[ Hemedti’s career is an object lesson in political
entrepreneurship by a specialist in violence. His conduct and (as of
now) impunity are the surest indicator that politics of the mercenary
kind that have long defined the Sudanese periphery, have been brought
home to the capital city.]
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SUDAN CONFLICT: HEMEDTI – THE WARLORD WHO BUILT A PARAMILITARY
FORCE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE STATE  
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Alex De Waal
April 17, 2023
The Conversation
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_ Hemedti’s career is an object lesson in political
entrepreneurship by a specialist in violence. His conduct and (as of
now) impunity are the surest indicator that politics of the mercenary
kind that have long defined the Sudanese periphery, have been brought
home to the capital city. _

General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, better known as Hemedti,

 

Dozens have been killed in armed clashes
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the Sudanese capital Khartoum following months of tension between the
military and the powerful paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces
(RSF)
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Behind the tensions is a disagreement over the integration of the
paramilitary group into the armed forces – a key condition of
a transition agreement
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never been signed but has been adhered to by both sides since 2021.

General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, better known as Hemedti, is the leader
of the RSF. He is a key mover in the fast-escalating civil war, as he
has been in other key moments in Sudan’s recent history.

Hemedti’s Rapid Support Forces is led by Darfurian Arabs known
as Janjaweed
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The term refers to the armed groups of Arabs from Darfur and Kordofan
in western Sudan. Drawn from the far west of the country’s
periphery, they have – in a mere decade – become the dominant
power in Khartoum. And Hemedti has become the face of Sudan’s
violent, political marketplace.

I have been a scholar of Sudan for decades. During 2005-06, I was
seconded to the African Union mediation team for Darfur and from
2009-11 served as senior adviser
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High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan, in the lead-up to the
independence of South Sudan. My most recent book
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co-authored with Justin Lynch, examines Sudan’s unfinished
democracy.

Hemedti’s career is an object lesson in political entrepreneurship
by a specialist in violence. His conduct and (as of now) impunity are
the surest indicator that politics of the mercenary kind that have
long defined the Sudanese periphery, have been brought home to the
capital city.

Coming in from the periphery

Hemedti is from Sudan’s furthest peripheries, an outsider to the
Khartoum political establishment. His grandfather, Dagolo, was leader
of a subclan that roamed across the pastures of Chad and Darfur. Young
men from these camel-herding, landless and marginalised group became a
core element of the Arab militia that led Khartoum’s
counterinsurgency in Darfur from 2003
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A school dropout turned trader, Hemedti has no formal education. The
title ‘General’ was awarded on account of his proficiency as a
commander in the Janjaweed brigade in Southern Darfur at the height of
the 2003-05 war. A few years later, he joined a mutiny
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the government, negotiated an alliance with the Darfurian rebels, and
threatened to storm the the government-held city of Nyala.

Soon Hemedti cut a deal
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Khartoum would settle his troops’ unpaid salaries and compensation
for the wounded and killed. He got promotion to general and a handsome
cash payment.

After returning to the Khartoum payroll, Hemedti proved his loyalty.
President Omar al-Bashir who ruled
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from 1993 to April 2019 when he was deposed became fond of him,
sometimes appearing to treat him like the son he had never had.

But, in the days after Bashir was overthrown
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democracy protesters camped in the streets around the Ministry of
Defence embraced him as the army’s new look.

A country in his pocket

Back in the fold, Hemedti ably used his commercial acumen and military
prowess to build his militia into a force more powerful than the
waning Sudanese state.

Al-Bashir constituted the Rapid Support Forces as a separate unit in
2013, initially to fight the rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation
Army-North in the Nuba Mountains. The new force came off second best.
But, with a fleet of new pickup trucks with heavy machine guns, it
soon became a force to be reckoned with
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fighting a key battle against Darfurian rebels in April 2015.

Following the March 2015 Saudi-Emirati military intervention
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deal with Riyadh to deploy Sudanese troops in Yemen. One of the
commanders of the operation was General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan who has
chaired the Transitional Military Council since 2019. But most of the
fighters were Hemedti’s RSF
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This brought hard cash direct into Hemedti’s pocket.

And in November 2017, Hemedti’s forces took control of the artisanal
gold mines in Jebel Amer in Darfur — Sudan’s single largest
source of export revenues. This followed the defeat and capture of his
arch-rival Musa Hilal, who rebelled
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Al-Bashir.

Suddenly, Hemedti had his hands on the country’s two most lucrative
sources of hard currency.

Hemedti is adopting a model of state mercenarism familiar to those who
follow the politics of the Sahara. The late President Idriss Déby of
Chad rented out his special forces for counter-insurgencies on the
French or U.S. payroll in much the same manner. One can expect to see
RSF troops deployed to Libya some day.

On the other hand, with the routine deployment of paramilitaries to do
the actual fighting in Sudan’s wars at home and abroad, the Sudanese
army has become akin to a vanity project. It is the proud owner of
extravagant real estate in Khartoum, with impressive tanks, artillery
and aircraft. But it has few battle-hardened infantry units. Other
forces have stepped into this security arena, including the
operational units of the National Intelligence and Security Services,
and paramilitaries such as special police units — and the RSF.

Reaping the whirlwind

But there’s also a twist to the story. Every ruler in Sudan, with
one notable exception, has hailed from the the heartlands of Khartoum
and the neighboring towns on the Nile. The exception is the Khalifa
Abdullahi “al-Ta’aishi” who was a Darfurian Arab. His armies
provided the majority of the force that conquered Khartoum in 1885.
The riverian elites remember the Khalifa’s rule (1885-98) as a
tyranny. They are terrified it may return.

Hemedti is the face of that nightmare, the first non-establishment
ruler in Sudan for 120 years. Despite the grievances against
Hemedti’s paramilitaries, he is still recognised as a Darfurian and
an outsider to the Sudanese establishment.

When the Sudanese regime sowed the wind of the Janjaweed in Darfur in
2003, they least expected to reap the whirlwind in their own capital
city. In fact the seeds had been sown much earlier. Previous
governments adopted the war strategy in southern Sudan and southern
Kordofan of setting local people against one another. This was
preferred to sending units of the regular army -— manned by the sons
of the riverain establishment — into peril.

Hemedti is that whirlwind. But his ascendancy is also, indirectly, the
revenge of the historically marginalized. The tragedy of the Sudanese
marginalized is that the man who is posing as their champion is the
ruthless leader of a band of vagabonds, who has been supremely
skillful in playing the transnational military marketplace.

* Sudan
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* armed conflict
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* Hemedti
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