Beyond Valdez, Part 3: "Love thy Neighbor"... not fuel their war

A continuation of older posts in a series "Beyond Valdez" - Part 1 and Part 2.

The unknown landlocked African nation of Chad has overcome a series of attacks on its capital apparently a result of a "spillage" of the conflict raging on in Darfur region, part of Chad's neighboring nation Sudan.

Chad's economy relies on oil as its main resource in fueling its economy. As a result, rebels sought to control the oil fields in an effort to control and destabilize the current regime of Chad. In a CNN report:

An Exxon Mobil-led consortium exported 133 million barrels of oil from Chad between October 2003 and December 2005, according to the World Bank, earning Chad $307 million.

Exxon-Mobil once again arises amongst the ashes of a violent background. The Exxon-Mobil Consortium involves exploiting Chad's oil reserves and creating a pipeline to channel oil through Chad into Cameroon where eventually Chadian crude can be shipped overseas from the Gulf of Guinea. Despite the high hopes of the project, Chad still falls victim to corruption as a result of its oil wealth and enhances the status of Chad as the world's fifth poorest nation. How is it that with such oil wealth, why do nations still suffer?

A recent article by the Christian Science Monitor analyzes the conflicts raging on in Chad with the government and rebels standing-off on oil fields. Further on, Chad has increasingly been involved in supporting rebels of Darfur (although the government maintains they are neutral) and in exchange, Sudan fuels rebels of Chad. This could be because Idriss Deby, the current leader of Chad, is of the same ethnicity of the Darfur region. Meanwhile...

Chad now pumps about 160,000 barrels a day through a 650-mile pipeline to Cameroon's coast. The pipeline was partly funded by the World Bank as part of a deal that aimed to create a model for ensuring that oil revenues help Africa's poorest. In December 2005, when Deby altered the agreed-upon poverty reduction laws that had been central to the deal's negotiations,the World Bank froze $124 million in loans already earmarked for Chad.

And nation's do not have friends, they have "interests". This is proven when Deby threatened to cut oil exports as the price of oil peaked at $71/barrel...

The US State Department quickly announced this week that it was sending a senior official to act as an "honest broker" to try to resolve the oil and rebel issues.

And the reasons for the "quick" action:

In all, Africa's oil exports are growing rapidly - and could provide 25 percent of US oil imports by 2015.

Ironic, that the United States acts when their interests are threatened, despite the years of war and suffering endured by people of Chad and not to mention the much publicized atrocities that have occurred in the Darfur region. We still somewhat indirectly fuel the atrocities that happen despite our sympathy and calls to end the events that happen in Darfur. Even as the pipeline project went on, according to Amnesty International USA, the project was far from democractic:

In March of 1998, Chadian security forces reportedly killed more than 200 unarmed civilians in the villages of Dobara and Lara in the Doba oil region. The massacre was never investigated. The community consultation process for the oil project took place in Chad largely in the presence of the security forces responsible for these human rights violations, hence exacerbating the climate of fear and intimidation in the oil region

The project went on naturally, with the people struck with fear from ever even consider saying "no" the proposed pipeline. So as oil is shipped through the pipeline, with the government reaping the benefits of the money generated... where does that money go? The BBC reveals that Deby actually publicly stated that Chad requires the money generated by the oil fields to pay for arms:

"Why shouldn't Chad be allowed? We are going to buy weapons. We're going to do it openly. In the next two days these arms will arrive," Mr Deby told the French daily Le Figaro newspaper.

Again, a corrupt government of the fifth poorest nation in the world fails to channel the money where it needs to go: the people. Spending more money on arms could lead to a possible escalation in the conflicts in the Darfur region with the Chadian government supporting rebels in Sudan. The United States is slow to act to analyze where and how we get oil - we may as a nation call down violent acts in the Darfur region, but we hardly notice we somewhat fuel the tension. Certainly with Exxon-Mobil's track record, we would definitely not want them there as diplomats in securing more oil for our thirsty populace. Although Exxon-Mobil posted $9 billion in profits... the costs as a results of these profits are just way too high...