July 22 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Activists, politicians and rebel leaders will begin a two-day meeting in Togo next Sunday to prevent the total collapse of the Sudanese region of Darfur, where intercommunal clashes fueled by open conflict between the army and paramilitaries throughout the country are about to cause an irreversible catastrophe.
Some 25 political and civil leaders are expected to attend, such as Mohamed el Tayshi, a member of the Sovereign Council, and former Justice Minister Nasreldin Abdelbari, both during the tenure of the country’s former prime minister, Abdalá Hamdok, who was finally overthrown in a military coup led by the head of the Army, Abdelfatá al Burhan.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) will be represented by the adviser to the Command, Yusef Ezzat, according to information shuffled by the Sudanese radio station Radio Dabanga.
The purpose of the meeting will be, according to the invitations, “to reach a consensus position and prevent the effects of this war on the cohesion of the Darfur society”, as well as the search “for a radical solution to the Sudanese crisis in its entirety”.
“We declare Darfur a disaster area,” said the governor of Darfur, former rebel leader Minni Minnawi, earlier this month, before calling on the international community to “send humanitarian aid across all borders and with all available means to save the population of the battered region.”
Minnawi, who was the leader of the main faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), has denounced “terrible violations” in the cities of Kutum and El Geneina, including “looting and killings” that threaten in particular the thousands of displaced people who are seeking to escape to neighboring countries through this region.
The governor of Darfur himself – the position he holds following the signing in October 2020 of a historic peace agreement between the transitional government and various rebel groups – called on May 30 for “all honorable citizens and the people of Darfur” to “take up arms to protect their property”, before adding that those who did would have the support of his armed faction.
The Darfur region had previously been the scene of a rise in inter-communal tensions despite the aforementioned 2020 peace agreement, which tried to end the situation derived from the 2003 war, which left at least 300,000 dead and more than 2.5 million displaced.
