LJM secretary-general prevented from speaking at South Darfur seminar

Forces of the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM), led by Dr El Tijani Sese, disturbed a seminar organised by LJM Secretary-General Bahar Idris Abu Garda in Nyala, capital of South Darfur, on Sunday.

The former rebel fighters stormed the government building where the seminar was held, and prevented Abu Garda from giving a lecture to the attending LJM members about the state of affairs regarding the implementation of the Doha Document of Peace in Darfur (DDPD), and the DDPD security arrangements.

“The situation was chaotic, and may have gotten out of hand, if Abu Garda had not left the building,” an attendant told Dabanga.

“A heavily armed group of LJM combatants from the Domaya military training camp arrived at the premises of the Abdallahi El Taisha Hall in Nyala in four vehicles,” he related. “They went straight to the podium, where one of them seized the microphone from the seminar’s facilitator.

“Abu Garda cancelled the seminar immediately. His guards stood up against the intruding forces. A fight could barely be prevented,” he said. “Abu Garda then angrily returned to the house of the governor, refusing to comment.

The deputy head of the LJM in South Darfur, Emadeldin Mohamed Osman, attributed the incident to grievances of the movement’s field commanders over the implementation of the security arrangements.

The LJM, formed in 2010 by 19 breakaway factions of the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Movement, signed the DDPD in July 2011 with the Sudanese government. The DDPD’s security arrangements protocol stipulated the implementation of the DDR within 45 days after the conclusion of the peace agreement. It took more than three years before the first LJM batches entered the Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (DDR) programme.

LJM field commander, and head of the Domaya Security Arrangements Committee, Abdelkarim Bakhit Mansour, commented by saying that the field commanders wanted to prevent the spill over of the political conflicts within the LJM to the movement’s military institution. “Besides, Abu Garda called us militiamen. We demanded an apology, but he refused.”

“The Darfur Regional Authority does not belong to Abu Garda or to Sese, but to the entire Darfuri population.”

At a briefing to native administration and civil society leaders in Nyala on Saturday, Dr El Tijani Sese, the head of the LJM, and the Darfur Regional Authority (DRA), admitted the existence of “sharp differences” within the LJM leadership. “The way the differences are handled, make us “look like children” to others.”

“We want to keep these problems within the leadership”, he stressed, “to preserve the unity of Darfur. The internal problems put the people of Darfur at risk, as the DRA does not belong to Abu Garda or to Sese, but to the entire Darfuri population.”

Sese also responded to the recent accusation by DRA Minister of Reconstruction, Development, and Infrastructure, Tajeldin Niyam, that $2 billion of the DRA funds “went into some people’s pockets”, saying that “this means a direct accusation of the National Bank of Omdurman”.  

“Yet, I do not think that the bank has agreed with contractors to steal the funds of the Authority. The accusations of theft and corruption within the DRA are explicitly targeting the DDPD, and the people of Darfur,” he noted.