The morning of April 16 was not a typical morning in Khartoum. The capital city of Sudan woke up to the sounds of heavy gunfire and shelling after clashes erupted the night before between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The situation was so dangerous that I could hear the gunfire and airstrikes clearly from my home in Khartoum East. While Sudan has faced multiple civil wars before, this clash is the most catastrophic because of its threat to civilians and state institutions.

The current clashes were expected for a long time because the RSF has occupied an unusual position in the state’s security bureaucracy since the fall of the Omar al-Bashir regime in 2019. The history of the RSF goes back to the 1980s, when the government of Sadiq al-Mahdi (serving his second term as prime minister from 1986-89) armed Arab tribes in Southern Kordofan to fight rebel groups in the South. Bashir then led a military coup that removed the Mahdi government but continued the same policy of recruiting militias among tribe members.

The last episode of recruiting tribal militias to fight for the government took place in Darfur, as the government faced enormous challenges in fighting rebel groups there in 2003. Those militias were known as the Janjaweed, and, according to a U.N. report, committed war crimes between 2003 and 2007. However, their numbers were insignificant until Bashir sought to develop the militia further after the Justice and Equality Movement, a major Darfuri rebel group, attacked Khartoum in 2008.

Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemeti, rose to prominence when he achieved significant successes in the fight against Darfuri rebel groups, only to be chosen as the new leader of a new force that superseded the Janjaweed. The new group was called the Rapid Support Forces and was given paramilitary status. According to Hasan Ali, a professor at the University of Khartoum, the SAF rejected the incorporation of the RSF into the military at the time. Therefore, it was incorporated into the National Intelligence and Security Services. In 2017, the National Assembly adopted a law that affiliated the RSF with the SAF but gave it an autonomous structure and a separate chain of command.

Bashir saw the RSF as his protector against military coups that could emerge from other security forces.

Moreover, the RSF was not only a military force but also a political actor. Bashir saw the RSF as his protector against military coups that could emerge from other security forces. As a result, the group grew in military might but also developed a financial arm independent of the state financial institutions. The RSF took control of one of the largest gold mines in Sudan and established companies that export gold directly to international markets.

Following the December uprising, the RSF’s leader, Hemeti, saw an opportunity to advance his political and economic portfolio. Thus, he turned on Bashir and sided with the military junta that toppled Bashir’s regime on April 11, 2019. Hemeti became the military council’s deputy chairman and the Sovereign Council’s deputy chairman after the signing of the power-sharing deal between the military and the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC).

Hemeti’s influence continued to grow through the transitional period. Financially, he announced a $1 billion financial support package to Sudan’s Central Bank on April 25, 2019. Moreover, his political influence grew as coup rumors swirled in Khartoum. While most were associated with Islamists, a New York Times report cited fears among members of the FFC, an alliance of political parties that led the protests in 2019, of a military coup led by the SAF that Qatar and Egypt unexpectedly supported despite their clashing interests. Therefore, the FFC and the civilian government moved closer to Hemeti, and the FFC appointed him as head of the Higher Emergency Economic Committee.

Hemeti’s power and influence grew in the transitional government, partly because of his troops’ stronghold in the capital and his growing political interests. The RSF is active in media campaigns to rebrand its image. Three years ago, Hemeti appointed Faris Al-Noor, a prominent activist who helped manage the famous Khartoum sit-in in 2019, as his advisor. Al-Noor was well known for his extraordinary efforts to supply protesters with food and water during the protests. In addition, the RSF appointed Dickens & Madson, a Canadian law firm, to lobby Western governments and manage its brand-washing campaign in international media.

 

In Sudan, U.S. Policies Paved the Way for War

A misguided effort to integrate the RSF into the Sudanese Armed Forces led to a tragic but predictable conflict.

In October 2021, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s military chief, announced what he described as “corrective measures” that toppled former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok’s civilian government and arrested members of the FFC. Hemeti supported Burhan’s move in a televised speech confirming RSF support for the SAF leadership. However, disagreements began to emerge between the two powerful armed forces, especially after the U.N. mission in Khartoum launched an indirect dialogue between the FFC’s two main factions and the Sudanese Armed Forces, including Hemeti’s force.

Hemeti announced his support for an interim constitutional draft proposed by the FFC’s legal bureau. That decision directly contradicted Burhan’s position to support only initiatives that include all political stakeholders in Sudan and not only the FFC. Furthermore, when Burhan left the country to attend the funeral of the U.K.’s Queen Elizabeth, he temporarily delegated his government and military authorities to Gen. Shams Eldin al-Kabashi instead of Hemeti, despite the latter being the nominal second-in-command of the ruling Sovereign Council, where Burhan represented the SAF and Hemeti represented the RSF.

In December 2022, members of the FFC and other political organizations signed an agreement on behalf of the civilian forces. The agreement, however, stated that the Rapid Support Forces must be integrated into the army. The integration issue intensified the disagreements between the SAF and RSF. The former proposed that the RSF be integrated into the army by the end of the two transitional years. Hemeti’s position was that the integration should take at least 10 years. As a result, tensions between the two forces escalated as the final agreement deadline approached.

Days after the postponement of the deadline in April, the RSF mobilized its troops from different regions in Sudan to come to Khartoum. Similarly, the SAF brought heavy armor and tanks to Khartoum to counter any possible attack by the RSF. The army also built a concrete wall around its headquarters that showed its anticipation of an imminent attack inside the capital, which antagonized the RSF leadership.

The most recent flash point occurred last week, when the RSF deployed troops to encircle the Marawe air force base in northern Sudan. The military condemned the RSF for taking this step without coordinating with the SAF’s leadership.

The existence of a strong tribal militia is a threat to the state’s monopoly of violence—and hence, the state itself.

Three days later, the tensions spiraled into a total confrontation in the streets of Khartoum. Reports from the RSF said the first bullet was fired in one of the RSF camps south of Khartoum. However, the coordinated attacks of the RSF against Burhan’s residence, Khartoum International Airport, and the Marawe base show that Hemeti was planning to orchestrate a coup against the armed forces.

Hemeti’s final move to seize power shows the threat that the RSF embodied against the very existence of the Sudanese state. He stated that he went to war to preserve the democratic transition in Sudan. However, retaining large armed forces with an economic empire independent of the state threatened any possibility of a democratic transition in Sudan. Furthermore, the RSF has developed independent foreign ties. It is not a secret that Hemeti has maintained strong ties with Gen. Khalifa Haftar in Libya and Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary force.

Fundamental theories of state formation maintain that the state must enjoy a monopoly of the legitimate use of force. Therefore, the existence of a strong tribal militia that was established out of the personal and political interests of Bashir is a threat to the state’s monopoly of violence—and hence, the state itself.

The best outcome of the ongoing war would be the Sudanese Armed Forces eliminating the RSF to prevent a second Somali scenario—where militants have long vied with the state for control—in a volatile region.

Therefore, the international and regional actors should avoid addressing the fight in Sudan as a fight between two generals. Instead, it is a fight between the remains of national state institutions against a tribal, corrupt militia founded by the Bashir dictatorship.