AL-SALAM CAMP, Sudan - A day before Darfur peace talks are due to open in Libya, many victims of the 4-1/2 year conflict in Sudan's remote west have already doomed them to failure.
While more than a dozen Darfur rebel groups jockey for power at the negotiating table in Libya, Darfuris at the Al-Salam Camp say the one rebel they trust will not be among them.
Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) founder and Chairman Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur commands almost unanimous support in Al-Salam and many of the camps housing more than 2 million people who have fled homes and villages destroyed in the fighting.
Nur's refusal to go to the U.N.-African Union mediated talks until a U.N. force deploys to stop rape, looting and murder in Darfur has earned him almost blind support among those who suffered most after his group rose up against the government.
"He's (Nur) not going because we don't want him to be there," said Ahmed Etim Osman who watched 13 members of his family executed by militia in 2004 before fleeing his home to the camps surrounding Darfur's main town el-Fasher.
"I can still see the faces of the men who did it," he said. "I was in the next hut watching through the window. I could see them but they couldn't see me."
While Nur has few troops on the ground, he commands huge support among his Fur tribe, the largest in Darfur. But his support also crosses tribal lines. Osman is from the Tunjur tribe.
"Libya is the wrong prescription for Darfur's disease," Osman said.
"PAID FOR ABUJA"
Mostly non-Arab rebels declared war on Sudan's central government in 2003 accusing it of neglecting the remote west.
International experts estimate some 200,000 people have died and the world's largest aid operation is helping almost two-thirds of Darfur's population now affected by the violence.
After a 2006 peace deal signed in Nigeria between Khartoum and one of three rebel negotiating factions, tensions worsened and rebels split into more than a dozen groups, seeming to care more about power than the people they were supposed to liberate.
"If talks go ahead in Libya it will cause more suffering. We paid for what happened in Abuja," Osman said.
