Darfur rebel group says Bashir statements “declaration of war”
November 18, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — A Darfur rebel faction said Sunday that a call by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to reopen auxiliary training camps was “a declaration of war” and that it was putting its troops on high alert.
“The Sudan Liberation Movement-Unity decrees a state of maximum alert for its troops following the Sudanese president’s declarations about opening popular defense force training camps,” the SLM-Unity said in a statement.
“We take this decision as a declaration of all-out war in Sudan,” it said the day after al-Bashir ordered the reopening of auxiliary training camps to prepare for war amid an ongoing crisis with southern former rebels.
“We order the legitimate sons of the people to open their camps… not to declare war but to be ready,” al-Bashir said in a speech marking 18 years of the popular defense forces unit linked to his political party.
The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, former southern rebels who once battled the auxiliary, walked out of the Khartoum government last month in protest at the non-application of a 2005 north-south peace deal.
They brand the popular defense forces a “militia” of al-Bashir’s National Congress Party and want it dissolved – one of a series of disputes that saw talks between the SPLM and the north collapse last Sunday.
The SLM-Unity “warns the Sudanese government against opening training camps in Darfur and says it will consider them as military targets,” the statement said.
More than four years of conflict in Darfur has killed more than 200,000 people from the combined effects of war, famine and disease while 2.2 million others have been left homeless by what the United States calls “genocide”.
(AFP)