Darfur rebels seek alliance

LONDON - A leading rebel group in Sudan’s western Darfur region, which managed to attack Sudan’s capital of Khartoum earlier this month, says it is seeking an alliance with a former rebel group that dominates southern Sudan to help overthrow the Islamist-dominated government of Lt. Gen. Omar Bashir.

“The [Sudan People’s Liberation Movement] has misread the situation by trusting al-Bashir. In truth, he is our common enemy. We are trying to get closer to them,” said Abdullahi El-Tom, head of strategic planning for the Darfur-based Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), a Christian and animist group, waged a 20-year civil war against the Arab and Islamist dominated North, which claimed an estimated 1.5 million lives.

Shortly after a peace treaty in 2005 ended the North-South civil war, and brought the SPLM into an uneasy national unity government, a second civil war erupted between the Islamist administration in Khartoum and rebels in Darfur.

Within the past month, new fighting has erupted on both fronts.

The latest episode began May 10, when the Darfur-based JEM militia launched a lightning cross-desert raid on Khartoum, driving unchecked hundreds of miles to the city’s west Nile bank.

Three days of pitched battles and street fighting left more than 200 people dead and shook the Sudanese capital of 8 million.

“We are able to move freely around Kordofan, and have acquired plenty of weaponry from our attacks on government positions,” Mr. El-Tom told The Washington Times. He was referring to the region between Khartoum and Darfur.

In addition to his role as head of strategic planning for JEM, Mr. El-Tom also lectures at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth, and is on the advisory board of Irish Aid, Dublin’s equivalent to U.S. Agency for International Development.

JEM is led by Khalil Ibrahim, who has promised “regime change” in Sudan, going beyond the ambitions of Darfur’s other rebel factions, which focus on Darfur-centered issues.

After repelling the JEM, the Sudanese army subsequently rounded up hundreds of Darfurians living in Khartoum, focusing on the ethnic Zaghawa tribe that is said to dominate the JEM.

Addressing a rally in Khartoum on May 13, Gen. Bashir described Mr. Ibrahim as someone who “sold himself to Israel, Zionism and the devil.”

In a country that has known only 11 years of peace since independence in 1956, it was the first time in any of Sudan’s long wars that the capital was directly threatened.

Then, over the week beginning May 20, Sudanese forces destroyed the town of Abyei along the North-South border, leveling portions of the oil hub that were awarded to the SPLM-led part of Sudan under the 2005 peace deal.

With nationwide elections scheduled next year, the political and security stakes are high. Potential International Criminal Court indictments hang over members of Gen. Bashir’s government. Moreover, the elections are to be followed by a referendum in 2011 on whether the south should secede.

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