Darfur: Splintered Rebels Search for Common Ground

From Reuters

Representatives of seven Darfur rebel groups net in south Sudan on Monday to try to reach a common negotiating position ahead of peace talks with the government.

But huge doubts remain about whether Darfur's rapidly fracturing rebel groups will be able to agree on a joint set of grievances and negotiating points before they travel to Libya for the negotiations with Khartoum on Oct. 27.

Even as the meeting got under way, rebels leaders said some fighters were shifting allegiances.

Organisers of the meeting in Juba, capital of south Sudan, said rebels would have up to five days to find common ground.

Some delegates in Juba told Reuters they were optimistic.

"We will not leave Juba unless we are reunited," said Tadjadine Bechir Niam, from a breakaway faction of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement. "We are ready to give any concessions."

A spokesman for the meeting's organisers, the South Sudan Darfur Taskforce, said they were hopeful the founder of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur, would attend.

El-Nur has so far refused to take part in any peace negotiations, demanding a string of concessions from Khartoum.

Mainly non-Arab rebels took up arms in 2003 in Darfur accusing the government of neglecting the remote western region. Khartoum mobilised mainly Arab militias to quell the revolt.

The sheer number of rebel groups vying for a place at the negotiating table has proved a headache for the United Nations and the African Union, the organisers of the Libyan talks.

The leader of the main branch of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement, Khalil Ibrahim, last week threatened to pull out of the peace process unless only two factions -- his own and a unified Sudan Liberation Army -- were allowed to take part.

The situation was further complicated by reports that a number of fighting units had agreed to leave their leaders and join the "Unity" faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA-Unity).

Suleiman Jamous, a leading figure in SLA-Unity, told Reuters: "We are trying to get the Sudan Liberation Army back under one banner if possible. We are contacting field commanders across the region."

He said fighting units previously loyal to other SLA faction leaders including el-Nur and Ahmed Abdel Shafie had joined the new unified group.

Jamous also claimed a number of defections from the SLA faction run by Minni Arcua Minnawi -- the only rebel leader to sign up to a failed peace agreement with Sudan in 2006.

Another leading member of SLA-Unity cast doubt on whether Sudan's government had the authority to go to Libya, following the withdrawal of its main coalition partner.

The southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement pulled its ministers from the government on Thursday in a dispute over the 2005 peace agreement on the separate north-south civil war.

From AFP

Darfur rebel factions that have not signed a peace deal with Khartoum were meeting in the southern city of Juba on Monday to try to unify their positions ahead of peace talks in Libya later this month.

Salva Kiir, first vice-president and head of the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement that formed a government with Khartoum, opened the meeting with a call for "unity of the factions and of the people of Darfur."

The talks come with the southern semi-autonomous government gripped by its own crisis after it withdrew from the national unity government on Thursday, accusing Khartoum of failing to respect a 2005 peace deal for the south.

A Darfur peace deal was signed in May 2006 between Khartoum and one of three negotiating rebel factions to end four years of conflict which has killed at least 200,000 people according to the United Nations.

Since then, the non-signatory rebel groups have splintered into dozens of factions. UN envoy to Darfur Jan Eliasson said last week he was aware of 28 rebel groups.

Kiir urged participants to draw up "common demands and form a single delegation" ahead of the Libya peace talks on October 27, according to Jar al-Nabi Abdel Kader Yunes, who heads a delegation of commanders who split from a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement headed by Abdel Wahed Nur.

Other rebel groups present are the Sudan Liberation Movement-Unity headed by Ahmed Teshafi and a faction of the Justice and Equality Movement, known as JEM-Unified Command, according to Yunes.

Two rebel chiefs from south Darfur known only as Mohammed Ali Kilai and "Commander Seddik" were also present, Yunes said, but could not immediately identify their factions.

Notably absent from the meetings was Nur's SLM faction, which has said it will not attend the Libya talks unless a UN peacekeeping force is deployed first in Darfur.

Also missing were the main JEM faction led by Khalil Ibrahim and the SLM faction headed by Khamis Abdallah, said Yunes.

The rebels meeting in Juba said that the Khartoum military tried to prevent them from reaching the talks, forcing the African Union plane they were flying in on Thursday to make an emergency landing in Darfur or be shot down.

"An air defence unit said it would shoot down the plane if it didn't land immediately," SLM-Unity spokesman Mahjoub Hussein said at the time. The aircraft was allowed to resume its journey several hours later.

Monday's talks come amid an upsurge in violence in Darfur, where the one rebel group to have signed the peace deal with Khartoum, the Sudan Liberation Movement of Minni Minawi, has threatened to take up arms again.

Minawi's faction said that Sudanese forces and their allied Janjaweed militia killed 50 people in an attack earlier this month on a town it controls in Darfur, threatening the fragile peace deal.

The UN subsequently reported clashes between Khartoum forces and Minawi ex-rebels, but the circumstances of the violence were not clear.

Another attack carried out by unidentified forces on an African Union base near Haskanita in Darfur killed 10 peacekeepers from the under-manned force, ratcheting up the pressure ahead of the Libya talks.

Conflict and famine in Darfur have killed at least 200,000 people and displaced two million since Khartoum enlisted the Janjaweed to put down an ethnic minority revolt in 2003. Aid groups have blamed the militia in particular for widespread rape, murder and destruction of villages.

Khartoum says only 9,000 people have died in the conflict.