“This war started very, very early, since 1989, when the Islamists came to power with Omar al-Bashir”, explains Manal Abdin near the bus which served as his roof for four days and four nights. This nutrition professor at the prestigious Ahfad Women’s University is one of thousands of Sudanese stranded on April 24 at the Argeen border post. All are waiting, in deplorable sanitary conditions, without latrines or drinking water, to take shelter on the Egyptian side.
This exile to Egypt but also Chad, South Sudan and Ethiopia, as well as to regions spared from the fighting, follows the outbreak, on April 15, of an armed conflict between General Abdel Fattah al -Burhane, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, alias “Hemeti”, the boss of the paramilitary militia Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The roots of this war actually go back at least to Omar al-Bashir’s coup.
Thirty years of military-Islamic dictatorship followed. Freedoms and human rights are close to nothing. In 1996, the law on public order tightened the noose on citizens, especially women. This text relies on “loose sections containing phrases such as ‘indecent clothing’ to give [the] officers the ability to decide and rule on what is decent and indecent. Your safety and freedom depended on the opinions and personal preferences of law enforcement officers and men who roamed the streets armed with a misogynistic vendetta,” journalist and feminist activist Reem Abbas summarizes in a published article. in 2021 by the Christian Michelsen Institute.
Sudanese women risk being whipped for wearing trousers or carelessly leaving their ankles exposed. Despite the abolition of this legislation in 2019, seven months after Bashir’s ouster, the Penal Code remains, to this day, based on Sharia. In general, the decisions taken under the old regime directly reflect on the current conflict, which has already left at least 528 dead and 4,620 injured. The RSF of Hemeti were indeed born under the paw of the kleptocratic dictator. In the early 2000s, the latter armed the Janjaweed, Darfur militiamen belonging to the so-called Arab peoples, to fight against the so-called African rebels who rose up against the confiscation of political power and economic resources by the elites of the North – they also described as Arab.
These Darfuris are notorious for their cruel methods which include murder, rape and burning of entire villages. Abuses that continue today, as evidenced by the attacks perpetrated the week of April 24 in el-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur. The central market was looted and partially burned, hospitals were destroyed, while a provisional assessment lists 180 victims, mostly populations displaced by previous conflicts.
In 2013, Bashir felt the threat getting closer. “Last year he foiled an attempted coup led by members of his own party, the National Congress Party. Among the traitors was ex-intelligence director Salah Gosh. He needs Hemeti to protect himself from them,” political science professor Bashir Elshariff points out. The dictator then gathered the Janjawids into Rapid Support Forces, which he entrusted to this former Darfuri cameleer. In addition to Darfur, these militiamen are fighting rebels in the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile. The peace agreement initialed on October 3, 2020 has failed to bring peace to these areas.
For ten years, the strength of Hemeti’s troops has continued to grow until it approaches that of the regular army, with the only difference that the RSF does not have an air force. “The army was hijacked by Islamists who used the RSF to fight,” said al-Baqir al-Afif, founder of the Kace think tank on conflict and human rights. The generals provided them with intelligence and technical support, but ground combat was systematically carried out by the RSF. Army officers are just corrupt politicians. »
From then on, Hemeti began to weave an economic empire through his company Al-Junaid, very active in gold mining. At the same time, he developed international relations with the European Union, which paid him from 2014 to stem migratory flows – the country of the two Niles constituting a hub for human trafficking through which many displaced Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis pass. , South Sudanese… This warlord also sends thousands of young men to fight in Yemen for the United Arab Emirates. Dubai thus becomes Hemeti’s main ally, which facilitates the oil monarchy’s access to the gold mines, lands and ports it covets. He also maintains close ties with the mercenaries of the private Russian group Wagner. Moscow benefits greatly from Sudanese gold and in February obtained guarantees to transfer four nuclear-powered submarines to Port Sudan.
From a political point of view, Hemeti succeeded in establishing himself as the number two member of the Sovereignty Council established in August 2019, the day after the revolution that ousted Bashir and less than three months after the June 3 massacre in which his troops and those of Burhane probably participated. Four years later, witnesses are still traumatized by the murders – 127 bodies have been found but dozens remain missing – and gang rapes committed today. The investigation carried out by the lawyer Nabil Adib never succeeded.
If the leader of the RSF no longer conceals his presidential ambitions, many observers attribute the same ambitions to Burhane. The head of the army and the Sovereignty Council chairs the Military Industry Corp, “an essential behemoth of the Sudanese economy”, according to a survey published by Africa Intelligence on July 25, 2022. In 2021, Hemeti and Burhane feel threatened by the committee tasked with dismantling the old regime, which is ousting hundreds of officials accused of corruption. Above all, they must soon hand over the reins of the Sovereignty Council to civilians, according to the constitutional document of August 2019. The duo finally seizes power on October 25, 2021.
A move that Hemeti would eventually call a “mistake”. Rather than “rectifying the course of the transition”, to quote Burhane on the day of the putsch, this decision threw the country into an impasse. Pro-democracies, led by neighborhood resistance committees, have continued to protest, sometimes blocking Khartoum several days a week. For their part, the Western powers and other international bodies have greatly reduced their financial aid.
Sudan is sinking a little more every day. State employees rarely receive their salaries on time. Many families no longer have enough to eat. The junta has failed to appoint a prime minister since Abdallah Hamdok resigned on January 2 after a six-week whirlwind return. Finally, under pressure from the international community, the two generals agreed to sign a preliminary agreement on December 5, 2022, to turn the page on this failed coup. However, the sponsors of the agreement, including the United States and the UN, are demanding a roadmap for integrating the RSF into national troops. And get, finally, a unique army.
“Integration has always been the most dangerous word in Sudanese politics. In 2011, the war in the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile began precisely with this term,” recalls a researcher specializing in militarization, who therefore holds the international community responsible for the chaos into which Khartoum plunged in mid-April. Back at the Egyptian border, Anne Belal, an architecture professor traveling with her elderly mother, dragged out of intensive care in a hospital overrun by fighters, concludes: “After the revolution, we had dreams. Now the wind has taken it all away. »
