UM RAWABA, Sudan: The line of army pick-up trucks rumbled into the dusty streets of Um Rawaba, a once placid city in the heart of Sudan that days ago became a new front in the war of attrition between government and rebels.
Six days earlier, hundreds of insurgents had stormed in, spraying bullets and killing up to 13 civilians and soldiers, before pulling out as government planes started flying overhead.
A week on, Um Rawaba’s traders and shoppers cheered and gave “thumbs-up” signs as the latest government reinforcements arrived and drove past buildings still bearing the scars of the attack.
Even as government minders looked on, some citizens acknowledged they were worried.
“This was the first time we had such an attack ... We want security,” trader Omar Kuf said.
Sudan has long been plagued by rebel attacks — but there were at least two main reasons for the Khartoum government to sit up and take particular notice after this assault.
Almost all the past turmoil has sprung up in the country’s distant and arid peripheries, not in North Kordofan, the region that includes Um Rawaba and forms part of Sudan’s commercial heartland, a hub for its agriculture, livestock and gum arabic industries.
Second, many of the earlier uprisings have been focused affairs - between the government and rebels fighting over grievances in their particular territories, among them Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile.
But this was a coordinated attack by members of those rebel groups, fighting together under the single banner of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) with a nation-wide agenda.
It was biggest assault yet by the umbrella group of fighters who have vowed to topple President Omar Hassan Al Bashir and end what they see as his elite’s stranglehold on the whole country - an accusation he denies.
The government has previously played down the threat posed by the rebels, and called Um Rawaba’s attackers “terrorists” holding civilians as “human shields”.
Reuters
