George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 128

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“The UN is recommending a vote on independence for the South and West? What kind of nonsense is this! We can never accept it!”

No country wants its own separation, but Sudan’s case had a very specific reason why it should never be divided into North and South. First, there was South Sudan’s population of 8 million and its vast territory, but more importantly, southern Sudan was a treasure trove of natural resources.

Natural gas and oil were just the beginning. There was a wide variety of resources used in industry, including precious metals like gold and silver, gems like diamonds, and resources like iron, lead, copper, chromium, manganese, zinc, cobalt, and tungsten.

Who would want to lose such a treasure trove? The issue of independence had been brewing for quite some time. Sudan had traditionally been ruled by Arabs and Muslims since before it became a joint colony of Britain and Egypt. Of course, if you go back to the Roman era, the ruling class would have been Catholic, but let’s leave that aside. In any case, modern Sudan had certainly been ruled by Arabs. Moreover, the Arab government had been exploiting the South long before the colonial era because the South had traditionally been rich in natural resources.

The colonies of the 19th century were never peaceful, so revolts, both large and small, broke out one after another in Sudan. When the Governor-General of Sudan was assassinated in 1924, Britain came up with a scheme. In fact, it was one of the things Britain did best. This policy, called the Southern Sudan Policy, was designed to exacerbate regional conflicts between the North and South, a policy that was common in British colonies – divide and conquer.

Anyway, the important thing is that Britain effectively divided Sudan in half. In short, if you want to find the root cause of the massacres and conflicts in Sudan today, more than half of the responsibility lies with Britain.

In any case, the North became a joint rule with Egypt, and the South was treated harshly like other African colonies. The hatred grew as the non-Arab Christians and Arab Muslims were already divided, and Sudan slowly began to fracture.

That division led to the ‘First Sudanese Civil War,’ which caused blood to flow continuously in Sudan even after its independence. The North suppressed the South by force, but has suppression by force ever led to a good outcome? This led to the ‘Second Sudanese Civil War,’ which continued until 2002.

“But the opponent is the United States. What should we do?”

It was the United States that was pushing for South Sudan’s independence. Sudan had clashed with the United States once before, during President Clinton’s administration, when the United States openly bombed Sudanese territory. To understand why the United States bombed Sudan, you have to go back a little further than Clinton. In 1985, the Palestine Liberation Organization hijacked an Italian passenger ship and carried out terrorist attacks in Rome and Vienna. The United States blamed Libya and launched Operation El Dorado Canyon in 1986, an operation to bomb Libya.

The problem was that Sudan was very wary of this foreign intervention, and anti-American sentiment was rampant. Eventually, in 1998, Sudan was attacked by U.S. cruise missiles. The accusation was that weapons of mass destruction were being manufactured at a chemical plant in southern Sudan, but the problem was that this chemical plant was a pharmaceutical company, so it could not manufacture antibiotics and vaccines, and many children died without being vaccinated.

Even a mad dog learns its lesson when it is beaten, and Sudan was hit by cruise missiles. After being struck by a magic wand that creates fear even when you have lost it, they suddenly came to their senses. Any country with its sanity would try to avoid antagonizing the United States as much as possible, but would those who have been hit directly feel the same as those who have only seen it happen to others?

Anyway, the United States seemed to have a guilty conscience, so it decided to provide Sudan with high-quality medicines permanently. Moreover, it wasn’t just beating them up all the time; it also supplied about 100,000 tons of food when Sudan was hit by a drought.

The Bush administration had been interested in Sudan even before Bush’s orders because it was speculated that large amounts of oil were buried in Darfur and Kordofan, regions of Sudan at the time.

Anyway, the important thing is that Sudan, which had been thoroughly beaten with cruise missiles, was determined not to antagonize the United States. It was because they didn’t want to be beaten again. But now the United States was strangling Sudan.

“What should we do?”

What was certain was that if the United States was really determined, Sudan would be divided in half and become independent. If a referendum on independence for the South were held, there would be no way that a no vote would prevail unless it was rigged.

“How about trying to get something out of the United States? Guaranteeing aid equal to what the North loses if the South becomes independent.”

“There’s no way the United States would listen to that!”

But that didn’t mean they could confront the United States. The consequences of rejecting this proposal were very simple. First, they would be subjected to trade restrictions by creating all sorts of pretexts. Once trade restrictions began, they would be subjected to all sorts of restrictions at the UN level, and then they might even face military invasion.

Of course, this was the best-case scenario. Another scenario was to become like North Korea, isolated and sanctioned. There was also a scenario in which the existing government would be turned into a puppet of the United States and become a puppet state subject to all sorts of interference in internal affairs. The worst of these was to go to war with the United States, in which Sudan would become a testing ground for all sorts of new weapons and eventually return to the Stone Age.

Thus, the Sudanese central government was completely terrified by its own imagination.

“Long live Southern independence! Get out of here, you Islamic kebab bastards!”

In stark contrast, southern Sudan was filled with hope. In particular, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army [SPLA], which was leading the war of independence, praised the UN’s decision, saying it wanted peace. The majority of the South felt that they were being inhumanely oppressed by the central government’s Sharia [Islamic law] constitution.

Moreover, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army was almost cornered, so the UN’s intervention was very welcome news. Initially, in 1983, they had been supported by the Soviet Union and Ethiopia, but the Soviet Union had collapsed, and Ethiopia was no longer able to provide support, so they had to fight on their own. Of course, it is almost impossible for a resistance without support to defeat a systematized central government.

In the midst of all this, the UN, which could be said to be the world itself, was backing them up, so what news could be more welcome than independence? The South was already in a festive mood, and demonstrations were being held demanding a referendum on independence.

“I think this is too extreme. I explained to the Federal Assembly that we would secure the South’s oil and other natural resources and establish a pro-American regime, but I think it would have been better to mediate between the central government and the South. This coercive approach could cause problems in the future.”

What the Chief of Staff said was the path that the United States had chosen. Certainly, if you only looked at the national interests of the United States, the Chief of Staff’s words were not wrong. However, simple mediation could not have an immediate effect, so Bush had no choice but to use a somewhat radical method of recommendation through the UN.

“Instead, we’ll have two pro-American regimes.”

“Will they be able to exert their power properly? I’m worried that they might turn into a second Afghanistan.”

A second Afghanistan meant a ‘monster that eats up the budget.’ Afghanistan alone is manageable enough, but if West Sudan and South Sudan are added, even the United States will start to feel the strain.

“West and South Sudan are fine. More than anything, unlike Afghanistan, they have abundant natural resources.”

“By the way, weren’t we just dividing it into North and South?”

The Chief of Staff glanced at the map of the African continent. There, the line he had drawn with a marker was clearly visible.

“Well. Why do you think?”

Of course, Bush was trying to separate the West in order to prevent the Darfur massacre that would occur in 2003. The Darfur massacre was a kind of cultural and ethnic cleansing, and the central government thought of it as Arabization.

In any case, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell described it as a massacre, and in 2019 it is recorded as ethnic cleansing comparable to the Nazi Holocaust. Babies who could barely babble were brutally murdered, women were subjected to sexual torture regardless of age, buildings were burned down, and wells were poisoned.

All sorts of human rights abuses were carried out in this Darfur massacre, and even though Bush knew about it and had the power to stop it, he wouldn’t stop it simply because it would cost money. If he didn’t stop it simply because it would complicate diplomatic relations in the future, he wouldn’t be human.

But wouldn’t it be impossible to say this to the Chief of Staff?

“It’s probably because the President likes things to be cool.”

Bush smiled at those words. It wasn’t entirely wrong.

“Let’s just say that’s the case.”

“Now that things have turned out this way, I’ll have to draw another line.”

The Chief of Staff said that and drew another line in the Darfur region. With this line drawn, there was nothing else to divide the world into three.

Seeing this, White cleverly realized that Bush was upset and came to his feet and acted cute with his big body. Of course, even if he was big, he was a cat, so he just felt cute.

Seeing how well he understands people’s feelings, he must be a spirit.

“But why do you keep catching things?”

No matter how good White is, it would be very hard to catch something big, but he still catches something every night. Why are they all so strange? Perhaps he learned that Bush didn’t eat the prey he caught and stuffed it, so he must have thought that he should bring something that humans eat this time, so he came back with a piece of pizza in his mouth from somewhere. Of course, the pizza was dusty and full of mold.

“Chief of Staff.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Tell the CIA that I can’t wait any longer and to give me an interim report today.”

Today was the fifth day of waiting for the CIA’s Russia report. That meant that two more bird taxidermies had been added to the Oval Office.

“Also tell them that it’s ridiculous to ask me to wait even for the interim report.”

“Yes, sir.”

Of course, Bush’s orders gradually changed, and by the time the orders reached Moscow, they had been distorted to mean that the CIA was worse than White.