Release International

Sudan's president has sparked outrage after he called on militia groups loyal to the government to train 'holy warriors'.

President Omar al-Bashir's belligerent outburst came at a mass rally of the Popular Defence Forces (PDF), which fought southern rebels in Sudan's long civil war.

He called on the PDF to 'open training camps and to gather mujahideen, not for the sake of war but to be ready for anything'. These militia have been accused of widespread atrocities during the north-south civil war and in the ongoing Darfur crisis in western Sudan.

Southern leader Salva Kiir, who is also Al-Bashir's vice president, later told a rally in the southern capital Juba that the president was 'mobilising for war'.

Al-Bashir's speech has added fuel to the fire in the current stand-off between northern and southern politicians and is seen as a further threat to the north-south peace deal of 2005.

RI's 7x7 Prayer Alert on November 13 quoted UN Special Envoy Andrew Natsios as saying that, after crisis talks, both north and south were committed to implementing the peace deal fully. But al-Bashir's speech to the PDF painted a very different picture.

He told the rally that he would not budge 'an inch' on the issue of Abyei, a disputed oil-rich region which straddles the current north-south border. Al-Bashir insisted he would only accept the 1905 border, which absorbs Abyei into the northern region of Kordofan.

The border demarcation issue is one of the key sticking points jeopardising the peace deal. Al-Bashir's stalling on the Abyei question was one of the main reasons that the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) withdrew its ministers from the coalition government last month.

Pagum Amum, SPLM Secretary General, told Reuters his party stood 'for peace and not for a return to war, and deplored public statements threatening and calling for war'.

Back to top