Hemeti: ‘RSF will eliminate SLM-AW in Darfur’s Jebel Marra in three months’

The commander of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces government militia (RSF), Lt Gen Mohamed Hamdan (also known as Hemeti), vowed to eliminate the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM-AW) led by Abdel Wahid Nur in Jebel Marra in three months.

Hemeti was addressing displaced people during a visit by the governor of North Darfur Sharif Samouh and himself to Zamzam camp on Monday.

He said upon addressing the displaced people at the three camps of El Fasher on Monday that the next three months would see what he called “the liberation of Jebel Marra from Abdel Wahid and turning it into a tourist destination”.

He said that what he called “the rebellion in Darfur has completely been defeated and whoever believes otherwise is a loser”.

Hemeti called on the fighters of the SLM-AW “to join the RSF to protect citizens and promote peace and development”.

He stressed that his forces “will work to clean-up all areas of criminals, return land rights to their owners and return them to their families, arrest the outlaws, put them in prison and remove the obstacles of voluntary repatriation”.

SLM-AW

SLM-AW founder and leader Abdelwahid El Nur says he will only join peace negotiations after Khartoum has restored stability and security in Darfur.

The holdout leader El Nur, whose faction resolutely refuses to enter into talks or negotiations with the Khartoum government, reaffirmed that “the movement [SLM-AW] is continuing its struggle against the National Congress government in its steadfast positions of disarming the government’s militias, demanding compensation individually and collectively for the victims, and addressing the roots of the Sudanese crisis with equal citizenship, separation of religion and state, liberalism, and rule of law. All this must be done before talking about peace.”

‘Govt. exploiting cease fire’

On the current situation in Jebel Marra, El Nur accused the government of exploiting the declaration of a cease-fire for humanitarian reasons after the recent landslides in Jebel Marra.

He says that the government continues to bombard and attack the sites of the movement and the civilian areas: “Now there are large government movements armed with heavy weapons.” He says there is also intensive aerial bombardment on the movement’s sites.