Darfur's Divided Rebellion (Page 3)

One such man is Mohammedain Dosa, a slick character flaunting a suit, manageable English and a short stack of colorful letterhead with the name of his party, the Sudan Democratic Constitutional Party (SDCP), written large across the top. I meet Dosa in an Internet cafe in N'djamena, where he is promoting the SDCP to Darfur advocacy groups in the US. Throughout the several days I spend with him he hounds my colleague and me, insisting we "forge a link between the American media and my party," and asks me to photograph him using our satellite phone so he can post it on his future website.

He reluctantly admits he doesn't have troops on the ground in Darfur. He, the president, is also the only member of his party that I meet. Nevertheless, he insists that his party and others should be included in all negotiations. "If we want democracy in our country, we need to first implement it among ourselves," he says. "Darfur doesn't just mean JEM and the SLA."

He warns: "If people aren't included in negotiations, there is nothing to bind them to an agreement." He informs me that he submitted a petition to the UN to be included in the Arusha talks, which he says was met with no response. A senior official of the UN Refugee Agency in Chad, who asked not to be named, said the agency received many written requests from previously unknown groups to be flown to the negotiations. "I threw them right into the wastebasket," she said.

Dosa takes us on a tour of Darfur's "new generation" of opposition, an assortment of groups unheard of a year ago that mostly came out of the collective disillusionment with the DPA. In a whitewashed house along one of the Chadian capital's dusty streets, Dosa introduces me to the United Revolutionary Force Front. The group, while relatively small, contradicts conventional understandings of the Darfur conflict as a neatly Arab versus black war: the mostly Arab movement finds it no contradiction that Arabs in Darfur should want to fight the government. "This [war] isn't between Arabs and blacks or blacks and Arabs," says the mustachioed secretary-general, Muhammad Ibrahim Muhammad Brima. He says the government has exacerbated local tensions to keep its hold on power. "The government insists it is a conflict within our community, but the conflict in Darfur is a political one. The center controls everything in our region," he says.

* * *

In Darfur, the radio announces upcoming steps in the AU/UN road map, but the people listening are incredulous. The AU and UN have set October 27 as the date for peace talks between the government and rebels, but most civilians and every fighter I talk to are not interested in anything that results in the president and the National Congress Party staying in power. After so many burned villages, broken agreements and endless horror stories that have become synonymous with Darfur, few here believe peace could exist under the NCP's rule. "It is absolutely necessary to change the ruling regime in Sudan. That is our first and final conviction," says Musabbal. "If [the government] isn't changed there will be nothing in Darfur."

But Al-Bashir probably won't back down easily. Shortly before I leave the rebel-held territories of Darfur, the young fighters under Mukhtar's command are polishing their antiaircraft guns, changing the tires on their trucks and loading the trucks with barrels of fuel. The government attacked their troops two days before in another part of Darfur and made a string of attacks against civilian-populated villages in recent weeks, and Mukhtar's faction is preparing to retaliate. He says it's the government's fault they didn't come to an agreement with the SLA-Unity faction, and he accuses Al-Bashir of attacking to keep the rebels divided so they pose no serious threat to Khartoum. Still, he is hopeful that their armies will unify soon. As he wipes his pistol down with diesel fuel, I ask him what he thinks about the potential for peace in Darfur. "I have rights and needs that I cannot forget," he answers, working the rag against the surface rust. "Once we get our rights and economic justice, then we'll talk about peace and security."

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