Rebel groups fighting the government in western Sudan have suffered heavy losses, according to a senior government official.
| This is the government side of the story... |
Gutbi al-Mahdi, President Omar al-Bashir’s political adviser, made the claim as the military bombarded rebel camps in the region in a bid to crush an insurgency. The official denied rebel accusations that the government was targeting civilians, but said the mlitary was bombing four rebel camps in Darfur, an impoverished region that borders Chad. He said the rebels had suffered "a lot of losses".
| They're all rebels, of course, so it doesn't matter who you bomb... |
Reporters in the region heard loud explosions on Tuesday as planes circled over the border town of Tine. Al-Mahdi said there is a rebel camp in Tine on the Sudanese side of the border. Refugees fleeing into Chad have said their villages were destroyed by bombs and raids by Arab militia. They accuse government forces of practicing a scorched earth policy in fighting the insurgency. The UN refugee agency said on Tuesday it was registering thousands of newly arrived refugees along the Chad-Sudan border.
| Rebels, every one of them... |
Refugees from the village of Habila told UN officials that a large aircraft and helicopters bombed their homes 10 days ago. Armed men then entered the village on horses and camels, stealing cattle and chasing people away, the refugees said. Al-Mahdi said the government was isolating the rebels and talking to community leaders to solve the region’s problems. He said the rebels were making unreasonable demands. "In the beginning... we had an agreement, but when the politicians started to use the situation, things changed and the talks broke down," al-Mahdi said. "So the government felt its responsibility, number one, is to maintain order in the country, and second, it is to try to solve the problem on a political level."
| "Sometimes you just have to kill most of the population to maintain order, don't you?" |
He said the rebels’ new demands included self-determination for Darfur and a large share of Sudan’s oil wealth. Their earlier demands - "mainly services, development in the region, securing the villages" - were very reasonable, he said.
| "We didn't bother accepting them, but they were very reasonable..." |
The rebels, however, say they are fighting for an equal share of the nation’s wealth and greater political representation, not self-determination. Zakaria Muhammad Ali, secretary-general of the Justice and Equality Movement, said the government wanted to deal with the rebellion as a "security problem", not a political issue. "The people in the central government do not want power and economic sharing, this is our issue," Ali said. |