Dozens of people have been killed in armed clashes in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, following months of tension between the army and the powerful paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF). These tensions are due to a disagreement over the integration of the paramilitary group into the armed forces, a key condition of a transition agreement which was never signed but to which the two parties have adhered since 2021.
General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemeti, is the leader of the FSR. It is playing a key role in the rapidly escalating civil war, as it has at other key moments in Sudan’s recent history.
The Hemeti Rapid Support Forces are led by Darfurian Arabs known as the Janjawid. This term refers to armed groups of Arabs in Darfur and Kordofan, in western Sudan. Originating from the far west of the country’s periphery, they have become, in the space of a decade, the dominant power in Khartoum. And Hemeti has become the face of Sudan’s violent political arena.
I have studied Sudan for decades. From 2005 to 2006 I was seconded to the African Union Mediation Team for Darfur and from 2009 to 2011 I was Senior Advisor to the African Union High Level Implementation Panel. Union for Sudan, in the period leading up to the independence of South Sudan. My latest book, co-authored with Justin Lynch, examines Sudan’s unfinished democracy.
Hemeti’s career is a lesson in political entrepreneurship given by a specialist in violence. His conduct and impunity (so far) are the surest indicators that the mercenary-type politics that have long defined the Sudanese periphery have been brought back to the capital.
Hemeti comes from the furthest outskirts of Sudan, a stranger to the political establishment in Khartoum. His grandfather, Dagalo, was the leader of a sub-clan that roamed the pastures of Chad and Darfur. The young men of this group of landless and marginalized camel herders became a central part of the Arab militia that led the counter-insurgency from Khartoum to Darfur from 2003.
Having dropped out of school and become a trader, Hemeti did not receive a formal education. The title “General” was bestowed on him because of his skills as commander of the Janjawid Brigade in South Darfur at the height of the 2003-2005 war. A few years later, he joined a mutiny against the government, brokered an alliance with Darfur rebels, and threatened to storm the government-held town of Nyala.
Soon, Hemeti made a deal with the government. Khartoum undertakes to settle the unpaid salaries of its troops and to compensate the wounded and the families of the dead. He is promoted to general and receives a handsome sum of money.
After returning to the Khartoum workforce, Hemeti proved his loyalty. President Omar al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan from 1993 until April 2019 when he was overthrown, has taken a liking to him, sometimes seeming to treat him like the son he never had had.
But in the days following Bashir’s overthrow, some of the young pro-democracy protesters camped out in the streets around the Defense Ministry embraced Hemeti as the new face of the military.
Back home, Hemeti was able to use his business acumen and military prowess to make his militia a more powerful force than the declining Sudanese state.
Al-Bashir formed the Rapid Support Forces as a separate unit in 2013, initially to fight Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North rebels in the Nuba Mountains. At first without much success. But, with a fleet of new pick-up trucks fitted with heavy machine guns, it quickly became a force to be reckoned with, fighting a key battle against rebels in Darfur in April 2015.
Following the March 2015 Saudi-Emirati military intervention in Yemen, Sudan reached an agreement with Riyadh to deploy Sudanese troops to Yemen. One of the operation’s commanders was General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who has chaired the Transitional Military Council since 2019. But most of the fighters were members of Hemeti’s RSF. This brought money directly to Hemeti.
And in November 2017, Hemeti forces took control of Darfur’s Jebel Amer artisanal gold mines – Sudan’s biggest export earner. This followed the defeat and capture of his great rival Musa Hilal, who had rebelled against al-Bashir.
Thus, Hemeti got his hands on the two most lucrative sources of foreign exchange in the country.
Hemeti adopts a model of state mercenary familiar to those who follow Sahara politics. The late President of Chad, Idriss Déby, hired his special forces for counter-insurgency operations on the payroll of France or the United States alike. One day we can expect to see RSF troops deployed in Libya.
On the other hand, with the routine deployment of paramilitaries to fight in Sudan’s wars inside and outside the country, the Sudanese military has become something of a vanity project. She is the proud owner of extravagant real estate in Khartoum, complete with impressive tanks, artillery and planes. But it has few seasoned infantry units. Other forces entered the scene on the security front, notably the operational units of the national intelligence and security services, the paramilitaries such as the special police units – and the FSR.
But there is also a flip side to the coin. All of Sudan’s leaders, with one notable exception, hail from the heartland of Khartoum and neighboring towns on the Nile. The exception is Khalifa Abdullahi “al-Ta’aishi” who was an Arab from Darfur. His armies provided the majority of the forces that conquered Khartoum in 1885. Local elites remember Khalifa’s rule (1885-1898) as a tyranny. They are terrified of a return of this tyranny.
Hemeti is the face of this nightmare, Sudan’s first non-establishment leader in 120 years. Despite grievances against Hemeti’s paramilitaries, he is still seen as a Darfurian and an outsider to the Sudanese establishment.
When the Sudanese regime sowed the wind of the Janjawid in Darfur in 2003, it did not expect to reap the storm in its own capital. In fact, the seeds had been sown much earlier. Previous governments had adopted a war strategy in southern Sudan and southern Kordofan of pitting local populations against each other. This strategy was preferred to sending regular army units because it was a question of not endangering the latter, made up of sons of the local establishment.
Hemeti is that storm. But its rise is also, indirectly, the revenge of historical marginals. The tragedy of the marginalized Sudanese is that the man who presents himself as their champion is the ruthless leader of a nomadic band, who has known how to take full advantage of the military conflicts tearing the country apart.
* Alex De Waal is the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and Research Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his research and practice has also probed humanitarian crises and responses, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, as well as conflict and peacebuilding.
