With Darfur’s remaining rebels still refusing to sign a peace deal, fighters from African tribes who were united against the Sudanese government have turned on each other. Around Tawilla, thousands of civilians have been displaced since the beginning of the year following deadly violence between two ethnically divided factions of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), Darfur’s largest rebel movement.
In what has become a turf war for control of rebel-held territory, gunmen on pick-up trucks and horseback have been burning huts, killing, looting and even raping women, in raids just as deadly as those of the Janjaweed militia.
Camps for displaced people on the outskirts of town lie abandoned, their terrified former residents having barricaded themselves in makeshift shelters against the razor wire surrounding the African Union peacekeepers’ base. All but one international NGO have left.
‘Initially the trouble here was the government forces,” said an AU military observer based in Tawilla. ‘But now these different SLA groups fighting each other have become the problem.”
Fighting between the rebels peaked before the signing of the peace pact on May 5 between Khartoum and the larger SLA faction, desperate to make territorial gains before the ceasefire.
Hopes of an end to the rebels’ mutual enmity, which has added another layer to an already muddled conflict, were dashed again on Monday when the SLA faction led by Abdel Wahid ignored an extended deadline to accept the Darfur peace agreement. A third, smaller group, the Justice and Equality Movement, is also holding out.
Wahid is demanding more detailed provisions on compensation for the war’s victims and disarmament of the Janjaweed. Negotiators have again extended the deadline to May 31.
On Tuesday the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution to speed up planning for a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur and threatened sanctions against anyone who opposed the May 5 accord. The AU has agreed to transfer authority for its 7 300-strong peacekeeping force to the UN by September.
The latest twist in the Darfur crisis follows fallout late last year in the SLA, a broad-based guerrilla movement. Minni Arcua Minnawi, the group’s secretary general, took with him the larger share of the fighters and weapons. Most of his men are Zaghawa, a cattle-herding tribe. Wahid, the SLA chairperson, and a member of the Fur, Darfur’s largest tribe, was left with a smaller force but a large support base.
‘We thought we would meet up in Khartoum, as we still had the same objectives,” said Commander ‘Tiger” Muhammad, from the Wahid faction, who arrived in the deserted village of Tina this week with several dozen fighters.
Some of his men took part in the 2003 attack on government forces in El Fasher that helped spark the Darfur conflict. Retribution came quickly to Tawilla, where the vast expanse of desert gives way to rocky foothills to the west, as government forces attacked African tribes.
The SLA ‘liberated” the area more than a year ago, bringing a degree of stability. Civilians began returning to their fields to plant crops. Some even returned to their villages near the town. But since February, Tawilla has become one of the most insecure regions of Darfur as rebels under Minnawi sought to capture territory from their rival faction. Civilians were caught in the crossfire. Attacks on villages continued throughout the next two months. —