately defended the US bombing, an act later condemned by the Non–Aligned Movement, Arab League and Organization of African Unity. Echoing US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s statement that “we have a legal right to self-defense,” Axworthy said: “When you come into this very murky and very dangerous area of dealing with terrorism, nations have a right to defend themselves.”

Arguing he was “not privy to the private information they have”, Chrétien insisted “the Americans had to do something. They decided to use cruise missiles to attack the people who are responsible for the terrorism.” The US strike in Sudan was purportedly a response to Al Qaeda’s bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam two weeks earlier.

Ottawa obstructed Sudan’s effort to have the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) condemn the US violation of its airspace during the bombing. Canadian officials refused to grant a Sudanese delegation visas to attend an ICAO General Assembly. As a result, their chargé d’affaires in Canada presented Sudan’s case at the Montréal-based ICAO.

In another example of indifference to Sudanese lives, Ottawa recently signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the United Arab Emirates. The Carney government boasted about concluding the CEPA in just 47 days.

But that economic accord adds to Canada’s complicity with the terrible violence in Sudan. The UAE has armed and backed the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since they fought Ansar Allah (Houthis) in Yemen. In “The mercenaries fighting in Africa’s forgotten war”, The Financial Times recently detailed a UAE-based security firm’s recruitment and deployment of Colombian mercenaries to fight alongside the paramilitary RSF. Amidst its civil war against the Sudanese army, the UN has accused the RSF of committing genocide and the UN recently reported that 200,000 people have been newly displaced across Sudan’s Kordofan region due to intensified fighting.

The CEPA with UAE followed a November trip to Abu Dhabi by the prime minister. Mark Carney also met with President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan at the G7 Summit in June.

In recent years Canada has exported hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons to the UAE. Additionally, Canadian diplomats and the military have promoted firms selling their wares at the Abu Dhabi based International Defence Exhibition and Conference (IDEX), the largest arms fair in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Canadian-owned Streit Group has provided armoured vehicles to the RSF. Long based in southern Ontario, the Streit Group’s operations in the UAE have recently supplied the RSF. In the past Canadian officials have directly assisted the Streit Group though ten days ago Ottawa sanctioned the company. The rationale for sanctioning Streit Group was entirely focused on Russia. They ignored the company’s armoured vehicles well-documented use in Sudan.

Ottawa simply doesn’t care about Sudanese lives.

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