Sudan’s rebel leaders returned to the capital, Khartoum on Sunday, signalling the first major steps toward implementing a peace agreement with the government that aims to end the country’s decades-long civil war. Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of the ruling sovereign council, welcomed leaders of the Sudan Revolutionary Front as “partners and peacemakers” upon their arrival from South Sudan on Sunday. The front, a coalition of several armed groups centered in the western Darfur region, South Kordofan and Blue Nile, inked a peace agreement with the transitional government on Oct. 3 after months of arduous negotiations in South Sudan’s capital, Juba.