Darfur is back

Gerard Prunier

Now that the CPA is finally drifting towards its possibly bitter end, Darfur is becoming again a major front..

A major development has just taken place in the Sudan crisis, which the focalization on the upcoming referendum (and the holyday season) might not bring to full attention. On December 23rd and 24th guerrillas fought two winning  battles with the Sudan Armed Forces , not far from the Shangil Tobayi Refugee Camp . These victories were modest in military terms and are unlikely to change the picture of the conflict in the short term. But what made them particularly significant was that they were fought in the name of an hitherto unknown organization, the Alliance of Resistance Forces (ARF).

Since its beginning in February 2003, the Darfur insurgent movement has been known for its tendency to splinter in ever smaller fractions and cliques. Whether one was hoping for a negotiated peace or for a military victory, the Darfurians appeared incapable of managing either, due to their endless divisions and, one can even say in the eyes of the civilian population sufferings, their shameless bickering. So one could be forgiven for thinking that the "ARF" was still another of these one-off instant liberation movements, angling for a seat at the next "peace conference" where material blandishments would be proffered. This time it is not the same.

The forces that faced the SAF on December 23rd and 24th were not splintered from something else but were on the contrary an alliance of fighters belonging to four different groups: (1) the mostly Zagahwa Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)  (2) Abd-el-Wahid an-Nur's original Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) , a mostly Fur Front  (3) Minni Arkoy Minnawi SLM splinter which had accepted to rejoin the government forces after the 2006 Abuja "peace agreement" (4) and even a number of men officially obeying al-Tijjani Sissi Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM) which were presented as the "good boys" of the Doha Process , the "reasonable" guerrillas who had decided to lay down their arms and collaborate with the internationally-sanctioned "peace process" .

In two days of combat the fiction of the Doha process was stripped of whatever logic or legitimacy it still had left. And the place of Darfur in the complex Sudanese political equation shifted suddenly. Darfur has become the nightmare that Khartoum had feared all along and which had caused it to unleash a genocide in 2003 in the hope of crushing the western province and prevent a war on two fronts, should the then dormant conflict with the South restart at a later date. In 2005, the NCP had managed to obtain the CPA "peace" from the South while befuddling the international community about what it was doing in Darfur. This seemed at the time like a brilliant tactical success. And it was, as long as the CPA could be maintained as a free lodestar while Darfur was isolated and dealt with separately in Abuja and later in Doha. But the birth of the ADF could mean that the chickens have finally come home to roost. Now that the CPA is finally drifting towards its possibly bitter end, Darfur is becoming again a major front in the confrontation between the Arab center and the African peripheries.

Meaning what in terms of the coming referendum? That the CPA-sanctioned consultation would better take place as planned at the right time and in the proper circumstances. Because if Khartoum seeks to interfere with the referendum, either by discounting its organization of by trying to postpone its date , war will become the major choice for the Juba authorities . And this war, given the (re)birth of the ARF will not be a North-South war . It will be a war of the Peripheries against the Center. And it will take place in the North. One can already imagine how the militia forces of Abd-el-Azziz al-Hilew in South Kordofan and those of Malik Agar in Blue Nile are looking at the recent military successes of the ARF. Khartoum is flush with cash and equipment. But it has very few men. During the long 1983-2002 war, the Northern Army was made up of soldiers from the peripheries (Nuba Mountains , Darfur , South itself) . But today none of these are readily available in large numbers any more.

For the last six years the SPLM has looked at the 2011 referendum as its main hope for peace and survival. In the next few weeks, it might become Khartoum's last line of defense against a collapse of the Islamist regime under siege from all its peripheries.