Two Generals at the Heart of a Conflict
On the 15th of April, long-brewing tensions in Sudan finally boiled over into an outright conflict that now threatens to throw the Sahel nation into civil war. Sudan is accustomed to political instability, having suffered 35 coup d'états since it became an independent state in 1956. The latest conflict is a battle between two Sudanese generals: General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (better known as Hemedti), head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The violence is expected to be prolonged as neither general can afford to succumb to the other, with the threat of imprisonment and war crimes allegations hanging over both of their heads.
The origins of this violence date back to the mid-1980s when then Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi began arming Arab tribes in southern Kordofan – a central Sudanese province – to fight local rebels. After a bloodless coup in 1989, General Omar al-Bashir took power from PM al-Mahdi. During al-Bashir’s thirty-year reign, he continued the practice of arming Arab tribes to fight against rebel groups. In the early 2000s, at the behest of Darfuri Arab’s, al-Bashir’s government created pro-government militias known as the Janjaweed to deal with growing protests in the region. The Janjaweed are made up of Arab youths from different tribes in Darfur, armed and empowered to quell rebel insurgency at all costs with little regard for civilian casualties or the standard rules of war.
By the early 2000s when fighting broke out in Darfur, Hemedti, was an amir (war lord) of one of the Janjaweed tribes. Hemedti is native to the region, although his Arab clan is of Chadian origins. His family members escaped to Darfur - where he was later born - after violence and drought hit Chad in the 1980s. As a boy, Hemedti attended school until dropping out in the third grade. He then took up work as a camel trader, leading caravans across the borders into Libya and Egypt. Hemedti claims to have joined the Janjaweed after seeing Darfuri rebels loot and kill a caravan of fellow camel traders.
The man Hemedti now battles, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, was also involved in the conflict in Darfur in the early 2000s. Al-Burhan is a career soldier and was a military intelligence colonel by the time the conflict erupted. By the end of the conflict, he advanced to Brigadier General. Reports show that al-Burhan was born in 1960 in a village north of Khartoum. He studied at the Sudanese Army College, before going on to Jordan and eventually Egypt’s military academy. He has over 40 years of military experience, which have conditioned his vision of the world, his actions, and his approach to governing. Media sources describe him as quick tempered, averse to criticism, and is no stranger to violence and threatening civilians.
Hemedti and al-Burhan met in the 2000s in Darfur where they were leaders of opposite forces working towards the same goal. The rebels of Darfur were ethnically and economically repressed and were fighting for greater autonomy for Darfur, and a redistribution of political and economic power. Initially they were dismissed as rabble rousers, but after the rebels shocked the government by destroying vital military equipment and attacking the al-Fashir airport, the government responded by deploying the Janjaweed and the SAF to the region. Both military forces were under government orders to quell the Darfuri rebel uprising and maintain government stability by any means necessary. The counterinsurgency was brutal, with the government using military troops and ethnic militias to attack rebels and civilians alike. According to the BBC, “Darfur has been described as the first genocide of the 21st Century, with the Janjaweed accused of ethnic cleansing and using mass rape as a weapons of war.”
Both generals are implicated by their actions in Darfur. Reports show that Hemedti consistently led raids in Darfur, including one in 2006 where he and his troops “rammed non-Arab men with pickup trucks and raped women in the name of jihad.” Al-Burhan coordinated military and militia strikes against civilians in West Darfur. He has also been accused of massacring civilians and of rape. Although no charges have officially been brought forward, both generals know they are subject to prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their actions in the Darfur conflict.
In the years since the end of the war in Darfur, both generals have managed to increase their political standing even as their relationship deteriorated. As the Janjaweed began to splinter, their leader Musa Hilal left his post as presidential adviser, leaving a hole for Hemedti to eventually fill. His loyalty to the government was rewarded and when the Janjaweed restructured into the Rapid Support Forces in 2013, Hemedti was chosen to be its leader. He used his paramilitary force to suppress protesters in South Kordofan, Darfur, and the Blue Nile states while also ransoming civilians travelling along state highways. The RSF, under Hemedti’s lead, also began developing its own revenue streams through illegal gold mining and trade. They developed working ties with the Wagner Group, as well as Libyan warlords.
During the last years of al-Bashir’s 30-year reign, General al-Burhan maintained the appearance of a completely committed general, but he began developing ties with foreign powers in secret. He became close with the Egyptian military government and won plaudits for trying to normalise Sudanese relations with Israel. Al-Burhan continued his ascent until 2019 when he and other senior military leaders, along with the RSF, overthrew PM al-Bashir. Control of the state-run businesses fell to al-Burhan after the coup.
With al-Bashir ousted, the military took control of the country until August 2019 when the Sovereign Council – a joint civilian and military transitional government – was established. The transitional government was headed by General al-Burhan with Hemedti as his deputy. There were calls for democracy from civilians and due to the pressure from foreign governments, the Sudanese government signed the 2020 Juba power-sharing agreement. The agreement was supposed to ensure free and fair democratic elections and a civilian government. However, al-Burhan and Hemedti had other intentions, evident in their leadership in another coup in 2021.
However, by 2021 al-Burhan and Hemedti’s relationship was dissolving. Kholood Khair, founder of the Sudanese think tank Confluence Advisory, comments that both factions developed their own income streams, along with foreign and domestic policies. They created separate political apparatuses and forged separate alliances. The only thing keeping them together was an avoidance of political and security reform, as they sought to avoid accountability for war crimes in Darfur and accountability for massacring protesters in Khartoum in 2019.
As plans for integration of the RSF into the military came to the fore, tensions reached a boiling point. Al-Burhan wanted the RSF integration to be almost immediate, while Hemedti wanted it to take place over 10 years. Neither general is willing to give ground because this means loosening their grip on power and giving their rival the upper hand. Violence was not unexpected. Reports show, al-Burhan had his air force scoping out bombing targets even as he promised to hold democratic elections in February of this year. After the fighting began, he is quoted as saying, “There is no other option but the military solution.” Hemedti is taking a similarly hard-line approach, saying to al-Burhan, “We will get to you and hand you over to justice, or you die just like any other dog.”
Hemedti, who over the past years has embraced public relations campaigns to position himself as a representative of the marginalised tribes in the country, now has a 100,000 strong paramilitary force at his command. He, too, was prepared for conflict and shows no signs of backing down. The Telegraph reported that civilians are likely to be in the line of fire if caught outside, and that rape, sexual violence, and general lawlessness are now occurring in Khartoum. Further reports show shortages of basic necessities such as food, water and medication, a rising death toll and large numbers of civilians fleeing to neighbouring states. However, there is likely no end in sight as this is an existential conflict for the two generals involved. Neither can afford to back down, and the civilian lives caught in the middle are of no consequence to them.