Sudan’s biggest rebel group rocks peace process by withdrawing from talks in Juba
In a serious blow to peace prospects in Sudan, a major rebel group suspended its participation in talks with the government to end civil wars after the removal from power in April of the country’s authoritarian leader Omar Al Bashir.
The decision by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North to withdraw from the talks came just two days after they began in the South Sudan capital of Juba on Monday. The SPLM-N, the largest single rebel group in Sudan, said it would not return to the talks until authorities released about a dozen people it said government troops detained this week in areas under its control. It also wants the government to pull its forces from the area.
The group controls territory in South Kordofan and the Blue Nile provinces. The SPLM-N identified the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary as the outfit behind the detentions. The RSF’s genesis is the feared Janjaweed militia that fought rebels in Darfur on behalf of Mr Al Bashir’s government in the 2000s. The head of the government delegation in the Juba talks is RSF leader and Sudan sovereignty council member Gen Hamdan Dagalo.
“If the government clears all these demands, we are ready to come back to the table with the commitment we declared during the Juba Declaration,” said SPLM-N chief negotiator Ammar Amoun, referring to the agreement signed between the transitional government and rebel groups on September 11.
Government spokesman Mohammed Eltaishi denied the SPLM-N accusations and said it was willing to investigate. “This incident should not be a big obstacle to the ongoing peace negotiations,” he said.
In a bid to show goodwill towards the rebels, the transitional government in Khartoum swiftly declared a nationwide ceasefire after the SPLM-N announced it was suspending its participation in the talks. There was no immediate response from the group, which is led by Abdel-Aziz Al Hilu.
Ending the country’s civil wars is part of a power-sharing agreement signed in August between a pro-democracy alliance and the generals who removed Mr Al Bashir from power in April.
The agreement stipulates that the wars should end within six months. By ending the conflicts, the transitional government hopes to cut defence spending to give the economy a chance to recover.
But resolving the root causes of the rebellions in South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Darfur will not be an easy task.
The rebels are seeking changes that, if implemented, would dismantle the country’s political system that has given Arab Sudanese from the country’s north and central regions a monopoly on power since independence in 1956. The rebels, mostly ethnic Africans, seek a fairer share of national resources and representation.
Their armed struggle against successive governments in Khartoum, famine and human rights offences have defined Sudan’s political landscape in the 63 years since independence.
Already, a decades-long civil war between the mainly Muslim north and the mostly animist and Christian south ended with the south seceding in 2011, taking with it a third of Sudan’s territory and most of its oil wealth.
A war against rebels in Darfur in the 2000s killed an estimated 300,000 people and displaced many more.