Quotes of the Day

It's not easy to find the leaders of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) in Khartoum. They demand that a visitor travel alone by taxi to a crowded landmark in Sudan's capital. "Someone will contact you," says Izzadin, an SLA chief who asks that his full name not be used for fear the government will track him down. "We will know who you are." When a lookout is satisfied that no one is tailing the visitor, he is led down a maze of backstreets to a crumbling office block. There, up two flights of stairs, SLA members work to overthrow the Sudanese government from a few starkly furnished offices. "From here we will rule Sudan," says Izzadin.

This urban outpost is a long way from the killing fields of Sudan's western Darfur region, where fierce fighting over the past 20 months — and ensuing hunger and disease — has killed some 50,000 people and forced 1.4 million from their homes. So far, international attention has focused on the marauding Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, which aid workers and human-rights observers say are backed by the authoritarian central government of Omar al-Bashir and have, according to the U.S. and others, committed genocide. But Darfur's two main rebel factions have also done their share to destabilize the country during the latest phase of its 20-year civil war: the SLA, a secular, non-Arab guerrilla group whose April 2003 attack on a Darfur airport killed 75 policemen and soldiers and, aid agencies and Western observers say, led the government to unleash the Janjaweed; and the closely aligned Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a fiercely Islamic organization said to be led by Hassan al-Turabi, Sudan's former Speaker of the parliament. Though their visions are radically different, both groups want the overthrow of al-Bashir's regime and are pushing for more autonomy for Sudan's provinces. Even as they sat down with Khartoum officials in the Nigerian capital Abuja last week for a third round of peace talks, they were forging alliances with regime foes across the country — threatening to widen the conflict and boosting the chances of more civil war.

The latest peace talks, the result of intense pressure from the African Union and Western nations, aren't likely to bear fruit. The government says it wants the rebels and Janjaweed to simultaneously disarm before it will consider power-sharing with the prov-inces. The rebels say they won't disarm until after the Janjaweed does. The talks "are a waste of time," says Izzadin, the sla chief, offering his guest a Pepsi as the muezzin's call to afternoon prayers drifts in through an open window. "We say you first have to bring them [the Janjaweed] to justice, and then we can deal."

Together, the SLA and JEM have fewer fighters than the estimated 15,000 government-backed Janjaweed, but they are deadly all the same. From their bases in the mountainous central region of Darfur, they have launched scores of lightning raids against police stations and government outposts in the last 20 months, seizing arms and inflicting a few casualties before withdrawing to avoid direct battles with government forces. The sla, with the most fighters, is a home-grown movement formed from the various African tribal militias. It has good relations with the villagers, who provide it with shelter, food and intelligence. With every new Janjaweed attack, young African men are swelling its ranks. The SLA has occasionally attacked truck drivers or detained Sudanese aid workers suspected of being government agents, and some observers criticize it for bringing villagers into the line of fire. "Of course it's the government's duty to distinguish the SLA from civilians, but the sla doesn't help in making that distinction," says Bénédicte Goderiaux, a researcher on Sudan at Amnesty International.

Originally known as the Darfur Liberation Front, the SLA was founded in 2001 by young members of the African Fur tribe, who had grown tired of Arab and government harassment. In 2001, led by Abdel Wahed Mohammed al-Nur, they planned an armed rebellion against the government and convinced militias from other Darfur tribes to join their fight. In March 2003, on the eve of its offensive, the group renamed itself the sla. Its rebellion caught the government by surprise and has so far claimed hundreds of lives; Khartoum is accused of deploying in response the Janjaweed militias, which have targeted rebels and villagers alike.

The SLA's ultimate goals remain murky. Over the years, its leaders have advocated everything from secession to greater representation in local government to the capitulation of the central government. "They are a very young group and haven't had time to mature politically," explains Suliman Baldo, the Africa program director at the International Crisis Group office in New York. "They haven't to this day clarified their political objectives or presented them in a coherent way."

Despite its inchoate goals, the SLA may be the one rebel group that can rally Sudan's disparate guerrilla factions into an alliance capable of launching a countrywide rebellion against Khartoum. According to Western officials, the sla has made political alliances with neighboring Eritrea, a bitter foe of Khartoum, and with rebels in the east of Sudan, as well as with John Garang, leader of a separate and long-running guerrilla movement in Sudan's south that is close to signing a peace deal with Khartoum. Last month, the sla launched attacks on government installations in the central Kordofan region. "They are widening their contacts," says Goderiaux. "But it's not yet a full-fledged political agenda for all of Sudan."

If the SLA provides the muscle, the JEM is the more formidable political opponent. Khartoum says the shadowy group is a creation of al-Turabi, who masterminded the coup that brought al-Bashir to power in 1989. Al-Turabi is a devout Islamist who in the early 1990s transformed Sudan into a haven for terrorists, including Osama bin Laden. But the allies fell out; in 1999 al-Bashir accused al-Turabi of using his position as parliamentary Speaker to seize power, and purged the government of him and his supporters.

A JEM spokesman claims al-Turabi has no official relationship with the group, but others disagree. "He's certainly a factor out there," says a Western diplomat in Khartoum. Indeed, most of JEM's leadership is made up of al-Turabi loyalists, the most senior of whom live in Germany, where they fled after 1999. Al-Turabi's ultimate goal: the presidential palace in Khartoum and a stridently Islamic Sudan. In early April, al-Turabi and scores of his supporters were arrested after government officials uncovered a cache of arms that they claimed was part of an assassination plot. Sudanese police say they foiled two more plots in September, one to free al-Turabi and arm his supporters and another aimed at killing or kidnapping 38 government officials.

For now, the unlikely alliance between the SLA and the JEM is holding. But strains are starting to show, and it's unlikely that they can paper over their differences for long. "We are asking for democracy and security," says Izzadin, "and they are asking for Shari'a." Says Janet McElligott, a longtime adviser to the Khartoum government: "The sla is fighting for their land, and they probably think al-Turabi is looking out for their interests. But these jem people are using them as puppets." In other words, even if Khartoum manages to tame a concerted rebellion against al-Bashir, a separate conflict between the JEM and the SLA could unravel into a whole new war.

• SAM DEALEY | KHARTOUM
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