Darfur in Sudanese and Regional Contexts - Alex de Waal

Bridget Conley-Zilkic, Project Director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience, interviewed Sudan expert Alex de Waal yesterday as part of the USHMM's Voices on Genocide Prevention podcast series.

The interview focused mostly on shifting rebel allegiances inside Sudan, and how the fighting in Darfur is related to the conflict in Chad.

Click here to read or listen to the entire interview.

Some interesting points:

* The largest of the "Janjaweed" groups, headed by a man called Mohamed Hamdan Hemeti, received a major delivery of armaments in September and October of 2007 and then promptly mutiny, rebelled, fought the government, fought them very fiercely actually for a few months. Hemeti claims he has 20,000 troops with him, others say there are as few as 5,000, but either way he's one of the most substantial fighting forces in Darfur and had they gone over the rebels -- and they did sign some memorandums of understanding with the rebels -- it would have decisively shifted the military balance against the government. The government however managed to buy them back with monetary compensation, offers of positions in the army, etc. but it doesn't mean they bought their allegiance; it's just a tactical shift.

*The wars in Darfur and Chad are to all intents and purposes one and the same. They have the same belligerents, the same militias and rebel movements fight on both sides. And as far as the key players are concerned it is one and the same battlefield. The Darfur rebels, particularly the JEM, have been extensively armed and supported by Idriss Déby the President of Chad for about 2 years now and have done a lot of fighting in Chad, in fact including doing a lot of police and security work in N'djamena. The Chadians and JEM, essentially indistinguishable one from the other, have now gone on the counter offensive again and we have had fierce fighting with civilians has always been the main casualties, the main people suffering in the northern part of West Darfur. And this is likely to continue for some time unless some deal is done that brings JEM back into the government fold, which is never out of the question but it's looking rather remote at the moment.

*So it is correct to say a return to the bad old days, though the number of fatalities is much fewer than ever occurred in 2003, 2004, the area of operations is relatively confined.

*The government's attitude is that essentially it has militarily defeated the rebels and were it not for the continuing support of Chad, they wouldn't have a military problem on their hands. They have really little interest in peace talks because they don't frankly see any leverage that the rebels bring to bear other than the pressure from Chad. What they're concerned about in Khartoum is the international response. They see the European troops in Chad as partisan.