Darfur’s Armed Movements End "Neutrality,” Decide to Fight Alongside Sudan’s Army
(AWP) - The armed struggle movements signatories of the Juba-Darfur peace agreement announced an “end to neutrality” and the joining of military operations on all fronts, vehemently condemning “violations of the Rapid Support Forces, practices against the homeland and citizens and crimes against humanity, including the right to live.”
The movements emphasized their insistence on the unity of Sudan, noting they would not allow “a current agenda to disintegrate Sudan.”
According to a statement by the armed struggle movements, read out during a press conference in Port Sudan city, the movements asserted that they would not allow “the dismantling of Sudan nor allow having Darfur as a means to this end.”
They warned the groups that seek to “disrupt Sudan through the help of foreign parties with the aim of establishing independent statelets on the debris of the State of Sudan.”
“In the light of the risks posed to Sudan’s unity and the repeated attacks by the militias on cities and villages and their assaults on citizens and killing them and dragging their bodies and also of the current threats to humanitarian and trade convoys by cutting off routes of provisions for the cities and regions, we wash our hands of any neutrality and announce our joining of military operations on all fronts without the least hesitation,” said Mostafa Harun, a spokesman for the armed struggle movements.
For his part, Minni Arko Minnawi, Governor of Darfur, revealed that more than 50 of the fighters of armed movements have been killed in Darfur while on their duty of protection of humanitarian convoys, markets and banks and the resistance to sexual violations and road blocking.
“The joint force we are commanding is composed of all Darfur groups that signed a peace agreement. It already has more than 50 martyrs. This is for you to understand very well lest you should think that we have just woken up from our slumber. We are working in silence. We do not need speech words. More than 50 people were dead in order to protect the humanitarian convoys, road and markets and to resist the bank plundering and raping. Accordingly, we can never be neutral while we are watching crimes being committed,” stressed Minnawi.
The movements urged the international community and regional actors to take a “clear stance” to bring this war to an end and preserve Sudan’s unity and territorial integrity.
They urged the African Union (AU) to stop the “violations and genocides” being perpetrated now in Darfur.
They also emphasized that the solution to this conflict would be to reach an immediate ceasefire, taking into account Sudan’s sovereignty and unity and to broker a deal over a Sudanese national project through a purely-Sudanese will.