East Sudan battles political isolation

Political leaders from east Sudan started arranging a conference for the East Front in Kassala, which is in isolation from frontline political leadership consisting of Musa Mohamed Ahmed, Assistant to President Omar Al-Bashir, Minister of Labour Amina Darrar, and Minister of Livestock, Mabrouk Mubarak Selim. Informed sources said that the list of participants included Hassan Kentippa, member of the implementation team in the East agreement, Idris Nour, vice-president of the Democratic East Party, and Abdullah Musa, resigned political secretary of the Baja Conference. The front, which signed the Eastern Sudan Peace agreement with the ruling party, faces sharp divisions between its various factions concerning the implementation of the agreement. Sources stated that members of the legislative assemblies in Kassala and Al-Qadarif participated the alleged conferences, as well as current and former occupants of constitutional and legislative positions, not to mention representatives of the northern entity of both wilayas (states). The conferences will discuss addressing the president in order to withdraw trust from three frotnline leaders, namely Musa Mohamed Ahmed, Amina Darrar, and Mabrouk Selim, according to the sources. East Democratic Party leader, Idris Nour, said in a statement that opposing leaders in the front would no longer keep quiet about the violations by the three, their slowness in implementing the agreement, their exclusion of other “activists”, and their failure to read the conditions in the region which predict a catastrophe. Nour said that the conference will lengthily discuss the path of implementing the Eastern Sudan Peace agreement and the failures of the three leaders, in addition to pending issues, top of which are the division of authority, wealth, development, and security arrangements. On a different level, a senior leader in the ruling party in the state of South Kordofan disclosed a memo which the party leadership in the state plans to submit to heads in Khartoum. The memo included civil society leaders and demanded the restoration of the state of West Kordofan and the resignation of South Kordofan governor Ahmed Haround. The group justified the memo by stating the legislative, executive, and legal violations of the governor, and saying that the justifications were enough to have him resigned from his post, considering him to be a part of the state crisis. The group also called for serious dialogue which included the people of the state and members of the Popular Movement. Sources said that Abdel Aziz Al-Helw, who leads a rebellion in the state, highlights the crisis in South Kordofan, where the memo called on arms carriers to put their arms aside and resort to dialogue. A source in the state announced that the ones calling for Haroun’s resignation were a self-serving minority, noting that Haroun led vast universal development movement in the state and opposed the “Popular Movement”, which aimed to demolish security and stability in the state. The source added that dialogue was habitual to the state's leadership, believing that the centre of the ruling party would not, at the time being, listen to any claims or proposals as such.