Talks about talks
On the eve of the resumption of Sudanese peace talks in Kenya, insurrectionists in the war-torn Darfur region of western Sudan officially join the ranks of the Sudanese opposition in Eritrea, writes Gamal Nkrumah
Darfur is not a place for the faint-hearted and bravado is the essential style. For centuries warring tribesmen have eked out a precarious existence from subsistence farming, herding and raiding rival tribal groups. A coterie of ethnic groups inhabit Darfur, including the Zaghawa, the Masalit and the Fur, after whom the region is named. Today these groups demand human rights and stress that they are entitled to democracy and development.
"The demands of the people of Darfur must be included in the human rights monitoring mechanism set up under the Sudan peace process," Liz Hodgkin of Amnesty International told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Hodgkin warned against overlooking the rights of the traditionally marginalised parts of the country lest they get left out of the peace process. "The Sudanese government cannot put all their energies in southern Sudan," she said.
This week, fighting flared up again between the Sudanese government and armed opposition groups in the country's troubled Darfur region. Hundreds of thousands of people were rendered homeless with the escalation of the violence. Amnesty International estimates that 670,000 people are now internally displaced, and that some 100,000 have fled across the border to Chad where they live as refugees.
Thousands of students from Darfur marched in the Sudanese capital to highlight the desperate humanitarian situation in their home region. They urged international intervention to alleviate the crisis and asked the United Nations for help.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Beshir who claimed last week that he had "crushed the rebellion" in Darfur was forced to eat his words. The armed opposition groups in Darfur said that they have retaken some of the government controlled garrison towns in the region. Civilians suffered the brunt of hostilities.
Both the Sudanese government and the armed opposition groups in Darfur welcome international mediation and want to see the United Nations, who have expressed alarm at the rapidly deteriorating situation in Darfur, playing a more prominent role.
But thus far regional and international efforts to get the warring factions to the negotiating table have failed. The Sudanese government in Khartoum has declined to attend peace talks in Switzerland with armed opposition groups from Darfur, insisting that the conflict is a domestic matter and the talks should take place on Sudanese soil. However, the opposition groups want the talks to be held on more hospitable terrain.
The insurrectionists in Darfur appear to be supported by international humanitarian relief agencies and donor nations in their demands for a foreign country to host the peace talks. The subject was raised at meetings between UN Special Envoy for Humanitarian Affairs in Sudan Tom Vraalsen and Sudanese officials. The Sudanese government pledged its commitment to development and opening humanitarian relief corridors in Darfur, but Khartoum insists that the armed opposition groups in Darfur lay down their arms first before the resumption of peace talks.
The war in Darfur topped the agenda at a meeting of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) -- the umbrella opposition organisation embracing the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and other mainly northern Sudanese opposition parties. The meeting of NDA leaders took place in the Eritrean capital Asmara, where the NDA has its headquarters.
"The problems of Darfur will now come under the intense scrutiny of the NDA," Farouk Abu Eissa, former head of the Cairo based Arab Lawyers Union and official spokesman for the NDA, told the Weekly. "We have to work out a solution to Darfur's problems. But the solution can only be found in a new and democratic Sudan," he explained.
Darfur's Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), not to be confused with the southern-based SPLA, headed by John Garang, officially asked to join the NDA. Last Friday, the NDA accepted the SLA as a fully-fledged member of the organisation at the Asmara meeting.
Abu Eissa added that the SLA's admission to the NDA was warmly welcomed by all the various factions of the NDA, and he described the move as the single most important step taken by the NDA in the past few months.
SLA Secretary-General Minni Arkou Minnawi said that he had asked Farouk Abu Eissa about joining the NDA and added that he was pleased that his organisation has now joined the NDA.
Apart from Garang, who insisted on personally attending the Asmara meeting in order to brief NDA leaders about the latest developments in the Sudanese peace talks in Kenya, other leading opposition figures in Asmara included Sadig Al-Mahdi, former Sudanese prime minister and leader of the Umma Party which withdrew from the NDA three years ago.
The SLA is the chief armed opposition group in the war- torn Darfur region of western Sudan. A cease-fire deal signed last year heightened hopes of a peaceful resolution to the armed uprisings in Darfur, one of Sudan's poorest provinces. But hopes were dashed when fighting erupted again this year.
The other main Darfur armed opposition group, the Movement for Justice and Equality (JEM), has so far not made any moves to join the NDA. Unlike the secularist and leftist SLA, JEM is a militant Islamist organisation reputedly linked to the Popular National Congress party (PNC) of the Sudanese Islamist ideologue and former Speaker of the Sudanese Parliament Hassan Al-Turabi.
The talks that resumed on Monday in the Kenyan city of Naivasha, west of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, are restricted to the Sudanese government and the SPLA. Other Sudanese opposition groups, most of whom have expressed a desire to participate, have been excluded from the talks on the grounds that the Sudanese civil war was essentially waged between the SPLA and Sudanese government forces and allied militias.
The talks are taking place under the auspices of the Inter- Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD), a regional organisation that groups seven east African countries, including Sudan.
The talks have reached a critical stage with this week's round focussing on the status of three remote regions that the SPLA says are politically marginalised, economically disadvantaged and underdeveloped -- the Nuba Mountains in southern Kordofan, the Abyei region in western Kordofan, and the Ingassena region of the southern Blue Nile. While both the SPLA and the Sudanese government appear to have reached a compromise over the southern Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains, there is still much disagreement over the fate of Abyei, an oil-rich region which straddles the disputed border between northern and southern Sudan and is inhabited both by ethnic Dinka and Arabised tribesmen. The latter are accused by international human rights groups of enslaving Dinka villagers and leaving a trail of death, destruction and hunger in the wake of their raids.
The Sudanese government and the SPLA are currently trying to finalise an agreement to end the Sudanese civil war -- Africa's longest-running conflict -- which has cost the lives of more than two million people. The Sudanese civil war, which erupted in 1983, has also led to the displacement of an estimated five million Sudanese, about half of whom have fled abroad leaving the remainder internally displaced. Most of the refugees and people who have been displaced are southern Sudanese living in sprawling shantytowns on the outskirts of the Sudanese capital Khartoum or in refugee camps in neighbouring countries.
