Fears of deteriorating security conditions increased. Amidst a state of great fragmentation among the armed movements and the expansion of the Rapid Support Forces, which control about 80 percent of the region’s areas.
During the past few weeks, the Rapid Support Forces took control of a number of strategic cities in the region, which has an area of 493 thousand square kilometers and is inhabited by 6 million people. It links Sudan’s borders with Libya, Chad, and Central Africa.
Coinciding with the advance of the Rapid Support Forces towards the city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, a map of new alliances and alignments emerged among the armed movements, which fragmented into about 87 movements over the past years.
In addition to the fragmentation of armed movements; The spread of more than two million weapons in the hands of residents raises great concerns and casts a dark shadow over the future of the region.
Since the outbreak of fighting between the army and the Rapid Support Forces in mid-April, many Darfuri movements have remained silent, and some have taken a neutral position. But the recent period has witnessed a remarkable development that has reinforced fears of further fragmentation.
While Jibril Ibrahim and Minni Arki Minawi, leaders of the Justice and Equality and Sudan Liberation Movements, announced in a press conference they held in Port Sudan in the east of the country their alignment with the army, armed factions affiliated with them and operating inside the region said that they are part of the joint forces that were formed after the signing of the Sudanese peace agreement in October. 2020: It will coordinate its security operations with the Rapid Support Forces.
While Jibril and Minawi held their press conference under a banner bearing the name “Darfian movements that signed the peace agreement,” 3 of those movements, led by the dismissed members of the Sovereignty Council, Al-Hadi Idris and Al-Tahir Hajar, and the also dismissed Minister of Livestock, Hafez Ibrahim Abdel Nabi, refused. What happened at the conference? She said that it does not represent the position of the movements that signed the peace agreement.
The leaders of the three movements explained, “We were not present at the conference and we did not authorize anyone to participate or speak on our behalf, and we are not concerned with the positions taken in it.”
They added in a statement issued on Friday that the conference participants’ declared bias toward one of the two sides of the conflict contradicts the position agreed upon since the start of the war, which is neutrality and calls for stopping the war through peaceful, negotiated means and restoring civil transformation.
The three movements accused elements of the Brotherhood regime, which was overthrown in April 2019, of working to drag the Darfur region into a new civil war. It called on both sides of the fighting to engage in the Jeddah Platform negotiations. She called on the leaders of the Native Administration, civil society organizations, and political forces to work to “ward off tribal strife and expose its parties.”
As the alignments become more intense, fears center around the possibility of the situation exploding to the point of leading to further deterioration of the humanitarian situation.
According to journalist Abdullah Ishaq, what is happening around El Fasher is a harbinger of a dangerous escalation. It requires dealing with it wisely to avoid an explosion that may be difficult to deal with. In this regard, he pointed to the efforts made by some wise men in the region.
Ishaq told Sky News Arabia that it is better for other parties not to intervene in the current conflict between the army and the Rapid Support Forces.
He explained, “The entry of other parties will fan the fire of this losing war, which everyone has acknowledged is a war in which there is no victor and that the defeated is the homeland and the people of Darfur, who have been suffering from a war that has lasted for more than two decades.”
Ishaq considered that the danger lies in the state of fragmentation experienced by the Darfuri armed movements, which he saw as “incompatible and not understanding even within themselves.”
It is noteworthy that the Darfur region is witnessing the longest war on the African continent, which has continued since 2003 and led to the death of 300,000 people and the displacement of millions.
The security and humanitarian conditions are seriously deteriorating in most areas of the region amid reports indicating that the death toll has risen over the past seven months to more than 5,000 people, including a large number of children and women, which has led to the displacement of about a million people to neighboring Chad and a number of interior areas in the region. Territory.
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