At a two-day meeting in South Kordofan state, the Justice and Equality Movement selected Gibril Ibrahim to replace his brother Khalil, the group’s spokesman Gibril Adam Bilal told AFP.
“(The) Justice and Equality Movement held its extraordinary general conference in South Kordofan, attended by 109 people who elected Gibril Ibrahim as the leader,” Bilal said by satellite telephone.
In an interview with AFP, the new leader said JEM will follow the course set by his brother to seek “democratic” change in a mismanaged country run by what he called a clique.
“We are going to unite with other resistance movements,” Ibrahim said. “Our people our facing a lot of problems: marginalisation, deprivation of their rights.”
Ibrahim, 56, trained as an economist and worked as a professor at universities in Khartoum and Saudi Arabia. He has recently been based in London, where he served as a JEM adviser and head of its foreign relations.
The group announced that Khalil Ibrahim, 54, was killed on December 23 in an air strike, although Sudan’s military said the longtime rebel chief was wounded during a clash with government forces in North Kordofan, which adjoins North Darfur state, and died later.
JEM and other rebel groups drawn from Darfur’s non-Arab tribes rose up against the Arab-dominatedKhartoum government in 2003 and were confronted by state-backed Janjaweed militia in a conflict that shocked the world and led to allegations of genocide.
Since then, the rebel movements have resorted to banditry and the government is keen to bring JEM into a peace deal to bring a “clean end” to the conflict, said Magdi El Gizouli, a fellow at the Rift Valley Institute, a non-profit research and advocacy group.
“The politically motivated rebellion of 2003 is essentially dead,” he said.
The United Nations estimates at least 300,000 people have died as a result of the Darfur conflict, with about 300 killed in clashes last year.
The Sudanese government puts the death toll at 10,000.
Gibril Ibrahim inherits a movement that has been weakened by chronic war and divisions, Gizouli said.
“Unless he has some regional backing, his options are limited” and he may ultimately seek an accommodation with the government, Gizouli said.
The Darfuri rebels once received support from neighbouring Chad and Libya.
But reflecting their greater isolation, Ibrahim’s brother Khalil, who had been given sanctuary by Moammer Kadhafi, was killed shortly after returning to Sudan, following the Libyan dictator’s ouster.
The new JEM leader said his movement was “more united than ever before” and accused the government of destroying the climate for negotiations.
JEM did not join a peace deal inked in Doha last July with the Liberation and Justice Movement, an alliance of rebel splinter factions. Two factions of Darfur’s Sudan Liberation Army, which together with JEM represent the main rebel groups in the region, also rejected the Doha deal.
Ibrahim said the Doha document fails to address the root causes of the conflict, and the government is not a reliable partner.
“The regime in Khartoum signs a lot of documents and doesn’t go ahead in implementation,” he said.
In November, the holdouts formed a “revolutionary front” to overthrow the Khartoum government.
They teamed up with rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – North based in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, contested regions bordering newly independent South Sudan.
The Small Arms Survey, a Swiss-based independent research project, last week wrote of speculation that Ibrahim could take over the leadership because of a critical requirement that the Kobe sub-group of the Zaghawa people remain dominant in JEM.
“Gibril lacks his brother’s military experience, which may lead Abubakr Hamid Nour, a JEM military field leader, to take on greater prominence,” it said.
Ibrahim Gambari, who heads the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission to Darfur, told AFP on Wednesday that until Khalil Ibrahim’s successor was named, it remained unclear whether more groups would sign up to the Doha deal.
“We’ll have to wait and see what leadership emerges, how much support such a leadership has, and then we’ll take it from there,” he said.