Iranian Mission to Africa is
Bad News for the British
by Hussein al-Nadeem
Executive Intelligence Review, Sept. 20, 1996
Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's tour of Africa this month is turning the tables on British geopolitics in the region. Following on Turkish Prime Minister Ecmettin Erbakan's visit to Iran in August, during which he called for starting ``a new era of regional relations'' based on economic cooperation, Rafsanjani's diplomacy could go a long way toward ending the myriad British-instigated insurgencies and wars that have kept east Africa in turmoil. Rafsanjani and the moderate faction inside Iran realize that the only way Iran can survive as a modern nation-state, is to build economic relations based on major infrastructure projects and trade with the nations of the world, especially the Third World.
Most significant, from a strategic standpoint, was Iran's role in mediating a peace settlement, signed on Sept. 9, between Sudan and Uganda. Rafsanjani was accompanied by a huge entourage of officials from three ministries and 300 businessmen. His itinerary included Sudan, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.
He started his tour in Kenya on Sept. 3. During the visit, Iranian and Kenyan officials signed a number of economic development agreements related to Iran's participation in infrastructural projects in Kenya, such as dam building, power plant development, building of new oil refineries, and rehabilitation of an old oil refinery in Mombasa, building petrochemical industries, and repairing roads. Iran will build a storage station for liquified petroleum gas in the port of Mombasa. According to the agreements, Kenya is also to buy such Iranian products as tractors, agricultural machinery, telecommunication products, and minerals. Rafasanjani said in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi that ``Iran is ready to establish transport and cultural links between the African nations and the newly independent republics of Central Asia.''
During one of the last stops on his trip, in Zimbabwe, the Iranian President called for a new world order based on justice, equality, national interests, independence, and safeguarding territorial integrity, the official Iranian daily {Ettela} reported on Sept. 12. Rafsanjani was speaking at a dinner hosted in his honor by Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe. He said that Iran stands ready to assist countries of the South in development and reconstruction projects.
Rafsanjani arrived in the Ugandan capital of Kampala on Sept. 5, and disclosed that he was willing to mediate in the conflict between Sudan and Uganda. Uganda, as {EIR} has documented, has been controlled by the British Overseas Development Office of Lady Lynda Chalker and the World Bank, and has been used as a base to launch a dirty British operation aiming at overthrowing the government of Sudan and dividing that country, through support for the south Sudanese separatist rebels, such as the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA). A Uganda-based United Nations ``humanitarian'' operation was put at the disposal of the SPLA, to continue the war which has devastated the southern region of Sudan.
All previous initiatives to settle the Sudan-Uganda dispute have failed, because the economic side of the issue was not addressed. The simple fact is, without economic development, there can be no peace, especially in Africa. The Iranians, fortunately, did not miss this point. During Rafsanjani's Uganda visit, Iranian and Ugandan officials signed seven major economic accords in the areas of oil, industry, building dams and infrastructure projects, agriculture, and trade. The Iranian President, who visited the Nile River, told reporters that ``building a number of dams on the Nile can provide 10,000 megawatts of electricity for the region. This is a great wealth, and is more precious than hundreds of oil wells. In Iran, we have been building six major dams on the Karun River, and we have the expertise to assist the African nations in this field.''
At a press conference held by Rafsanjani and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the Iranian President said: ``If the African nations, since their independence, had exploited their wealth to build Africa, they would have become much stronger today. Stronger than China. The Chinese are not richer than the Africans. The difference is that the U.S. and Europe are not able to impose their will upon the Chinese people.''
On Sept. 8, the Iranian delegation landed in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. To the surprise of reporters and foreign officials, Ugandan Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Eriya Kateagaya met the Iranian President's airplane at Khartoum Airport. Before leaving Kampala for Khartoum, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Velayati announced that both Uganda and Sudan had accepted an Iranian plan for mediation to settle their differences. The foreign ministers of Sudan, Iran, and Uganda met in Khartoum the same day, and on Sept. 9, a 12-point peace agreement was signed (see {Documentation})). Velayati revealed that secret talks among the three governments had already started three weeks before the date of the agreement.
The first thing the agreement will achieve is the elimination of the separatist groups and their backers from the UN and the non-governmental organizations operating in that region. It will allow stability and peace to prevail in southern Sudan, in order to bring development to that ravaged area. Iranian companies are already involved in projects for oil exploration in the south, and building power plants and building roads in various part of the country.
In the days preceding and during Rafsanjani's tour of east Africa, the British-based and -controlled Sudanese opposition started a new assault against the government. Mohammed Osman al-Mirghani and Mansour Khalid, leaders of the Sudanese National Democratic Alliance, which was created by Baroness Caroline Cox at a June 1995 conference in the Eritrean capital of Asmara, and is financed by Cox's Christian Solidarity International, held a number of meetings in London on Sept. 5-6, with British Labour and Conservative Members of Parliament, to discuss ``ways of overthrowing the Khartoum regime,'' according to a press release by the SNDA. After the meetings, the SNDA issued a communique saying that its forces inside Sudan ``will escalate the fighting against the regime in the coming few days.'' Similar meetings were held in Washington, with U.S. State Department officials, and with UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, on Sept. 7-8. Boutros-Ghali promised to increase UN aid for southern Sudan. These meetings coincided with a new round of destabilization of Sudan. Riots broke out in Khartoum that week, after agents of the opposition parties infiltrated peaceful demonstrations protesting a strike by bakers, which had resulted in a bread crisis. Three people were killed in the riots.
Then on Sept. 6, a gunman who was allegedly trying to assassinate al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, the leader of the Mahdia sect and Umma Party in Sudan, was overwhelmed at the Omdurman Mosque, and was beaten by followers of the Mahdi. London-based opposition groups immediately charged that ``Hassan al-Turabi's National Islamic Front'' had plotted the assassination. Al-Turabi is the chairman of the elected Sudanese Parliament. By blaming the National Islamic Front for the assassination attempt, the London-based groups aimed at intensifying the civil war in Sudan.
One week before that incident, the Sudanese government revealed that it had uncovered a military insurgency led by 15 army officers with connections to the Asmara-based SNDA. The insurgency was attempting to take over or destroy Port Sudan, the most strategic Sudanese area. Meanwhile, the Eritrea-based armed wing of the SNDA continued its attacks on Sudanese army and police posts in eastern Sudan, close to the Eritrean border. So far, the Iranian initiative has succeeded in thwarting these attempts to destabilize Sudan, but the enemies of the nation of Sudan are reorganizing their ranks. Most of the forces of the SPLA have moved to east Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.
For the moment, the British plans aiming at destroying Sudan through an alliance among Eritrea, Ethiopea, and Uganda, and also through wrecking Kenyan-Sudanese and Egyptian-Sudanese relations, have been stalled. This gives the nations of east Africa the chance to rebuild their economies and resist the international oligarchy, which has for so long attempted to get its hands on the wealth and labor power of the African nations.