New Darfur political alliance formed in Ethiopian capital

The newly formed United Civil Forces alliance, chaired by Haroun Medeikhir, a leading member of the Darfuri Revolutionary Awakening Council (RAC), will present its members and vision in a press conference in Addis Ababa tomorrow.

Observers believe that the new coalition includes leaders who are closer in their political vision to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Medeikhir is a member of the RAC, set up by former militia leader Musa Hilal* in 2014.

Ibrahim Zariba, secretary-general of the new alliance, is a Zaghawa and expert in conflict affairs. He was a leading member of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), spokesman for the Sudan Revolutionary Front rebel alliance and its chief negotiator during the Juba peace talks in 2019-2020.

In an interview with Radio Dabanga reporter Ashraf Abdelaziz, Medeikhir spoke about their commitment “to put an end to the series of wars that have been raging in the country since independence, and to rebuild Sudan according to the alliance’s vision of rebuilding all its civil and military institutions on new and just foundations”.

He said he regretted that the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) did not send a delegation to the current negotiations round, organised by the USA, in Geneva, Switzerland. “This confirms that the SAF’s decision has been hijacked by the Islamists who infiltrated the army in the 1980s and later through the empowerment policies of Al Bashir and still control its command,” he said. “Reaching an agreement with the army in light of this hijack is very difficult.”

The United Civil Forces (UCF) is made up of 68 member groups that reject war. They consist of political, professional and civil society groups from various political and geographical backgrounds and rebel factions. In its general conference, held in Khartoum, that is mainly under control of the RSF, in early February, the members of the alliance approved its vision and elected Medeikhir as president and Zariba as secretary-general.

‘Liberating the army’

Medeikhir underscored the necessity of “liberating the SAF from the control of the Islamist regime, which dreams of returning to power through the army.

The RAC leader told Radio Dabanga that “these Islamists do not want to stop the war, as they are profiting from it. Through their blatant hostility to the international community, they will return Sudan to international isolation,” he said, and referred to demonstrations Islamists staged earlier this year in River Nile state and other states controlled by the army. “They chanted outdated slogans hostile to countries seeking to help the Sudanese stop the war and restore civilian rule.”

In a press statement on Wednesday, the UCF said that “The war that our country is witnessing has placed a great responsibility on our shoulders and made it necessary for us to unify our efforts nationally to confront the current challenges and chart the path towards a better future for us and for future generations”.

The statement welcomed the American initiative to invite the SAF and the RSF in Geneva and expressed its disappointment about the army’s refusal to attend. The alliance hopes that “the initiative’s efforts to include the army delegation in the negotiations will be crowned with success.

“This protracted war that has left negative effects and repercussions on the overall humanitarian situation must end. It requires urgent intervention to address the health disasters and famines that have caused suffering to civilians, especially women, the elderly, children, and people with special needs.”

The new alliance will “work with all partners in the region and the international community to achieve a new Sudanese state, which will be a state of citizenship based on rights and duties, free from the crises of the past, and dominated by the values ​​of freedom, peace, justice and a decent live.”

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* Musa Hilal is the head of the Mahamid clan of the large Rizeigat herders tribe. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are mostly made up of members of impoverished herders’ clans in Darfur. RSF Commander Hemedti hails from the Abbala (camel-herders) Rizeigat Arabs based in Chad.

Hilal is held responsible for numerous atrocities committed in Darfur against civilians after the conflict erupted in 2003. In that year, he was released from prison by the Sudanese government with the purpose to mobilise Darfuri Arab herders to fight the insurgency in the region. With full government backing, his militiamen, popularly called janjaweed, targeted villages of African Darfuris. They rarely came near forces of the rebel movements. In 2006, the UN Security council imposed financial and travel sanctions on the janjaweed leader.

He was appointed Presidential Assistant for Federal Affairs in Khartoum in 2008. Five years later, however, he announced his defection from the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), returned to Darfur. He established the Revolutionary Awakening Council (RAC) in 2014.

The RAC, consists of Hilal’s militiamen and a number of North Darfur native administration leaders. RAC commanders took control of the Jebel Amer gold mines in North Darfur in July 2015. According to a UN Security Council report in April 2016, Hilal and his entourage were profiting from vast gold sales.

Two years later, when Hilal and his militiamen refused to hand in their arms to the authorities, he was held, together with a number of his relatives and followers, in a raid on his stronghold in Misteriya, North Darfur, in November 2017. His trial in Khartoum secretly began on April 30. Sources claim that Hemedti was behind Hilal’s detention, as the RSF commander took over the operation of the mines. According to a Global Witness report two years later, Hemedti had captured a large part of the gold market in Sudan by December 2019, and started arrangements to hand the Jebel Amer gold mines to the government.  

Musa Hilal was released from prison in March 2021, reportedly after intervention of RSF Deputy Commander Abdelrahim Dagalo. He returned to Darfur and not much has been heard about him since. In September last year, he announced a reconciliation initiative between cattle herders tribes in South Darfur.

The RAC joined the Forces for Freedom and Change in early 2019, that co-ruled the country with the military from September that year until the SAF-RSF coup d’état on October 25, 2021. The council withdrew from the coalition two weeks before the coup. “The RAC categorically rejects the Juba Peace Agreement and its tracks, as well as definitively refuses to line up with the remnants of the former [El Bashir] regime with all its facades and banners,” it explained in a statement on October 12.