Qatar laying its hands on Sudan’s mineral wealth

Mohamed Abdelghaffar

Qatar works to help some political forces reach power in some Arab states or even use some of the forces already in power in these states to serve its own interests.

Ousted Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir was a case in point. Bashir allowed Qatar to control almost everything in his country. This gave Doha the chance to have unfettered access to all of Sudan’s wealth, including minerals.

Minerals

Sudan is a resource-rich country, especially when it comes to minerals. This boils down to the topographic richness of the African country. It contains hills, volcanic mountains and deserts.

Each of Sudan’s regions contains a specific mineral. In the northern part of the country, near the Red Sea coast, there is copper, iron, silver, gold, and salt. In the north-central part of Sudan, there is aluminum, marble and manganese.

The Bashir regime did not exploit this wealth, despite its presence in abundance in all areas of Sudan. Instead, he gave Qatar advantages to use it.

Qatari nets

Doha established the company, Q.M.S.D, or the Qatari-Sudanese Minerals Company which started operating in April 2014. The company explored minerals, on top of which gold, in different areas in Sudan.

In the following year, the Sudanese government gave the company a concession to explore gold in an area of 6,000 kilometers in the Red Sea state.

A company official said in March 2018 that the company had discovered 246 million tons of mineral rocks. The rocks, he said, contained a million ton of crude copper.

The same company played a big role in the geological survey declared by the government of Sudan in December 2017.

Then-Minerals Minister Hashem Ali Salem said then that 40 types of different minerals were found in all Sudan’s states.