The janjaweed militia charged into Hayffa Ahmed’s village in Sudan’s Darfur region on horseback, rifles raised, swords glinting.
First they killed Ahmed’s grandfather, the village chief.
Janjaweed warriors, allies of the Sudanese government, “continued to kill everyone,” Ahmed, 30, said softly in Arabic.
“They used guns, clubs, swords — anything to be able to kill or hurt human beings. For some people, they tied them behind their horses and pulled them until they died in the road.”
In Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have perished in what the United States calls a genocide, the killing has been supported by profits from companies helping the government of Sudan tap its reservoirs of oil.
The companies include China’s Sinopec Corp., Malaysia’s Petronas and Schlumberger, based in the Netherlands Antilles — all of whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gates and Buffett
The Gates Foundation’s most significant connection to the Sudanese oil industry is through Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Bill Gates is a Berkshire director, and Berkshire’s chairman, Warren Buffett, is a trustee of the Gates Foundation.
Berkshire holds a $3.3 billion stake in PetroChina Co., a subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, the biggest player in Sudanese oil.
Buffett has pledged $31 billion worth of Berkshire stock to the Gates Foundation in annual installments, beginning last year with $1.6 billion.
In 2009 and afterward, the foundation expects Berkshire’s wealth to fund about half its charitable awards, which have included more than $34 million for emergency refugee and health services in Sudan plus a share of $167 million more in regional health grants.
But some of Berkshire’s wealth comes from PetroChina, whose parent company supplies the money that underwrites Sudan’s military and the janjaweed, according to the United States and the United Nations.
The infusion of Berkshire stock places the Gates Foundation in conflict with its own efforts to help victims of the Sudanese civil war.
Those victims include refugees of the massacre at Hayffa Ahmed’s village.
Sudan denies that it supports the janjaweed and accuses Darfur rebels of instigating the violence.
China ups pressure
But Sudan acknowledges that some militia commanders and government officials might have committed human-rights abuses and vows to prosecute such cases.
Amid concerns over a possible boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China recently has begun to pressure the Sudanese government to resolve the crisis.
In April 2004, the janjaweed, who had gang-raped girls in neighboring villages, torched houses on the north side of Ahmed’s hamlet, near Tawila, looting as they moved south.
“We had a chance in that time to run,” Ahmed said.
She, her husband, Abdel Hamid Mohamed, and their three children fled with only the clothes they were wearing.
They found temporary sanctuary in El Fasher, in northern Darfur, at a refugee camp filled with desperate people.
That same month, the Gates Foundation began an infusion of funds to CARE, Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee and other groups in the El Fasher camp.
The family moved to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and then bribed their way to Cairo, where the five family members obtained official refugee status. Last year, they arrived in Omaha, home to about 9,000 Sudanese refugees, more than anywhere else in America.
The hub of Sudanese life here is modest. A small restaurant, a mom-and-pop grocery, a few storefronts and the Sudanese Center, a social club, are packed into a depressed area of downtown. Nine blocks away stands Berkshire Hathaway’s headquarters.
Gabriel Ngong, a refugee and tax accountant, recently voiced a Sudanese axiom: “The Chinese take oil out for the government, then the government kills the people.”
Trust misplaced?
When he was told about Berkshire’s investment in PetroChina, Ngong was surprised and sad: “Our people always trust Americans.”
In response to questions about the Gates Foundation’s investments in key economic supporters of the Sudanese government, Monica Harrington, a senior policy officer at the foundation, said: “Bill and Melinda have initiated a process to assess the asset trust investments in Sudan.”
These investments, totaling $29 million, included $1.5 million in Petronas, $9.8 million in Sinopec and $2.4 million in Schlumberger, all in 2005, the most recent totals available.
Harrington did not address the conflict with the foundation’s mission caused by Berkshire’s holdings in PetroChina. She did say, however, that Buffett served as a trustee for the foundation’s grant programs and had no involvement in the foundation’s investment decisions, “including decisions that might be made about the disposition of Berkshire Hathaway stock.”
One week ago, an assistant to Buffett said that the Berkshire Hathaway chairman did not have time to respond to written questions.
But in a rare open letter to his shareholders in February, Buffett said that Berkshire would retain its financial holdings in PetroChina. It was PetroChina’s parent company, CNPC, he said, that had oil operations in Sudan.
The subsidiary, he said, bore no responsibility for the actions of its parent.
Nonetheless, Buffett has allowed a shareholder resolution challenging the PetroChina holdings to be placed on the agenda for Berkshire’s annual meeting Saturday in Omaha.
Critics have said Buffett was ignoring his ability, as PetroChina’s largest outside shareholder, to pressure CNPC and China into ending the support it provides the genocide by its oil dealings with Sudan and by providing arms to the Sudanese government and blocking UN efforts to stop the killing in Darfur.
By investing in PetroChina, Buffett signaled that the status quo in Sudan was acceptable, said Timothy Smith, president of the Social Investment Forum, an association of more than 600 financial institutions, research companies and foundations.
“There is no morally neutral ground,” Smith said. “If Mr. Buffett doesn’t want to divest his shares from PetroChina, he should use his considerable prestige and leverage as an investor to demand that the genocide be stopped.”
According to the Harvard Corp., which manages Harvard University’s endowment funds, oil production has become “essential to the government’s capacity to fund military operations,” a view shared by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Harvard divests
For this reason, Harvard has divested from companies with ties to Sudan.
Indeed, 95 U.S. universities, colleges and high schools, along with 31 states and 14 cities, are considering or have enacted similar divestment policies, according to the Sudan Divestment Task Force, an advocacy group.
To Emmanuel Lugang, another Sudan refugee in Omaha, the situation is clear: “Sudan is getting money from the Chinese oil companies in order to buy guns and tanks,” first to terrorize the south and now Darfur.
Oil money, Lugang said, is “prolonging the war.”
