Dean Diyan
14 February 2008
Juba — For Darfur rebels, the victory party over the defeat of Chadian rebels come too early.
On February 5, hours after it emerged that Chadian rebels out to overthrow the government had been beaten back, Sudan's Darfur rebels revelled in the moment.
The irony is not easily lost. A rebel group, seeking to overthrow a government, felt nauseated by another rebel's attempts to overturn another government, and gloated when those attempts came to naught.
An email photo of Sudan's Defence Minister Abdel Rahim Hesain snivelling into what looked like a napkin went around. "Too painful to lose Chad," read the caption.
The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which sent the photograph, is considered the militarily strongest of the four major Darfur rebel movements.
The other group, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) is considered the more politically savvy, but it is split into myriad factions.
Resigned to fate
During the fighting in Chad, while the other groups seemed resigned to fate, JEM, with perhaps more at stake to lose if Sudan-backed rebels overthrew Idriss Deby's regime, did all the touting and shouting as Chad beat back rebels who had slogged their way to the capital town, N'Djamena.
"At exactly the same time when the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was concluding a peace agreement between Khartoum and Chad, Mr Abdel Rahim Hesain, Sudan's Minister for Defence, was plotting in El Gineina city, organising the current abortive invasion of Chad," Mr Ahmed Adam Bakheit, the Justice and Equality Movement Secretary for Political Affairs/Darfur Sector, said in a statement.
"Gaddafi should now contemplate his true weight on Khartoum government and the futility of taking el-Bashir for his words."
Mr Bakheit said the Darfur rebel stand against the fighting in N'Djamena was based on humanitarianism. The Darfur rebel movement noted that, despite its meagre resources, Chad was host to a sizable chunk of refugees from Darfur, driven out of their homes by Khartoum Government and its Janjaweed allies.
The rebel movement argued that the current instability is likely to aggravate this situation and lead to a new crisis of Chadian refugees in the area.
On February 9, the UN Humanitarian Affairs office in Chad put the figure of new refugees at 30,000, as the world body continued planning for 50,000 refugees.
The irony is that only last November, the UN criticised the Darfur rebels, as they claimed winning decisive battle after decisive battle against the Sudan government, for displacing people in Darfur.
The Darfur rebels said they oppose the Chadian offensive because of the need for good neighbourliness.
JEM said it denounces 'in the strongest term el-Bashir's latest military gamble to change the political system in Chad and impose a puppet government in N'Djamena, the capital of Chad."
The rebels said they were extremely concerned and equally saddened by the unnecessary death caused by Khartoum's intervention in internal Chadian affairs; "an intervention that has to be seen in the light of desired good neighbourly relations, common ethnic relations and international conventions."
"JEM is committed to good neighbourly relations and creation of (an) environment that is conducive to peaceful border coexistence between Chadian and Sudanese people," the Darfur rebel leader said. "This blatant intervention has now put this goal in serious jeopardy."
But then again Chad has been bank rolling Sudan's Darfur rebels.
Jean-Marie Guehenno, the head of the UN peacekeeping operations, while addressing the UN Security Council last week, said the fighting in Chad and Darfur was a proxy war with each country using the other side's rebels.
The cliffhanger was this: "JEM reminds el-Bashir yet again that Africa has to put an end to military piracy, coup culture and undemocratic change of political governments in the continent."
Put another way, a rebel group plotting to take power was condemning the very action of fighting to take power, a blow-back to its own very existence.
The ironies during the course of the Chad/Darfur conflicts in the past week have had all the hallmarks of the theatre of the absurd.
The ensuing drama probably has something to do with the fact that the stakes were so high for the Darfur rebels.
For Darfur rebels, had the Sudan-backed rebels, overthrown Idriss Deby's regime, everything after that could have easily come down to a checkmate.
The Darfur rebel supply lines would have been disrupted.
And Sudan would have come out of this emboldened; overthrowing a neighbouring regime has historically brought with it more than bragging rights.
When in 1997, Uganda, Rwanda, and Angolan forces overthrew the Mobutu Government in DR-Congo and installed Laurent Kabila the puppet, they reaped bad press but became regional kingmakers and a must-stop for many an investor who wanted to venture into Congo.
When Angola helped Congo beat back the Uganda/Rwanda attempt to overthrow Laurent Kabila's government, it forked up millions of dollars in contracts and inherited the bragging rights in Congo. Ethiopia's operations in Somalia make Premier Meles Zenawi relevant at a time when the world could have come hard on him for the hundreds murdered during and after the national elections.
"JEM would like to congratulate President Deby and the Chadian people in their decisive victory against the (Government of Sudan) and its mercenary backed invasion of Chad," a JEM spokesman said in a statement.
The excitement was short-lived. If, as UN Undersecretary-General Guehenno said, this is a proxy theatre of war.
Sudan's proxies, the Chadian rebels are still in Chad, not far from the capital, but Chad's proxies, the Darfur rebels seem to have suffered some strategic losses.
On February 9, the Sudan military claimed that it beat back the Darfur rebels and the rebel survivors were crossing into Chad.
"The army managed to drive out rebels in these regions who fled to Chad, leaving behind them a large number of dead and wounded, as well as quantities of equipment of which we are in the process of making a stock list," army spokesman Othman Mohammed al-Agbash told the Sudan News Agency.
The rebels agree that there has been a government offensive. But they differ on who is moving into Chad: Darfur rebels or civilians? In a statement the same day, the Darfur rebels said the government killed 200 civilians in Abu Surug, 45 kilometres north of Al Geneina and the Darfur populations are on the run to Chad.
If it was as successful as the Sudan military claims, their offensive appears set to achieve two objectives.
The Sudan military offensive thwarts a potential Darfur rebel resurgence. The failure of Sudan-backed rebels in Chad could have emboldened the Darfur rebels - who announced that they fought alongside Chadian forces to defend N'Djamena.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
