From Shabelle Media Network via AllAfrica.com, Oct. 27:

More than 15 people mainly civilians and seven Ethiopian soldiers have been killed and many more have been injured after insurgents and government-allied forces battled with different sorts of weapons like, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and other automatic rifles.

Libyan authorities expressed pessimism as key Darfur rebel factions failed to show up for the peace talks with the Sudanese government at the Mediterranean port of Sirte. On the eve of the AU/UN-mediated talks, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and Sudan Liberation Army Unity faction announced they would not attend. Another rebel commander, Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur, founder of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), also said he would not travel to Libya for the talks. (Reuters, Oct. 28)

As the Great Powers condescendingly admonish Darfur's guerillas to participate in the peace talks to open in Libya next week, on Oct. 11, some 22 representatives of Darfur rebel groups were stopped by Sudanese government forces on their way to a pre-summit meeting in the country's autonomous south. They arrived in Juba, south Sudan's capital, after they were detained by soldiers at an airstrip in the North Darfur town of Kotum for several hours. They were apparently released after Sudan's Foreign Affairs Minister Lam Akol intervened. (Reuters, Oct. 12)

The UK warned Darfur's rebel groups Oct. 8 they could be excluded from the peace process if they boycott talks due to be held in Libya later this month. London's Minister for Africa, Lord Malloch Brown, said those who opted out "should understand the consequences." (BBC, Oct. 8) The comments came the same day Sudanese government troops and allied militias attacked and overran Muhajiriya, a town controlled by the Minni Minnawi faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)—the only faction to sign the 2006 peace deal. Khalid Abakar, a senior representative from the SLA, said: "Government planes have attacked Muhajiriya, which belongs to us, and government forces and Janjawid militia are fighting our forces." A UN official said the assault may be retaliation for a rebel attack on an African Union peacekeeper base to the north in Haskanita last week. Some members of the rebel factions involved in the attack are believed to have moved into Muhajeria. (AlJazeera, AP, Oct. 8)

Abu Mansur Robow, ex-deputy defense secretary with Somalia's ousted Islamic Courts movement, told Mogadishu radio Oct. 3 that his Shabaab resistance group has "nothing to do" with the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), recently founded by Somali opposition leaders in the Eritrean capital Asmara. Robow said al-Shabaab was "not satisfied" with the Asmara conference.

Over at the CIA, they must really be scratching their heads over Eritrea. It is hosting the exiled Islamist leaders of Somalia and is accused by Washington of backing Islamist insurgents there. But the New York Times reports Oct. 5 that it also hosts "more than half a dozen Darfur rebel groups" fighting the Islamist government of Sudan—including the United Front for Liberation and Development, which has been provided with its own offices by the Asmara regime, free of charge. The Times also points out that last year Eritrea's President Isaias Afewerki "brokered a peace deal between the Sudanese government and rebels in a separate conflict in eastern Sudan that had ground on for 15 years and that cost thousands of lives." (This is a reference to the Beja region, although the Times, in its maddening way, does not mention it by name.) Is this a schizophrenic policy, or is there some consistency here that we're missing?

Twelve Nigerian troops were killed in a Sept. 30 attack on an African Union base at Haskanita, Darfur, the deadliest since AU forces were deployed in 2004. Thirty vehicles overran the base, with fifty troops still missing and seven seriously wounded. A spokesman for the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) condemned the attack, but admitted it was led by breakaway commanders from his own movement, in conjunction with breakaway rebels from the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA). "There is a war going on between the rebels and the government, and the AU is crunched in the middle," a senior AU officer said.

by Vijay Prashad, Frontline, Chennai, India

In February, George W. Bush announced the creation of a new unified combatant command for Africa. After several years of deliberation, the Pentagon finally agreed to create the African Command (AFRICOM), which will relieve the European Command (EUCOM) and the Central Command (CENTCOM), which earlier shared responsibility for Africa.