The given reason for the expedition was to spark a Darfuri guerilla movement and spread the civil war to the west, as had been done in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile. SPLA chronicler Douglas Johnson suggests that the expedition may have been seen by the SPLA leadership as a diversionary tactic to create a rift in the north, like that created in the south by the splitting of the SPLA-Nasir faction under Riek Machar and Lam Akol.