Internal differences, conflicting goals and a lack of coordination among Sudanese rebel groups are obstructing international efforts to reach a peace agreement with the government over Darfur, diplomats and aid workers say.
Two rebel groups launched an uprising against Khartoum early last year and accused the government of arming Arab militiamen to loot and burn villages to stamp out the rebellion.
The conflict has killed 50,000 people, displaced more than 1 million and left about 2 million in need of aid. The UN calls Darfur the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
International bodies, including the African Union, persuaded the two sides to agree a ceasefire in Chad in April, and to sit down at peace talks in Ethiopia last month, which broke down after the rebels set preconditions that the government rejected.
The rebels have since said they were just requests, not preconditions for talks. But some say disarray among rebel ranks, mixed messages and the different agendas of the two main groups have frustrated efforts to resolve the conflict.
"The factionalism of the (rebel) leadership almost derailed talks in N'Djamena and set back the talks in Addis Ababa," said one African Union official working on the Darfur issue.
A Western diplomat based in Khartoum said: "I doubt they are both reading from the same hymn sheet."
Other analysts say that as international pressure on Khartoum builds, rebels are content to drag their feet in peace negotiations in the hope of winning greater concessions.
The Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), with around 40,000 fighters each, took up arms against Khartoum charging the government had neglected the vast region the size of France.
The government turned to the existing janjaweed militias, drawn from the nomadic Arab population, as auxiliary forces to suppress the rebels and non-Arab villagers considered to be their allies.
MIXED MESSAGES
Khartoum denies supporting the janjaweed but have agreed to try to disarm them under threat of possible sanctions by the UN.
The African Union has moved ahead on a tandem path, proposing another round of peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria on Aug. 23, but there is uncertainty over whether the rebels will attend.
On Thursday the two groups said they would attend the talks, but a JEM official said the date was unsuitable.
The response follows a pattern of often contradictory rebel statements from spokesmen who change frequently.
"It's a dilemma and, as the time for Abuja talks comes closer, I imagine it will get worse," an African Union official said.
"This is particularly a concern with JEM ... SLM is easier to deal with. The problem with them is less acute," he added.
"With JEM we have had splinter groups claiming to talk for the whole group ... it's difficult to know who talks for the group."
Rebel leaders, who have consistently angled for foreign intervention in Darfur, say reports of infighting amongst the leadership were part of a government ploy to discredit them.
"There are mistakes sometimes from some officials who say things that are not our policy," said SLM chairman Abdel Wahed Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur, blaming that on poor communications.
He said he was the overall leader of the group and took the final decision in political matters. But another SLM leader, Minni Arcua Minnawi, had previously told reporters he was the leader of the group, also known as the SLA.
"It is often unclear who speaks for the group or what section of the group they speak for. It is also unclear who speaks for the group at all and who doesn't," said one aid official who deals with SLM leaders on a regular basis.
STRENGTH IN UNITY
John Prendergast, a Sudan expert in Washington, said if Khartoum found the will to make the concessions for peace, including addressing rebel demands for wealth and power distribution, consensus among rebels would become all the more important.
"It is a problem of personality [between leaders], largely driven by how quickly the rebels were made to confront what their agenda will be," said Prendergast, special adviser to the International Crisis Group president for Africa.
If the rebels failed to find internal cohesion they would be unable to negotiate with the government on key issues, Prendergast said. But he stressed the initial responsibility towards finding a political solution was with the government.
The SLM holds territory in Darfur and observers say it is made up of three of the area's main tribes with substantial support among Darfur's settled farming population.
But a recent split is said to have left JEM's Europe-based political leadership with little control over events in Darfur. The government accuses JEM of links to jailed Sudanese Islamist Hassan al-Turabi, who hosted Osama bin Laden in the 1990s.
Turabi was once a powerful figure in the Islamist government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir but is now one of its most prominent opponents. Khartoum says his Popular Congress has funded JEM rebels, who deny the claim.
The situation is also complicated by outside influences.
SLM and JEM are believed to have received weapons from sympathizers in neighboring Chad with tribal affiliations to the groups. Both movements have recently opened offices in Eritrea's capital Asmara. Khartoum has accused its neighbor Eritrea of supporting the rebels and of training rebels.
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
RSS