Eastern Front (Sudan)
The Eastern Front ( English for "Eastern Front") is a coalition of rebel organizations in eastern Sudan . In the conflict in East Sudan , it faces the Sudanese central government in Khartoum . Your are connected to the Beja Congress , an organization of Beja , the Free Lions , an organization of Rashaida , and mainly in Darfur operating JEM .
Until January 2005, the South Sudanese rebel army SPLA belonged to the Eastern Front together with the Beja Congress and the Free Lions. However, the SPLA left this coalition after ending the war of civil secession in South Sudan against the government with a peace agreement. The JEM, which is fighting against the government in the Darfur conflict in western Sudan, took its place, also to position itself as a national movement beyond its traditional territory.
Both the Beja Congress and the Free Lions cite the unequal distribution of the profits from the extraction of raw materials ( oil and metals, especially gold and iron ore in East Sudan) in Sudan and the " marginalization " of the poor as the reason for their fight against the central government and underdeveloped Eastern Sudan. Supporters of the Eastern Front have repeatedly attacked government facilities such as the oil pipeline that runs through Eastern Sudan to Port Sudan on the Red Sea . In January 2005, police killed 17 Bedscha insurgents in Port Sudan.
The government of the neighboring state of Eritrea , which borders on East Sudan , where Bedscha and Rashaida also live, supported the Eastern Front in return for the Sudanese government's support for Islamist forces in Eritrea. The member organizations of the Eastern Front maintain military training camps on Eritrean territory. In early 2006, peace negotiations between the conflicting parties in East Sudan began in Eritrea's capital Asmara in order to prevent the conflict from escalating. A peace agreement was signed on October 14, 2006; the Eastern Front was entitled to various government posts, the eastern states were better off financially, and the Eastern Front demobilized its forces.
Web links
- East Sudan insurgency. Reuters, February 16, 2012
- John Young: Armed Groups along Sudan's Eastern Frontier: An Overview and Analysis. Small Arms Survey, Geneva, November 2007 (PDF file; 759 kB)