thE WaR in thE WEst 229groups that has retained Turabi’s revolutionary radicalism rather than
his religious ideology.
Wider political changes soon accentuated the feeling of the marginal-
ization of Darfur. In 2002 talks started in Kenya, between the government
and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement with the aim of putting
an end to almost twenty years of fighting in the south and the Nuba
mountains. Darfuris had no voice in these negotiations. In April 2003
during a key moment of the talks in Naivasha, when security questions
were being addressed, Darfur rebels carried out their first major operation:
an attack on the El-Fasher airport which destroyed several government
aircraft. This marked the beginning of open conflict in Darfur.
Two months before the attack on El-Fasher, the recently-formed Darfur
Liberation Movement, which had been carrying out sporadic attacks on
government targets for about a year, changed its name to the Sudan
Liberation Army/ Movement. The name was clearly inspired by the
SPLM and it is impossible not to remark on the similarity in the political
programmes of the two organizations. The SLA embraced the concept
of a unified ‘New Sudan’ first articulated by John Garang, the leader of
the SPLM/A. In contrast to the programme of the JEM, the other Darfur
rebel movement, the SLA manifesto was resolutely secular. The SLA
also imitated the SPLA at the strategic level; aiming to administer rural
areas of Darfur where the government controlled only small garrison
towns, largely deserted by their civilian population. And it tried to draw
international aid and attention of the international community to these
‘liberated areas’, as the SPLA had done.
The SPLA had made some previous, ineffectual attempts to encourage
an insurgency in Darfur, and as the conflict developed they offered some
limited support to the SLA. Advisors from the south, and Darfurians
from the ranks of the SPLA, joined the new front. But links quickly
disintegrated after the CPA was signed and John Garang died. ‘His death
is a loss for all of Sudan’, said Adam Yaqub, a Zaghawa commander from
the SLA who had previously spent five years in the SPLA. ‘But peace
in Darfur would not have come from him. Peace will come from us, byThe Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors weapons and talks.’
(www.riftvalley.net).