Darfur’s fractious rebels in landmark reconciliation talks

August 4, 2007 (NAIROBI) — Darfur’s myriad rebel groups sat at the same table for the first time in more than a year Saturday at a meeting in Tanzania, aiming to present a united front in future peace talks with Khartoum.

The landmark talks between the political and military leaders of the many factions that have emerged in Darfur over the past four and half years of conflict were overshadowed however by the absence of two key rebel figures.

“It’s the first time since Abuja that we’ve had so many leading rebel figures sitting together,” said Radhia Achouri, spokeswoman for UN envoy to Sudan Jan Eliasson, who is heading the mediation jointly with the African Union’s Salim Ahmed Salim.

A peace deal aimed at ending the bloodshed in the western Sudanese region of Darfur was signed with Khartoum in May 2006 in the Nigerian capital Abuja, but only one of the three negotiating rebel factions endorsed it.

Since then, violence has flourished and splinter groups have formed, complicating the prospect of a new round of peace negotiations with the Sudanese government.

But the mediators insisted at the start of the meeting in Arusha Friday that new momentum generated by Tuesday’s UN Security Council decision to deploy 26,000 peacekeepers in Darfur could yield a breakthrough in the political process.

“For the first time in a long time, I have a feeling of hope for Darfur, a sense of opportunity not to be lost,” Eliasson said late Friday in remarks opening the talks’ first plenary session.

Achouri said the rival rebel factions would seek “to agree on confidence building measures such as finding means to contain banditry, ensure the best possible humanitarian access and give a voice to Darfur’s civil society.”

Salim said Friday that the mediation team was aiming to resume final settlement negotiations between the rebels and Khartoum “within the next two months.”

One glaring absence among the dozens of rebel leaders flown over from their Darfur strongholds or from their exile in African and European capitals was that of the rebellion’s founding father, Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur.

Speaking to AFP from Paris, the founder of the Sudan Liberation Movement justified his boycott by arguing that the security situation in Darfur was not conducive to negotiations and challenged the legitimacy of the factions invited to Arusha.

“The government of Sudan has practised a ‘divide and conquer’ approach. Spending the international community’s money to host these factions will not bring peace to the people of Darfur,” said Nur, a member of Darfur’s largest tribe.

“Recognising new factions will be endless, the rebels will split more and more, we will only see more movements,” said Nur, whose SLM was represented at the talks by at least four breakaway factions.

With the new “hybrid” AU-UN peacekeeping mission not expected to be fully deployed before mid 2008 and amid continuing violence on the ground, Nur also said: “Peace negotiations need a conducive environment but the government of Sudan is still killing people, thousands are still being displaced.”

Another absence of note was that of Suleiman Jamous, a key rebel figure who has acted as coordinator to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to the population of Darfur but has been confined to a hospital by the Sudanese government for more than a year.

Mediators, Sudanese and foreign human rights organisations as well as other rebels have called for his release.

“We raised the matter with the president of Sudan…. We believe Suleiman Jamous can be a facilitator in the mediation,” Salim said.