Darfur’s Sudan Liberation Army chooses new leader
Nov 4, 2005 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudan Liberation Army, one of the two major rebel groups in the troubled western region of Darfur, has chosen a new leader, the movement spokesman said Friday.
Minni Minawi, the SLA’s former secretary-general and head of field operations, was sworn in as president during the group’s general conference Thursday, Mahgoub Hussein told The Associated Press by telephone from southern Darfur.
Minawi replaces Abdelwahed al-Nur, who boycotted the conference. Mahmoud Gomaa was named vice president, and a new secretary-general was to be named before the conference ends Saturday.
Minawi’s election signals a big shift in the strategy of the group, which already suffers from deep splits.
There are two main factions inside the SLA, one led by Nur, who resides in the north Darfur Jebel Mara mountains. The second faction is led by Minawi, a military leader blamed for the group’s most recent violations of a cease-fire agreement and frequent attacks on aid workers in Darfur.
According to Akhbar al-Yom, an independent paper published in Khartoum, Minawi defeated his competitor, Adam Bekheet, the group’s armed forces’ chief-of-staff, in the leadership election.
Nur had sent a delegation to ask that the general conference be postponed until after a February reconciliation conference, but his demand was rejected, the independent daily al-Ray al-Amm newspaper said Friday.
The reconciliation conference is expected to be held in Nairobi to heal the rift between the two factions, which threatens the security situation in Darfur.
However, Hussein denied any fragmentation within the SLA, saying it was “united and in harmony.”
“The group will not let anybody work on destabilizing its unity or claim that it is suffering from internal splits,” he said.
A number of foreign representatives attended this week’s conference, including special envoys from the U.S., the U.N., the African Union and other African countries, including Libya and Chad.
The Darfur conflict began in February 2003 when the SLA and the other major Darfur faction, Justice and Equality Movement, took up arms against the Sudanese government amid accusations of repression and unfair distribution of wealth.
The government has been accused of supporting Arab nomads known as the Janjaweed, who have been blamed for a campaign of killings, rape and arson. The Sudanese government denies backing the Janjaweed.
The U.N. estimates that 180,000 people have died, mainly through famine and disease. Several million more have either fled into neighboring Chad or been displaced inside Sudan.
(AP/ST)