thE WaR in thE WEst 237In recent years, tired of being considered by all – the other Arabs as
well as non-Arabs – as criminals, the Jalul of Sheikh Abdallah Abubakar
have slowly turned against the government, becoming closer to the Fur
rebels of the SLA faction led by Abelwahid Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur,
their neighbours living higher up in the mountains. Many other Arabs
also changed sides after the Abuja agreement of 2006. Absent from
the peace talks in Abuja, in Nigeria, the Abbala felt that they had been
let down by the government on questions as important as land and
disarmament.
The Abuja agreement did not bring peace, but it changed the structure
of the conflict. Arab groups that had been supported by the government
but who were less worried about obeying it than confirming their own land
conquests, started fighting amongst themselves. The bloodiest fighting
in Darfur in recent years has not been between Arabs and non-Arabs,
but between well-armed Arab groups. On the other side, rebel factions,
sometimes fighting against one another, have become more and more
numerous. This fragmentation has been caused by the government, ready
to sponsor groups, as well as by the international community, which is
now more flexible than at Abuja and ready to acknowledge any war leader
or even to create them.
The international community, Darfur civil society and many rebel
leaders have made the unification of the rebel groups a priority. But
attempts at unification or reunification have generally been short-lived.
In 2006, soon after Abuja, the JEM and the Zaghawa factions of the SLA
formed the NRF (National Redemption Front). The new front enjoyed
significant victories against Mini Menawi’s pro-government forces, then
against government troops. But the JEM became involved in civil war in
Chad fighting on the side of the President of Chad, Idriss Déby, himself
a Zaghawa, against Chadian rebels backed by Khartoum. And the SLA,
already divided, kept splintering along ethnic lines: the ‘unity confer-
ence’ which took place in April 2007 in Ammaray, North Darfur, was
boycotted by the Fur and gave birth only to a purely Zaghawa faction,
ironically called SLA-Unity.The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors The founder of the SLA, Abdel Wahid Mohamed al-Nur, lives in
(www.riftvalley.net).