New front flares up in eastern Sudan

KHARTOUM, June 21 (AFP) — Sudanese rebels pressed on Tuesday with an offensive against government troops near the Red Sea, sparking accusations of Eritrean involvement and fears of a new conflict in the war-torn country.

Beja people collect water in the rebel-controlled area of eastern Sudan, near the border with Eritrea June 4, 2005. The Beja people live a virtually medieval existence among desert plains and stony mountains in remote and rebel-controlled eastern Sudan. Lack of development in their region is one of the main grievances that spur the Beja rebels who have controlled this small area on the Eritrean border since early 1997. (Reuters).

Khartoum and a coalition of rebel groups were both claiming victory, two days after some of the worst fighting in years broke out south of Port Sudan in the eastern Red Sea state.

“Khartoum says they have stopped our progress, it is not true. All the defenses of our enemy are broken. The Khartoum troops remain with no commander,” rebel leader Salah Barqueen told AFP.

Barqueen is a member of Beja Congress, a rebel group that recently formed the Eastern Front with the Free Lions, another tribal-based movement from eastern Sudan.

The Justice and Equality Movement, a group with ties to Sudan’s jailed Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi currently involved in the Darfur conflict but with a national base, also took part in the offensive.

A statement signed by the Joint Eastern Forces — which includes JEM and the Eastern Front — claimed that 17 government troops, including a senior officer, were captured by their men.

The statement said attacks on a garrison led to the seizure of a significant amount of weaponry during the rebel push towards the town of Tokar, which lies half-way between the border with Eritrea and Port Sudan.

“This is our biggest operation in several years,” Barqueen said Monday.

Red Sea state governor Major General Hatim al-Wasilah al-Sammani accused Eritrea of backing the offensive and warned the rebels of retaliatory operations by government forces.

Several hundred thousand Eritrean refugees live in Sudan and relations between the two governments have been very volatile in recent years.

Asmara has accused its northwestern neighbour of persecuting its nationals in Sudan, while Khartoum has repeatedly charged the small Red Sea country of assisting several Sudanese rebel orgasations.

Sammani also charged that Darfur rebel groups were seeking a new battlefield as peace negotiations with Khartoum on the strife that has torn apart western Sudan were under way in Nigeria.

“They are planning to shift the rebellion from the west to the east because of ongoing peace talks in Abuja and because, economically, the east is more important to Sudan than the west,” Sammani said.

He also suggested that a recent reconciliation agreement between Sudan’s main opposition grouping — the National Democratic Alliance — and Khartoum had fueled anger among the eastern rebels.

Like their counterparts in the Darfur region of western Sudan, the ethnic minority rebels in the eastern states of Red Sea and Kassala complain of marginalisation by the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum.

The Beja Congress and Free Lions are officially members of the NDA but they pulled out of the reconciliation talks in Cairo.

“We want a comprehensive solution to the problems of Sudan,” the JEM’s Abdelaziz Osher told AFP. “As long as the government offers a piecemeal solution, even if there is an agreement on Darfur, we will continue the struggle somewhere else.”

The deal with the NDA was hailed as another step towards stabilising Africa’s largest country, following a January peace agreement between Khartoum and John Garang’s southern rebels.

Sudan is suffering from one of the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crises. Its wars have left close to two million people killed over the past two decades.