Two new rebel factions threaten peace efforts in Darfur

By Silvia Aloisi

ABUJA, Oct 24 (Reuters) – Two new rebel factions have emerged in Darfur, threatening to further complicate international peace efforts in Sudan’s troubled western region, African Union and United Nations officials said on Sunday.

Major-General Festus Okonkwo, the commander of the AU mission in Darfur, said a new rebel group was active in the area of Tine on the border between Chad and Sudan, and had attacked a government convoy on Oct 6.

The group, calling itself the National Movement for Reform and Development, may also be responsible for the death of two aid workers killed recently by a landmine, Okonkwo said.

“They wanted to join the peace process but that has not been possible,” Okonkwo said in an interview in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, where peace talks between the Sudanese government and the two official rebel movements are due to start on Monday.

The United Nations calls Darfur one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and says 70,000 people have died of malnutrition and disease there since March when a massive aid operation got under way.

Jan Pronk, the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative for Darfur, said a second group had appeared further south, near the city of Nyala.

While the first group was thought to be a breakaway faction of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the identity of the second group was not clear.

After years of conflict between Arab nomads and mostly non-Arab farmers over scarce resources in arid Darfur, two main rebel groups, JEM and the Sudan Liberation Army rebels, took up arms early last year.

They accuse Khartoum of using Arabic-speaking militias known as Janjaweed to loot and burn non-Arab villages, a charge Khartoum denies.

Okonkwo said the emergence of new factions was one of the main challenges for his 3,300-strong force which has a mandate to monitor — but not enforce — a shaky ceasefire in a region the size of France.

He said the Tine-based group did not consider itself bound by the truce accord signed by the other warring parties.

“Since they are not part of the agreement, they have said that the safety of the mil-obs (AU military observers) is no longer guaranteed,” Okonkwo said.

Pronk also said the new factions should be taken seriously.

“At the beginning I thought they were an artificial creation, but now I think it’s more serious,” he said. “You need to take them into consideration as a power”.