Day: December 9, 2022

Two were killed and 12 were wounded in attacks in Central Darfur this week whilst three displaced people were kidnapped and others were robbed in North Darfur. Especially farmers and displaced people were targeted.

Three people were wounded and a number of houses were burned in an attack by gunmen in Mukjar locality, Central Darfur, yesterday morning.

Radio Dabanga’s sources reported that about 150 armed men on horses and motorcycles attacked a neighbourhood in Dambar after a relative of theirs was found dead in the area.

The heavy shooting led to the burning of several houses and the injury of two men and a woman.

Government forces moved from Mukjar town, the locality’s capital, to Dambar yesterday.

Two other people were killed and nine others wounded in an attack by armed herders in Sidir, east of Bindisi in Central Darfur, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Relatives of the victims told Radio Dabanga that the herders beat farmer Feisal Ali Adam to death inside his farm on Tuesday. A search posse formed by people from the area traced the killers the following day.

When they approached the nomads’ settlement, the attackers fired a barrage of bullets towards them, killing of Mohamed Idris Kindi on the spot and wounding nine others.

Policemen and paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces arrived at the place in conjunction with the search posse but were unable to confront the attackers.

The RSF were able to evacuate the wounded after the arrival of additional forces.

North Darfur violence

On Wednesday evening, an armed group kidnapped three people from the Zamzam camp for the displaced south of El Fasher, capital of North Darfur.

A camp activist told Radio Dabanga that gunmen seized Salem Kabbashi, Daoud Kheirallah, and Suleiman Khater and took them to an unknown destination. He said that a search posse has been formed to find them.

In El Salam camp near Kabkabiya, three homes burned when a large group of gunmen raided the camp and fired heavily around them on Wednesday evening. They plundered two other houses.

Adam Juma told Radio Dabanga that the gunmen stayed for about three hours in the valley on the outskirts of Kabkabiya and continued shooting while the authorities remained silent.

In Saraf Omra, also North Darfur, two young men were injured in an armed robbery on Tuesday.

Two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a rickshaw in the area of Um Hajara. They hit its two passengers and robbed them of their belongings.

Darfur conflict

Darfur has a long history of strife between nomadic Arab herders and non-Arab African herders or sedentary farmers. Arab tribesmen were recruited by the previous regime of dictator Omar Al Bashir to join the Janjaweed militias. Al Bashir employed these Arab militias to repress a revolt over ethnic marginalisation in the region, mainly targeting non-Arab African farmers.

During the war in Darfur, farmers faced atrocious attacks on their villages by the Janjaweed in which their farms were occupied. Millions had to flee and found refuge in camps for the displaced but even these were, and still are, frequently attacked.

Source: Radio Dabanga

People in the country complain about the worsening cooking gas crisis and the scarcity of gas distribution centres in various states of Sudan. The crisis comes not long after an attack on a West Kordofan oil field and a report in which whistle-blowers in Sudan’s oil industry reveal that the military intentionally neglected securing oil fields.

The price of a cooking gas cylinder in Khartoum has risen to SDG 3,500 (USD $6.15) compared to SDG 2,500 before the crisis began.

People in the states told Rasd [Monitor] Sudan Network that the price of a cooking gas cylinder now ranges between SDG 8,000 and SDG 10,000.

They complained about the lack of alternatives with “the insanely high prices of electricity and charcoal”.

Earlier this month, Radio Dabanga reported that people had to wait in long queues for cooking gas.

Store owners, who complain about the limited quantities of gas cylinders they receive, attributed the scarcity of cooking gas to the suspension of the operations at the refinery of Khartoum at the end of last month, following the sabotage of the oil pipeline that runs from West Kordofan to Khartoum last month.

Rasd Sudan Network also said yesterday that the crisis began with the Oil Ministry’s announcement that the refinery in Khartoum had entered maintenance last month.

Conflict and tension surrounding the oil industry in Kordofan had been a bone of contention for many years. A week ago, Sudan’s Oil Workers Association reported that the Balila oil field in West Kordofan was attacked with a number of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

Sudan recently reported on an investigation by Sudan In The News in which whistle-blowers in Sudan’s oil industry reveal that the military intentionally neglected securing oil fields in order to exacerbate the fuel shortages, providing justification for the October 25, 2021, coup.

At a time when fuel prices rise further, the investigation explained that much of this crisis was avoidable and that the deliberate lack of security at oil fields plays a big role.

Source: Radio Dabanga

Beja protesters have closed the gate to the Southern Port in Red Sea state since Wednesday evening in protest against the Framework Agreement, signed on Monday. Port workers are doing their best to continue work inside the port as usual.

The Red Sea state Sea Ports Authority announced that work is proceeding normally in the Southern Port, but workers told Radio Dabanga that there are dozens of Beja protesters blocking the gate to the port, preventing lorries from entering.

The seaport workers’ trade union leader Osman Tahir told Radio Dabanga that work inside the port is indeed proceeding as usual and the gate closure has not (yet) affected work.

The port workers, and other people in Port Sudan who depend on the Southern Port, reject the protest action, Tahir explained. He also pointed to the negative impact of the previous closure on the stakeholders.

Tahir accused Mohamed Tahir Eila, Governor of Red Sea state between 2005 and 2015, of inciting Sheiba Dirar, head of the National Beja Congress and the Eastern Sudan Movements Alliance, to close the port and called on them not to use the work at the harbour as leverage in political conflicts.

Dirar confirmed to Radio Dabanga that they have closed the Southern Port since Wednesday evening to protest against the Framework Agreement, but that they also call for more employment and other development-related demands.

On Wednesday, he threatened to block access to the Northern Port and the Suakin Port as well. Some news media reported today that ‘Dirar’s protesters’ have temporarily withdrawn from blocking the port.

Dirar said that the closure of the port does not affect the entire city’s population, but limited groups. Workers are allowed to enter, lorries are not, until their demands are taken seriously.

Eisa Dabloub, Director of Operations at the Southern Port, said he intends to meet with Dirar as the closure of the Southern Port gate “causes harm to all people” even though Acting Director of the Southern Port Abdelmutalib Osman said that the closure of the gate does not affect the work of the port.

He also pointed to the impact of the previous closure on the economy and the reputation of the Maritime Ports Authority and explained that the port has only just begun to recover.

The port workers themselves said in a press statement on Wednesday that “the cause of eastern Sudan is a just cause, as the east has suffered injustice and marginalisation by all governments since the independence of Sudan.

“The eastern Sudan cause, however, should be dealt with seriously and not be abused in order to settle political disputes [..] supposedly in the name of eastern Sudan.”

“The closing of the port to put pressure on governments is a weapon that affects the port workers before anyone else as they are the weakest segment. Their income depends on their sweat and daily work as they do not have monthly salaries like those working for state or private companies,” the workers said. If they cannot work, they will not get paid.

Framework Agreement

The Framework Agreement is the newest agreement between a civilian alliance, dominated by the mainstream Forces for Freedom and Change-Central Council (FFC-CC), and the military junta.

Five important contentious issues for the agreement between the military junta and the civilian components still have to be discussed further as there are differing opinions within the Forces for Freedom and Change coalition. The outcomes will be laid down in a ‘final agreement’ which is expected to be reached at the end of this December.

Governance in Eastern Sudan is one of the thorny issues. Others are concerned with justice and transitional justice, security and military reform, approaches to empowerment* removal, and possible amendments to the Juba Peace Agreement.

The Eastern Sudan Groups Coordination Committee described the framework agreement as “a suspicious, imported settlement based on a secular constitution” in a press statement on Tuesday.

Escalatory steps

Nazir Sayed Tirik, co-deputy head of the Forces for Freedom and Change-Democratic Block (FFC-DB) and chair of the High Council of Beja Nazirs and Independent Chieftains, said that eastern Sudan rejected the framework agreement and may take “escalatory steps” on Wednesday.

The FFC-DB, dominated by rebel movements and eastern Sudan opposition parties and groups, announced earlier that they will join “the demonstrators in the street” and “to bring the framework agreement down within three months.”

In a press conference in Khartoum, he repeated his stance that the issue of eastern Sudan “cannot be solved by others” and called on “the Commander-in-Chief of the Sudan Armed Forces and the mediators to sit with them in a separate platform to reach an agreement to be included in the various documents”.

Source: Radio Dabanga

The Marches of Millions launched in Khartoum’s cities and Wad Madani, capital of El Gezira, yesterday under the slogan ‘Reject the False Power’. Protesters were again confronted with excessive violence.

Government forces faced the protesters in Khartoum and Omdurman with tear gas and stun grenades, in vast amounts.

Demonstrators told Radio Dabanga that the authorities had closed El Mak Nimir Bridge between Khartoum and Khartoum North (Bahri) in the early morning.

The forces prevented the protesters in Khartoum from reaching El Gasr (Palace) Street, close to the Republican Palace in Khartoum, and the authorities took similar measures to confront protesters in the vicinity of the Parliament building in Omdurman.

Sudan’s resistance committees have been protesting under the slogan of “No Negotiations, No Agreements, No Bargaining” (with the military), dubbed the three nos. They reject the framework agreement that was signed on Monday.

The committees have been against any form of collaboration with the military institution. Many families of martyrs, pro-democracy protesters killed by security forces also fear for an agreement that might allow the military to escape accountability.

“Safe areas”

Resistance committees in Khartoum described efforts by the authorities to define safe demonstration areas as “a new dictatorship of the forces that signed the framework agreement”.

Mohamed Anwar, the official spokesperson for the Khartoum Resistance Committees, stressed that the right to demonstrate is guaranteed to everyone, and should count everywhere, without any demarcation of safe or unsafe locations.

Emergency Lawyer Osman El Basri told Radio Dabanga that “determining routes and places for peaceful demonstrations, as reported in some statements of groups that signed the framework agreement, represents restrictions on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly and contradicts the [constitutional] document on which the framework agreement was built”.

Source: Radio Dabanga