Rebels’ disunity hobbles upcoming talks on Darfur

JUBA, SUDAN —  The thorniest issue in the upcoming Darfur peace talks isn’t when to deploy United Nations peacekeepers or how to disarm government-backed militias. It’s how many chairs to set at the negotiating table for the rebels.

Rebel disunity has become one of the biggest obstacles to resolving violence in the war-torn region of western Sudan and is already threatening to derail the much-anticipated peace conference in Libya, slated to begin Saturday.

Two years ago, there were three main rebel groups in Darfur. By the latest United Nations count, 28 are vying for recognition.

In this hot and humid provincial capital in southern Sudan, more than 80 rebel leaders have spent the last week huddled in talks aimed at resolving their differences and formulating a common negotiating platform for the meeting in Libya.

Under the mentorship of former fighters from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, which carried out a separate rebellion in the nation’s south, the pre-Libya strategizing session has had mixed success. Participants here say they largely agree on the terms of power-sharing and security reforms they’ll demand from the Sudanese government in Libya.

But the western rebels are still bickering over which faction should take a lead role in negotiating strategies. Much of the time has been spent attempting to reconcile offshoots of the two main rebel groups, the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement.

Complicating matters is the fact that the founders of those two groups, Abdel Wahid of the SLA and Khalil Ibrahim of the JEM, boycotted the Juba conference and are vowing to torpedo the Libya talks.

“This is completely the wrong approach and will only prolong the suffering of the people,” said Wahid in a telephone interview from Paris, where he is living in exile. He said peace talks should take place only after promised U.N. peacekeepers are deployed in Darfur and security is restored.

Ibrahim has said the peace talks should occur only after rebel groups reunify under the original two banners.

‘Big question marks’

Analysts say the chances of a successful peace negotiation in the current environment look dim.

“There are big question marks about how serious either the rebels or [Sudan’s ruling party] are about coming to a long-term peaceful solution,” said Sally Chin, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.

The current conflict started in 2003 when rebels attacked government installations, complaining that Darfur had been marginalized for decades. The Khartoum regime is accused of unleashing Arab militias, known as janjaweed, to attack, burn and loot civilian villages in response. An estimated 200,000 people have died, mostly of disease and starvation, and 2.5 million others have been displaced.

U.N. and African Union officials continue to express optimism about the upcoming conference, but Western patience with Darfur rebels is growing thin. The rebels were once viewed as freedom fighters, but their behavior over the last year has become increasingly aggressive and criminal.

Rebels were blamed for raping a French aid worker in Gereida in December; spreading the violence into the neighboring Kordofan region with an unprovoked attack on a government base; and participating in the growing number of carjackings and robberies against humanitarian aid groups in Darfur.

Last month, an unidentified rebel faction was accused of raiding an African Union base in Haskanita, killing 10 international soldiers in the deadliest such attack since the peacekeeping force arrived in Darfur in 2004.

Some diplomats recommend a get-tough approach to rebels, imposing sanctions against those who impede peace talks.

“The international community has acted rather irresponsibly on all this in the past by pampering a lot of these people around [and] not really wondering whether they really represented anybody and whether they were acting responsibly,” said U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi after a visit to the region this month.

Adam Azzain Mohammed, head of the University of Khartoum’s Institute for the Studies of Public Administration and Federal Governance, said some rebel leaders were less interested in achieving peace and more concerned about securing personal power and territory.

“It’s become a power struggle,” Mohammed said. “They’ve forgotten about the main cause of their struggle, and it’s turned into just about who gets what.”

Clement Janda, a national senator from the southern rebel group who is mediating the Juba talks, noted that many of Darfur’s rebel leaders were young and politically inexperienced when they were suddenly thrust upon an international stage.

“They have not matured as a movement,” Janda said. “They had to negotiate before they crystallized their leadership.”

By contrast, he said, Sudan’s southern rebels spent 20 years fighting against Khartoum, unifying under their movement’s former chairman, John Garang. After signing a peace deal with Khartoum in 2005, Garang was killed in a helicopter crash.

Cracks keep growing

Internal power struggles and finger-pointing in rebel movements show no signs of abating. Former lieutenants of the SLA’s Wahid say his support in displacement camps is waning because he lives in Paris, far from the reality of most Darfurians.

“He has lost his base,” said Khamis Abdalla of the United Front for Liberation and Development, a recently formed rebel alliance. “It’s only the international community that still holds him up as a key figure.”

Wahid fired back that Abdalla “has no vision.”

Rebel leaders say the West, particularly the United States, shares blame for their divisions for having pushed through a controversial 2006 Darfur peace agreement, which some rebels signed and others rejected. The U.S. and other Western countries threatened to impose sanctions against rebels who failed to accept the agreement, prompting additional fracturing.

“That is when the splits really started,” said Tadjadine Bechir Niam, chief negotiator for the JEM.

The governments in Khartoum and in neighboring countries also have played a role. Chad, Eritrea and Libya have each offered funding and other support to new rebel groups, presumably to boost the countries’ influence in the region.

The Khartoum government has routinely pursued a “divide-and-rule” strategy when dealing with rebel movements, courting some to defect with offers of money and power. This year, a top JEM official, Ibrahim Yahya, abandoned the rebel group and moved to Khartoum.

“It’s our own fault,” Niam said. “We are the ones who gave the room for Khartoum to come in.”

Khartoum’s refusal to live up to its promises to southern rebels and the U.N. is one reason peace talks are doomed, Wahid said. He noted that the southern rebel group last week suspended its participation in Sudan’s government because the ruling party has refused to implement key provisions of the 2005 power-sharing agreement. “How can we trust this regime?” Wahid said.

edmund.sanders@latimes.com