- The Media Line - https://themedialine.org -

Khartoum ‘Recruited Al-Qa’ida’ for Darfur

The Sudanese government ordered to ease restrictions on Al-Qa’ida operatives in the country in exchange for their help in fighting peacekeepers in the war-torn Darfur province, according to a secret document obtained by the Sudan Tribune.
 
The document, dated April 2004, was signed by senior members of the presidency office, the ruling National Congress Party and the army.
 
The authenticity of the document has not been verified.
 
The document requests government agencies to allow foreign jihad fighters who came to Sudan with Osama Bin Laden in 1994 to resume their “political activities in Sudan,” and support armed forces and the people of Sudan with regards to what it called the foreign intervention in Darfur.
 
The order included unfreezing bank accounts and returning property confiscated in 1996.
 
Last September, a video posted on the Internet showed Al-Qa’ida’s second in command, Ayman A-Zawahiri, calling on Muslims to engage in a holy war against proposed United Nations peacekeepers in Darfur.
 
More than 200,000 people have been killed and more than two million displaced in the conflict in Darfur, which erupted in 2003. The conflict largely involves control over natural resources and power.
 
Khartoum denies allegations it is backing local armed groups called Janjaweed to commit atrocities in Darfur.
 
The government of Khartoum has reluctantly agreed to the deployment of a hybrid U.N. African Union (AU) force in Darfur, to replace the largely under-staffed and under- financed AU force already there.
 
There have been links in the past between Osama Bin Laden and the Sudanese government, said Mariam Bibi Jooma, a researcher on Sudan at the Africa Security Analysis Program at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa.
 
Any direct relationships today were much more difficult to pinpoint, she said.
 
“The last thing the ruling party would want or need in terms of its international standing is any overt links with Al-Qa’ida,” Jooma explained.
 
She added that a close relationship does exist between Sudan and the American administration in terms of intelligence and security cooperation, due to the information Khartoum possesses about Al-Qa’ida.
 
“You see a far closer working relationship between the two than what you’d assume from the megaphone diplomacy coming out of the Darfur crisis,” she said.
 
“We have a strange situation where Sudan is both a sponsor of terrorism, according to the U.S., and also a key ally against terrorism.”