Category: Darfur

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A host of factions

As the Darfur peace talks continued, even without the key rebel leaders, the Herald Tribune takes note of the fact that hoping to bring both “sides” of this conflict together is an utter misnomer. The fact is, the rebel groups themselves have fractured and splintered into so many different factions that it’s almost impossible to tell who should be at the negotiating table.

It’s not easy being a Darfurian rebel, especially if you’re a member of the B team. Instead of being praised for coming here in the interests of peace, as the world begged them to do, they have been gaped at, criticized for being ineffective and dogged by questions about where the big guys are, like Abdel Wahid el-Nur, a founding father of Darfur’s rebellion, and Khalil Ibrahim, the commander of one of the strongest rebel armies, both of whom are boycotting the talks.

But the reality that international negotiators are beginning to grudgingly accept is that the rebels here in Sirte, Libya’s government center, represent the facts on the ground. After years of fragmentation and isolation, Darfur’s resistance movements have broken down into a fractious bunch of men, many of whom have never met before, who hail from different corners of the land and who belong to different tribes and command their own little armies.

According to the United Nations best estimate, the rebels have fractured from two main groups into twenty-eight separate causes. This recent Libyan attempt at peace talks only managed to bring seven of those leaders to the table.

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Peace talks for Darfur falter

Darfur peace talks that were planned for this weekend have been effectively shutdown as the main rebel leaders boycotted the meeting. The current talks are part of a pre-negotiation phase that would lead to more in-depth discussions in the next couple of weeks.

It was hoped that negotiations between rebel leaders and government forces would break the deadlock in the four and a half year conflict in Darfur.

But many of Darfur’s rebel leaders stayed away from the talks. Some distrusted the role of Libya, which is seen as being too close to the Sudanese government. This view was reinforced earlier this month when Col Gadafy dismissed the conflict in Darfur as a “quarrel about a camel”.

Opening the talks on Saturday, Col Gadafy noted that both key rival leaders, Abdul Wahid al-Nur and Khalil Ibrahim, were absent. “These are major movements, and without them we cannot achieve peace,” he said.

Even as the talks began, Reuters reported that Sudanese forces were attacking areas along the Chad border.

Rebels from two factions, which did not attend the talks, said on Monday the government had attacked the Jabel Moun area along the Chad-Sudan border on Saturday, the very day the government announced a ceasefire.

“At the same time they were announcing that there is a ceasefire there was aerial bombardment in Jabel Moun,” said Justice and Equality Movement commander Abdel Aziz el-Nur Ashr.

Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) commander Jar el-Neby confirmed there had been an attack but offered no details.

A Sudanese army spokesman, however, denied the reports.

This is the same pattern that has played out any number of times over the last seven years. The majority of rebel groups continue to distrust the government’s intentions for peace, while Khartoum continues to treat negotiations as a form of bait to attack rebel positions and the civilian population.

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Darfur “quarrel over a camel”

During a televised discussion with students at Cambridge University, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said that the violence in Darfur was nothing more than a “quarrel over a camel.”

“You might laugh if I say that the main reason of this issue is a camel,” he said.

“Africa has thousands of issues – they are about water, about grass – and Africa is divided into 50 countries, and the tribes are divided amongst so many countries, although they belong to each other.

“The problem we are having now is that we politicise such problems between tribes.”

He said that in Darfur the issue had been politicised because “there are super powers who are interested in oil and other things”.

He also said that the crisis had been prolonged by international aid agencies because the local population increasingly depended on the support it received and, therefore, wanted the conflict to continue.

Ironically, there are a number of valid points in Gaddafi’s argument, despite the fact that he over-simplifies the entire conflict, and adds his own political spin to the issue. Nonetheless, he is correct in that these sorts of disputes used to be handled by local, tribal leaders before they were ever given a chance to escalate out of control.

Unfortunately, when the government of Sudan began arming forces to propagate the conflict, the violence turned from a local issue into a regional (and thus humanitarian) concern.

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Carter refuses to stop

Former President Jimmy Carter was stopped by Sudanese security forces while he was attempting to talk with refugees in the town of Kabkabiya in Darfur. He originally flew in to visit Africans in the World Food Program compound, as the UN deemed the actual refugee camps too dangerous.

But none of the refugees showed up and Carter decided to walk into the town — a volatile stronghold of the pro-government janjaweed militia — to meet refugees too frightened to attend the meeting at the compound.

He was able to make it to a school where he met with one tribal representative and was preparing to go further into town when Sudanese security officers stopped him.

“You can’t go,” the local chief of the feared Sudanese secret police, who only gave his first name as Omar, ordered Carter. “It’s not on the program!”

“We’re going to anyway!” an angry Carter retorted as a small crowd began to gather around. “You don’t have the power to stop me.”

However, U.N. officials told Carter’s entourage the powerful Sudanese state police could bar his way.

“We’ve got to move, or someone is going to get shot,” warned one of the U.N. staff accompanying the delegation.

During the visit, Richard Branson, who was traveling with Carter, was slipped a note that read: “We (are) still suffering from the war as our girls are being raped on a daily basis.”

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Rebels attack African Union forces

Even as the United Nations attempts to cobble together enough material support to send troops into the embattled Darfur region of Sudan, a group of rebels attacked an African Union (AU) peacekeeping base this past weekend. According to a report from The New York Times, ten soldiers were killed, at least a dozen were kidnapped, and various types of equipment, including heavy weaponry, were stolen.

The raid, which began late Saturday and appeared to be highly organized, was the deadliest and boldest attack on African Union peacekeepers since they arrived in Darfur three years ago.

As the conflict continues in Darfur, these periods of violence are becoming regular parts of the landscape. It is still unclear as to which rebel group is responsible for the raid, but the United Nations is adamant that it will not stop the peace process.

Update: Time is reporting that the AU claims the attacks were committed by a rebel splinter group that calls itself the Sudanese Liberation Army-Unity (SLA-U).