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Gold/Mining/Energy : ARAKIS: HIGH RISK OIL PLAY (AKSEF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Edward M. Zettlemoyer who wrote (7293)	11/13/1997 7:20:00 PM
From: Douglas V. Fant	Respond to of 9164

Ed, No Mahdi broke a promise to Garang as a basisi of their partnership not to extend Sharia Law over the ethnic African populations- i.e. all of the Sudan. When that occurred then fighting flared "anew" at leasat starting again back in the mid-1980's. Is democracy the answer? I do not know. But what is going on here is a major trend in African histroy of which the Sudan is just one part. Basically a group of African Leaders led by Uganda's Yoweri Museveni have decided to pull Africa up "by the seat of the pants" economically and thereafter socially. Basically Museveni and a numbe rof other Leaders have decided to adopt a free emarket model with significant democratic freedoms for people's, and to encourage economic activity. Museveni in Uganda and Afwerki in Eritrea are already having much success in their efforts to move Africa forward. They have about six other Leaders of various African countries in their "club". These Leaders have decided not to lay any more blame on colonialism for Africa's failure to progess economically and just try to fix the problem. The Europoean colonila powers pretty much left Africa in the 1950's and 1960's, but the true African revolution is only now getting started under these leaders. (Indeed the thought in my mind is, and I haven't thought this trhough is that the rise in Islamic fundamentalism in some areas may be linked to traditionalists who feel threatened by changes which give more than traditional personal freedom to persons in whta up to now had been medieval closed market socities...) And one should see the Sudanese Civil War in these terms. Basically (talking in generalities here)the Africans perceive the Arabs to be the last remaining "colonial power" still bedeviling them in Africa. And they perceive Arab culture, religion as efforts by the Arab peoples to project their more truly socialistic type of social systems onto the Africans. By definition this group of African Leaders have "been there, done that" (for e.g., lok at Somalia) and now are moving away from the more socialistic model of Arab cultures to a more free- market oriented model in order to advance their peoples. That is really what is the "cosmic background" of the Sudanese Civil War in 1997. The African Leaders in this particular club have chosen to follow a free-market oriented path to raising their respective peoples. And the SPLA Leadership wants to join this same club. Now the good news is that a number of East African countries the economy is growing rapidly. So there will be lots of uses for the Sudanese oil locally. And I perceive Arakis currently as trying to distance itself (silently, and quietly) from the NIF leadership into a more neutral stance in the Civil War. Both of those items bode well for AKSEF in East Africa..... Now is democracy the right answer? Gosh I do not know, but many African Leades are starting to increase their experimenting with more day-to-day freedoms for their peoples. Let's see where it goes, since democracy generally also requires good econmic conditions in order to take root and to thrive.... Sincerely, Doug F.