For now, the headquarters of Abdel Wahid’s faction of the Sudanese Liberation Movement is a cafe in Paris.

“I may be in exile, but my people know I am still with them,” says Wahid, reaching into his bag and pulling out four cell phones and a chunky Thuraya satellite phone with its thumblike antenna.

“This one is for the commanders, so I can tell them what to do and what not to do. This,” he said, holding up a newer Nokia, “is for civil society so we can discuss their next move. This one is for (displaced people) and refugees. This one is for students. Sometimes I address their secret meetings by speaker phone.”

And who is the satellite phone for? “I can’t tell you.” He smiles.

Wahid, a round-faced 39-year-old, is one of Darfur’s original rebel leaders, and even from afar, a man of secrets, contradictions and considerable power. He is a holdout who gains influence over the conversation about peace by refusing to talk.

Wahid began the SLM in 1993 while a law student in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, to agitate for a secular democratic state and a greater share of the country’s power and wealth for the long-neglected people in the western region of Darfur. The group evolved into an armed movement, which along with other rebels attacked Sudanese forces in 2003. The rebellion resulted in widespread retaliation by militias known as janjaweed, widely believed to be backed by the Sudanese government. The militias terrorised the villages harbouring rebels, resulting in more than 200,000 deaths and driving more than 2 million people from their homes into UN-run camps.

... contd.