Can Darfur's disparate rebels unite?

Since those talks, many members of that group have split into factions and the number of Darfur rebel movements has proliferated to 18. Lacking leadership, discipline, and financing, these new groups are now blamed for a spate of robberies, carjackings, and kidnappings that have halted many relief operations .

The UN's chief envoy on Darfur, Jan Eliasson, told reporters this week that the upcoming talks in Tripoli were "the moment of truth for the parties to the conflict to see whether they are really ready to discuss peace in Darfur and not to continue the conflict."

Mr. Eliasson admitted that the international community is "getting tired of paying" some $700 million for humanitarian aid in Darfur and eastern Chad, when funds could be better spent on development projects that "make life better for the people of Darfur."

Some rebels seem to sense that time is running out. "I have given seven months of my life trying to unify the Darfur rebel groups, and I have failed," says Col. Jabbar Mahamat Hasabal, a former Sudanese Army colonel who defected to the rebel side last year after being released by Khartoum from jail for suspicion of rebel sympathies. He now leads the military wing of the SLM National Group.

"But most of the leaders of the political movements are villagers," he says, sitting in his grass hut near Abéché. "They have no education, no comprehension of Sudan as a country, no idea how to create a common program with other groups. They only know how to fight against something, not for something."

Idriss Haroon Abdullah, a high-ranking member of the militant Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance in Abéché, admits that there are vast differences among his group, which favors a secular Western-style democracy, and a group like the Justice and Equality Movement, which would impose Islamic sharia law over Darfur.

"We can even sit down with the people who backed the janjaweed," he says. "If they have done something wrong and they have accepted punishment for it, then we can forgive and mobilize together." But even with the intervention of Chad's President Idriss Deby and diplomatic efforts by Egypt, Libya, and Eritrea, unity has proved elusive. "Until this date, nobody has come forward," he says. "I don't know why."

Bashir Ali, a logistics commander for the militant group, SLM Unity Branch, remains hopeful that rebel groups will be able to unify, but he's not interested in peace talks with Khartoum.

"We are going to struggle until the collapse of the government of Khartoum," he says, as a dozen SLM soldiers nod. "Any peace has to be accepted from the highest person down to the lowest soldier."

Page: 1 | 2