Author: Web Desk

On Saturday, pictures of dead Russians on the border between the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, and Sudan, began to appear on social media.

A security expert, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that there have been “recurring clashes” between the Russian forces affiliated with the Russian Wagner militia and gunmen in the mining areas at the borders of the three countries. He warned that the situation could develop without giving any further details.

Sudanese people living on the border confirmed that Russian forces have been deployed widely along the western border of Sudan, in interviews with Radio Dabanga. Earlier this month, the Sudan News Agency (SUNA) reported that a large joint force of paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, army soldiers, and other Sudanese security forces was deployed to secure the border strip between Sudan and CAR on January 4.

The commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and vice-president of the Sovereignty Council, Lt Gen Mohamed ‘Hemeti’ Dagalo, on January 2 accused unnamed Sudanese groups of mobilising their forces on the border with CAR as “part of efforts to create change in the neighbouring country.”

The commander of the Sudan Armed Forces and president of the Sovereignty Council, Lt Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan, has denied the involvement of any Sudanese party in clashes on the border.

Enhanced capacity

Sudan and Chad agreed on the urgent need to enhance the capacity of the countries’ joint forces on Sunday.

In the face of “increasingly frequent security challenges” along the border, El Burhan and Chadian President Mohamed Idris Deby met in N’Djamena to discuss sharing intelligence and information between the security services.

Both sides agreed on the need for strong and consistent action to contain irregular migration and arms smuggling. The two presidents also decided to hold a cross-border forum on security and development before the end of 2023 in Abeche.

The Presidents’ joint statement also addressed the need to activate the joint Sudan-CAR-Chad Tripartite Force that was established on January 18, 2005, in Khartoum to combat insecurity.

The two parties stressed the urgent need to complete the railway project and road infrastructure between Chad and Sudan as soon as possible to facilitate economic and commercial exchange.

Security tensions

Ashraf Abdelaziz, editor-in-chief of El Jareeda newspaper, told Radio Dabanga that El Burhan’s one-day visit to N’Djamena aimed to discuss mutual accusations about “certain forces” operating at the border.

He said that Hemeti will travel to Chad today to discuss security tensions and the role of the Rapid Support Forces in the border areas.

Abdelaziz said that it is important to note that Chad has made multiple statements over the past few years about being “surrounded by Russian mercenaries from all sides, especially along the borders of Sudan, Libya, and CAR.”

Wagner Group

The Wagner Group is a Russian paramilitary organisation, variously described as a private military company, a network of mercenaries, or a de facto private army of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The Hemeti-Wagner connection was at the heart of” Head of Military Intelligence, Mohamed Ali Subir’s, visit to Washington this month, according to an article by Antoine Galindo and Antoine Rolland in Africa Intelligence.

“By bringing [El Burhan] back into its fold, the US hopes to tip the balance of power between the junta leader and Hemeti in favour of the former.” According to the article, published on Thursday, an alliance with the Wagner Group “could guarantee the RSF access to several gold mines.”

Russian Wagner mercenaries, which reportedly have been present in South Darfur since 2021, have been accused of attacks on artisanal gold miners in Um Dafug locality, close to the border with CAR. The Darfur Bar Association (DBA) confirmed the presence of the mercenaries on June 24.

Radio Dabanga reported the presence of about 500 Russian soldiers who were received and hosted by the Sudanese government in a camp 15 kilometres south of Um Dafug in July 2018.

Historically, relations between Sudan and Russia have been steady. Omar Al Bashir met with President Vladimir Putin in 2017 and 2018 to invite more Russian companies to invest in Sudan. January 2019, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that private Russian companies were training the army in Sudan.

A Sudanese delegation headed by the commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and vice-president of the Sovereignty Council, Lt Gen Mohamed ‘Hemeti’ Dagalo, arrived in Moscow on February 23 last year, a day before Russia invaded Ukraine. According to political analyst Magdi El Gizouli, the visit to Russia was arranged by the Russian “Wagner mercenaries in order to find a way out for their ally in Sudan, and to ensure his continuation in power so that they can continue to plunder the country’s resources”.

Source: Radio Dabanga

Anonymous sources told Radio Dabanga that a workshop evaluating and amending the 2020?Juba Peace Agreement?(JPA), which is being organised by the South Sudanese mediation team for mid-February in Juba, was requested by rebel signatories.

The Juba workshop contradicts the JPA dialogue conference being held by signatories to the Framework Agreement in Khartoum tomorrow, said the sources. They said that the Southern Sudanese mediators already sent workshop invitations to the leaders of the 13 rebel movements that signed the peace agreement in 2020.

The?review of the JPA, signed by the Sudanese government and members of the Sudan Revolutionary Front rebel alliance on October 3, 2020, is part of the political process the military junta and more than 40 political parties and civil society groups agreed upon in the?Framework Agreement?signed on December 5 last year. About 400 people, including displaced and other victims of armed conflicts in the country, will participate in the conference.

It was agreed that five important but contentious issues would be discussed by the civilian signatories of the Framework Agreement in separate dialogue conferences, under the umbrella of the Forces of Freedom and Change-Central Council (FFC-CC) and under auspices of the AU-IGAD-UNITAMS Trilateral Mechanism. The outcomes are to be incorporated in a Final Agreement with the military, after which a civilian government of non-partisan technocrats will be formed.

On January 19, the FCC-CC agreed with the Trilateral Mechanism that the international mediation team would take over the organisation of the conferences on the review of the JPA and the issue of governance in eastern Sudan.

No contradiction

Malik Agar, rebel leader and member of the Sovereignty Council, confirmed to Radio Dabanga on Thursday that the South Sudanese mediation team has invited all the signatories to the JPA, including the Sudanese government, to a workshop on the implementation of the agreement in Juba in February.

El Hadi Idris,?leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement-Transitional Council faction that signed the Framework Agreement and member of the Sovereignty Council, told Radio Dabanga on Sunday that he does not believe that the two workshops on the JPA will contradict each other.

“The South Sudanese government has been invited to participate in the workshops of the conference on the JPA in Khartoum on Tuesday,” he said. “In the next few days, a delegation from Juba will arrive in Khartoum and discuss the issue with the Trilateral Mechanism. At the end of the conference, if we see that there is a need to establish other workshops, then we will go south, as South Sudan has been mediating the agreement.”

Idris further stressed that “there is no disagreement between the signatories of the Juba Peace Agreement.”

Darfur stakeholders ‘excluded’

Saleh Eisa, chair of the Darfur Displaced and Refugees Coordination, strongly condemned “attempts to remove the issue of the displaced by intruders.” He told Radio Dabanga on Friday that “over the past few years, we have been repeatedly surprised by people who claim to represent the displaced, but in reality, they only represent themselves.”

He refused “any settlement that takes place in the absence of the displaced” and said that they have not been involved “in any of the stages that have led to the Framework Agreement.”

According to Habiba Dawelbeit, representative of the Darfur Displaced Women, “the issue of the displaced people and refugees should form one of the bases of the political process, which in turn is to be based on the goals of the glorious December revolution.”?

Mohamed Saleh Khaddam, media secretary of the South Darfur branch of the National Umma Party (an important member of the FFC-CC), stressed the need to involve stakeholders and war victims from Darfur in the official dialogue conference on the JPA on Tuesday.

“The support of the rebel signatories of the JPA to the 2021 military coup has definitely harmed the agreement,” Khaddam told Radio Dabanga. “The challenges that hindered the implementation of the JPA have to be addressed, in order to reach a comprehensive consensus to complete the democratic transition process in the country.”

Fuelling fire

Juma El Wakeel, one of the leaders of in the Sudan Liberation Movement faction headed by Minni Minawi and spokesperson for the FFC-Democratic Block, predicted the failure of the JPA conference the signatories to the Framework Agreement are organising in Khartoum on Tuesday.?“We consider it an attempt to add more fuel to the fire.”

The FFC-DB was formed in early November last year by rebel groups that signed the JPA and supported the 2021 coup d’état and the mainstream Democratic Unionist Party. A few weeks later, the High Beja Council wing chaired by Sayed Tirik, joined the coalition.

He told Radio Dabanga that “90 per cent of the JPA signatories will not participate in the Khartoum conference.” He stressed that the organisers of the conference “do not have the right to do so because they are not a party to the JPA”.

The FFC-DB also rejects Framework Agreement, on the basis that “the JPA conference is biased,” accusing the FFC-CC of “seeking to exclude many others”.

International involvement

The FFC-DB welcomes the recent Egyptian initiative to organise a Sudanese-Sudanese dialogue in Cairo, said El Wakeel. They have not received any notification about the postponement of the dialogue, planned to be held on February 1.

He explained that “all parties are welcome to participate in the Sudanese-Sudanese round table, except the [dissolved] National Congress Party. The dialogue will be about the economy, issues of the transitional period, peace, and the roots of the Sudanese crisis, among other things.”

El Wakeel said that he considers the Egyptian initiative “a positive intervention, as the neighbouring countries are aware of the situation in Sudan and have common interests and mutual influence in security and other issues.”?He accused the international community and the Trilateral Mechanism of “selectively dealing with political forces, stressing the need for all Sudanese to participate in the dialogue.”

Regarding the visit of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to Egypt, Ashraf Abdelaziz, editor-in-chief of El Jareeda newspaper, told Radio Dabanga said that “it is likely that it will also deal with the Sudanese issue, in order to prevent Cairo from complicating the course of the ongoing political process through the establishment of alternative platforms”.

On January 19, the mainstream Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC-Central Council) announced that it definitely refuses to participate in the Sudanese-Sudanese dialogue workshop which Egypt intends to organise in Cairo in February.

Many political parties and civilian groups that signed the Framework Agreement with the military junta on December 5 last year have previously said they reject the Egyptian initiative for an inter-Sudanese dialogue platform to be held in Cairo.

Source: Radio Dabanga

A 20-year-old woman was gang-raped near Golo in Jebel Marra, Central Darfur, on Friday. Two armed robberies were reported to Radio Dabanga in the Darfur region over the weekend.

Relatives of the rape victim told Radio Dabanga that she went out with two women to collect firewood in the area of Taronga on Friday morning. Six armed men wearing military uniforms intercepted the three women, and two of them managed to escape. Two of the attackers then raped the other woman.

Two men were injured in an armed robbery in Jebel Amer, North Darfur, on Sunday. Speaking to Radio Dabanga, a neighbour reported that a group of gunmen stormed the house of Mahjoub Ali (22) at about two o’clock on Sunday morning.

They opened fire at him and his relative Abdallah Mohamed (32), then “stole a huge amount of money”. Ali and Mohamed sustained bullet wounds and were transferred to the Kabkabiya Hospital. A report was filed with the police in Kabkabiya.

On Saturday, two people were injured in Mukjar in Central Darfur when a passenger vehicle was shot at. Driver Mohamed Ali Haroun and passenger Fatima Mohamed Ahmed sustained bullet wounds, and the attackers robbed the passengers of their belongings and fled.

In another incident, four gunmen wearing military uniforms and riding on motorcycles shot at a vehicle carrying 22 passengers on the Garsila-Mukjar road in Murlei. No one was injured.

Recommendations of a workshop on transitional justice in the North Darfur capital El Fasher on Wednesday included documenting the abuses related to the war in Darfur, as well as gender-based violence (GBV) in the region. The workshop also recommended handing over the indicted officials from the former regime, including Al Bashir, to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Radio Dabanga regularly reports on GBV in Darfur. Most recently, a displaced farmer was raped and killed on her way home in Central Darfur on January 20.

In November, activities as part of the annual international 16 Days of Activism against GBV paid extra attention to the position of displaced women.

Source: Radio Dabanga

A two-day training concluded with calls for self-reliance among farmers in Kajo-Kejo County of Central Equatoria State.

The training, organized by Community Empowerment for Progress Organisation (CEPO) under the Strengthening Conflict and Gender Sensitive Community Resilience (SCCR) project, attracted 41 farmers from the various payams of the county.

Kenyi Nason Felix, a field officer with CEPO, said the two-day training aimed at empowering the women and girls under the farming for peace initiative.

“Without farming, peace cannot prevail in our communities,” said Kenyi.

“The project impact is to contribute to gender equality, empower women and girls to promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies,” he added.

Wani Sylvano Yokwe, a farmer, said he acquired skills for peace building, peaceful co-existence and mediation systems during the two-day training.

He cited climate change as a hindrance to farming practices in the county.

Agnes Diiko, a vegetarian grower, said learnt self-reliance at the training.

She, however, urged CEPO to regularly train them on best farming practice.

“CEPO should organize refresher trainings so that we do not completely forget about what we learned during the two-day training,” stressed Diiko.

The project, funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), is mainly targeting refugees, host and migrating communities in South Sudan and Uganda.

The greater Yei region, including Lainya, Morobo and Kajo-Keji counties are known for their conducive farming weather and fertile soils for agriculture.

Despite the huge potentials, agriculture in South Sudan largely remains at subsistence level with average field sizes of just two feddans per household.

Source: Sudan Tribune