Sudan’s outsider: how a paramilitary leader fell out with the army and plunged the country into war
In-Depth Background from Nesrine Malik
Nesrine Malik is a Sudanese-born journalist and author of We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent. Based in London, Malik is a columnist for The Guardian and serves as a panellist on the BBC's weekly news discussion programme Dateline London.
Sudan’s return to war is taking a deadly toll on the capital city as two generals take their battles to the streets. The rivalry and the war is not new, although in previous stages it has largely been fought outside the city. The best background explainer I have seen is this Long Read in The Guardian published today.
While the overthrow of dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019 was propelled by widespread popular protests (see http://www.africafocus.org/docs19/sud1903.php), civilians were marginalized in a compromise ‘‘transitional government’’ between civilians and military forces that was doomed to failure. As Justin Lynch outlined in a Foreign Policy article today, that agreement pushed by the United States and the United Nations could only be implemented if the generals agreed. Civilian representation was at best a face-saving illusion to please the outside peacemakers.
The beginning of the article by Nesrine Malik is below. Read the full article in The Guardian.
Sudan’s outsider: how a paramilitary leader fell out with the army and plunged the country into war
The civilians of Sudan have been trying to throw off military rule for decades, but now find themselves caught in the middle of a deadly power struggle between former allies turned bitter opponents
When I landed in Khartoum in late February, the city was tense. On the short journey to my family home in the suburbs of Sudan’s capital, our car was stopped twice at checkpoints that in recent months have been erected after midnight. A car full of women – my mother, my sister and me – was clearly not the threat the officers were looking out for, so we were ushered onwards. Those manning the checkpoints were an inconsistent crew. Some were in plainclothes, others in military fatigues, the rest in police uniform. You never quite knew who you were dealing with, or exactly what they were afraid of. The only common feature they shared was a jittery menace. They were keeping a close eye on movements in a city where tensions had been rising between the two most powerful men in the country.
Sudan’s leader, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the Sudanese army, and the country’s deputy leader, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), the head of a paramilitary organisation called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), had been sharing power since late 2021, when they had jointly carried out a coup that had ejected civilians from a transitional government. But their alliance soon frayed and they began to regard each other with suspicion.
Hemeti in South Sudan in 2019. Photograph: Alex McBride/AFP/Getty Images
By February, inside Sudan, people were growing increasingly afraid that Burhan and Hemedti could come to blows and plunge the country into armed conflict. Still, life went on. Alongside the heavy security presence, there existed a broadly functioning city, kept afloat by families and communities pooling resources as inflation soared and public infrastructure crumbled. Khartoum’s shops and restaurants shone late into the night, casting their colours on to the checkpoints. As we pulled into our street just before dawn, a single bright makeshift light hung over a table on the side of the road. Gathered around, some of the neighbourhood teens were playing cards.
Over the next few weeks, tensions rose. Protests against the military and paramilitary junta – a regular occurrence since the 2021 coup – continued. In early March, a protester in Khartoum was filmed being fatally shot in the chest at close quarters by an army officer. More than 100 protesters had been killed since the coup, but this killing seemed even more gratuitous than usual, an indication of the rising tension and nervousness within and between different security forces. Locals found themselves adapting to the growing threat of violence. Warnings came through on WhatsApp and phone calls, telling people to avoid certain roads blocked by angry citizens and patrolling security forces, and we all found alternative routes as people made their way to weddings, funerals, work, friends.
Meanwhile, the two generals escalated their war of words, both attempting to portray themselves as the tribune of the people. Hemedti seized upon the shooting caught on video and called for the proper trial of the officer who shot the protester. Hemedti’s brother, the head of the RSF, said that his forces would not permit the killing or detention of protesters “from now on”. Burhan, in a pointed reference to a power-hungry Hemedti, claimed that the army was now ready to withdraw from politics altogether, and break the cycle of “support[ing] dictatorial governments”. Neither meant it. I left Sudan in mid-March, and a little over six weeks after I had passed the boys playing cards, the main road we took home from the airport would be struck by a missile launched from an army plane, and the airport would be in ruins.
It happened quickly. Both sides claim they were provoked and had no choice, but the big moves were made by the RSF. On the morning of Saturday 15 April, I started receiving messages from friends and family in Khartoum saying that they were hearing the sounds of gunfire. Within hours, the RSF had taken over the airport. Civilian aircraft were bombed on the asphalt. Two passengers died in their seats. RSF troops were posting videos from other airports and locations across the country, holding their machine guns aloft. Shortly after the attacks began, as citizens cowered in shock, Hemedti gave an interview to Al Jazeera. He was angry, ranting. Burhan, he said, was a criminal who wants to destroy the country. He would be arrested and brought to justice or “die like any dog”.
Hemedti only appeared on the national political scene four years ago. In that short time, he has drawn the army, and all of Sudan, into an unprecedented confrontation – in which the country’s army, under Burhan, now finds itself at war with a large paramilitary force that it cannot dominate, under a leader that it cannot control. How did Hemedti, seemingly overnight, come to capture Sudan’s politics?
Hemedti first became a nationally known figure after the Sudanese revolution of 2019, which ousted president Omar al-Bashir, a military dictator who ruled for almost 30 years. Until the revolution, Hemedti was a shadowy background militiaman who worked for Bashir, using his private army to stamp out rebellions in the restive west of the country on behalf of the central government. In February and March 2019, as protests against Bashir intensified, Hemedti’s forces were summoned from the peripheries of the country to support the army in Khartoum. But then, in April 2019, Hemedti made an unexpected move, which would be the start of his remarkable political rise.
Since early April, protesters had been camped outside Sudan’s military headquarters, demanding the removal of Bashir. Then, on 11 April, Hemedti decided, in a joint move with the military, to push aside the man who had been his patron and sponsor. After Bashir was removed, Hemedti transitioned from his informal role as head of a militia based outside Khartoum, to becoming incorporated into a post-revolution transitional government, working in partnership with Burhan, the commander in chief of the Sudanese army.
For two tense years after the revolution, Hemedti shared power with the army and civilian parties under a civilian prime minister, an arrangement that was supposed to pave the way for democratic elections. After the coup of October 2021, in which civilian elements were ejected from government, Hemedti’s role and power expanded once again. All transitional government bodies were dissolved, and Hemedti became the de facto vice-president of the country, with no civilian checks or buffer between him and the army. He thus consolidated huge executive power, with access to the country’s budget, and the mandate to represent Sudan globally, forging alliances and trade deals.
Hemedti is an outsider. If he were just a mid-level Sudanese politician, he would stand out; as a national leader, his style and personal background is even more striking. Unlike any other leader or politician the Sudanese have known, he speaks almost entirely in vernacular, and his Arabic is marked by an accent distinctive to the western tribes who live far away from the usual sources of Sudan’s leaders – Khartoum’s military cantonments and elite salons. Hemedti is folksy, easy in his skin, with a glint in his eye and a smiling mischief to his demeanour that belie his reputation for slaughter. Even his nickname, a diminutive of Mohamed, meaning “a little Mohamed”, is a nod to his baby-faced features.
His unconventional background means he has few allies among Sudan’s political elites and military. But as a politician who also happens to own immensely valuable goldmines and run the largest private army in Africa – with about 70,000 soldiers at his disposal – this has not, at least until now, proved an insurmountable obstacle.
[More]
AfricaFocus Notes is a reader-supported publication. To receive all new posts, consider becoming a free subscriber and sharing this with friends as colleagues. Paid subscriptions are also welcome as support for this publication. However, no post will be hidden behind a paywall.