KHARTOUM: By arresting Darfur’s powerful militia chief Musa Hilal, Khartoum has tightened its control over Sudan’s strife-torn region but analysts say it might open a new chapter of violence.

Hilal, a former aide to President Omar al-Bashir, was arrested last week by Sudan’s counter-insurgency forces near his hometown of Mustariaha in North Darfur state after fierce clashes that left several dead.

“This is a dangerous moment actually,” Magnus Taylor, Sudan analyst with the think-tank International Crisis Group, told reporters.

“By taking out Musa Hilal, they have pitched two different Darfuri Arab clans against each other.”

Hilal, the top leader of the Mahamid clan of Darfur’s biggest Arab tribe, the Rezeigat, was captured by a unit of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by other members of the broader Rezeigat tribe.

“This is the start of intra-fighting, this is only the beginning,” said Ahmed Adam, a research associate at London University.

“No doubt, Hilal’s arrest will impact the security and stability of Darfur.”

During the initial years of the Darfur conflict that erupted in 2003, Arab militias fought alongside government forces against the region’s black African rebels.

Hilal then led the government-allied Arab Janjaweed militia, notorious gunmen on horseback who swept through Darfur marauding villagers and fighting rebels who had taken up arms against Khartoum’s Arab-dominated government, accusing it of economic and political marginalisation.

The United Nations says hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and another 2.5 million displaced in the conflict.

The RSF has also been used to crush rebels in a brutal counter-insurgency launched by Bashir.

A joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force was deployed in 2007 to bring stability to Darfur − a vast region in western Sudan the size of France.

“The previous dynamic in Darfur was militia versus Darfur rebel groups violence,” Taylor said. “Now the most dangerous element is inter-Arab militia violence.”

Hilal is subject to a United Nations travel ban and on a list of individuals sanctioned for “human rights atrocities” during the early years of the conflict.

Agence France-Presse