“Another partition of Sudan”, “A third state emerges from Sudan,” and other such headlines blazoned across Sudanese, Arab and African media after Al-Fasher fell to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after holding out for a year and a half.
But what is the RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (aka Hemedti) – the camel trader, caravan guard, and Janjaweed militia leader widely accused of leading the genocide in Darfur (2003–2010) – really after? Does he want to rule over the whole of Sudan? If he cannot, will he be satisfied with Darfur? If that fails, will he barter his way out of a corner, sacrificing his soldiers and supporters in exchange for guarantees for his and his brothers’ personal safety and the security their ill-begotten wealth?
“Hemedti is undeniably an intelligent man, which is why I strongly doubt that his main goal is to rule Sudan,” said Khaled Mahmoud, an Egyptian journalist and specialist in Sudanese anthropology. “All indicators clearly show that he has no hope of coming to power in Sudan. For one, his supporters are confined to some parts of Darfur.”
Hemedti belongs to the relatively small Mahamid tribe. He comes from a family of camel herders who became relatively well-off through camel trading and working as guards and guides for trading caravans traversing the Sudanese desert between Darfur and Libya. The greater Darfur region is made up of sparsely populated, arid desert. Its most prominent feature is the large Jebel Marra volcanic massif, which can support considerably more agriculture than the surrounding plains due to its richer soil and higher levels of rainfall. This plateau is mainly inhabited by the Fur people and the Massalit to the south.
Beyond Jebel Marra, in a vast region roughly the size of France towards Sudan’s eastern border, live the Zaghawa, an ethnic group with extensions into Chad. Former Chadian president Mohamed Idris Déby was of Zaghawa origin. Arab pastoral tribes are scattered elsewhere throughout the region. Most are semi-nomadic pastoralists, with a geographic centre that serves as a base from which they head out in search of pastures during the rainy season from July to September. The Abala, camel herders, inhabit north Darfur, and to their south are the Sayara, sheep herders; the Baggara, cattle herders, live further south.
Khaled Mahmoud continues, “the reason why the notion that Hemedti wants to rule Sudan has gained such widespread currency is the fear among Sudan’s diverse ethnic groups in a country long familiar with civil war. This is not to deny that Hemedti’s ambitions have no ceiling. It’s just that he wants quick and guaranteed gains. This would be to rule over Darfur after clearing it of all non-Arab elements, which explains the massacres that the RSF has committed against the Massalit.”
According to reports by news media and specialised agencies, the slaughter of the Massalit in their capital, Geneina, in 2023, was one of the worst atrocities perpetrated by the RSF. According to the Sudan Doctors’ Committee, it resulted in 15,000 deaths.
The Massalit are a non-Arab tribe. Referring to the period when Hemedti was in charge of the notorious Janjaweed militia that served the ousted Omar Al-Bashir regime, Ahmed Bahr Al-Din, a leading Massalit commander, relates that the Bashir government had “confiscated all the personal weapons in Massalit areas so that these people would be an easy target for the Janjaweed.”
“Now that he controls Darfur, Hemedti will leverage this to secure more gains,” Khaled Mahmoud said, adding: “But he imagines that his control of Darfur will be more secure if he empties it of all ethnic Africans.”
According to Afrah Taj Al-Sir, the Sudanese media figure, “Hemedti is a criminal warlord. It is hard to accept him locally no matter how much power and local followers he has. I can’t imagine a wanted criminal ruling the country’s largest province. Still, even if Hemedti enjoys significant regional support, the army also has backers, so things will not be easy for him. What I think Hemedti wants is security for himself, his brothers, and the wealth they plundered illegally. So his plan is to strengthen his negotiating hand to get as much as he can.”
The war that erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF in April 2023 has so far claimed between 40,000 and 50,000 lives and displaced more than 10 million people. The SAF, under the command of General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, who serves as the internationally recognised head of state, controls all the Nile Valley regions of Sudan and the east of the country, while the RSF under Hemedti controls Darfur and part of North Kordofan to the east of Darfur.
Osama Mohieddin, Professor of Political Sociology in Khartoum, argues that the situation is somewhat more complicated. “It is true that Hemedti cares a lot about money, but the only way he can ensure his security is through his army, and that militia cannot sustain itself without establishing political control somewhere in Sudan, whether in Darfur or the capital, Khartoum.”
Hemedti built his army out of the Janjaweed gangs that committed massive atrocities in Darfur in the first decade of this century. In 2013, Al-Bashir transformed that militia into the RSF, a quasi-military force directly loyal to him. Following the overthrow of the Al-Bashir dictatorship, the RSF was expected to merge into the SAF as part of the transitional process, which included unifying the armed forces and the police and dismantling the militias. Hemedti’s refusal to relinquish his personal power base to integrate into the army was the primary cause of the devastating civil war that erupted in April 2023.
“If Hemedti lost all his loyal forces, he could not secure his safety or his wealth,” Mohieddin continued. “Hemedti is a prisoner of his illicit money. He can’t go anywhere outside Sudan. Either his life would be at risk or other countries would find him too toxic to host. Therefore, if Burhan ultimately succeeds in integrating the RSF into the army, Hemedti and his family would be stripped of all protection and they would no longer be able to control their illegal gold mining operations or profit from the soldiers he sent to Yemen and Libya to help the EU fight irregular migration. This is why Hemedti is compelled to fight to the end. He is totally desperate. What we are witnessing are his death throes.”
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