Sudanese rebels prepare for war

By William Lloyd George | Last updated: May 10, 2013 - 12:49:53 PM

ADDIS ABABA (IPS)—A rebel coalition in Sudan has declared war on the government less than a week after it attacked Sudanese forces. “Now there is a fully-fledged war in the new south of the north,” Yasir Arman, a leader of one of the armed groups in the alliance, told IPS, adding that the rebels now control a southern stretch of the country.

Rebel activity had previously been restricted to southern and eastern Sudan. But the April 27 attack by the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) in North Kordofan, which is about 300 miles from Sudan’s capital Khartoum, was the first full-on offensive to be launched in central Sudan.

“Now we are fighting under one command, and we have one unified political leadership,” Mr. Arman, the secretary general of the Sudan People’s Liberation Front-North (SPLM-N), said in an interview at a hotel in neighboring Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.

The SRF is made up of insurgent groups from Sudan’s western region of Darfur, including the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the two main factions of the Sudan Liberation Movement. The SPLM-N, which is also part of the SRF, is from South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, in south Sudan.

Previously, the groups had fought relatively independently, with the Darfuri rebels’ desire for an Islamist state being a main obstacle to forming an alliance. When the JEM gave in to the SPLM-N’s offer to create a secular state in Sudan, once President Omar Al-Bashir is deposed, the alliance was formed in November 2011, and it has seemingly grown in strength ever since.

The SRF’s core aims are for the formation of a new transitional government of national unity, the end to the marginalization of the peripheries, and the installation of a decentralized federal system based on a secular constitution. They have also stressed the need for land rights and support for pastoralists.

On Jan. 5, the SRF reached out to opposition parties and civil society groups, and signed a “New Dawn Charter” in Kampala, Uganda, which calls for an inclusive transition.

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