GTBT - Sudan's Forgotten War

: Adam Volf; Created: 10 September 2024

The civil war in Sudan continues

On August 1, 2024, IPC officially declared the state of famine in Sudan.

This development, the latest in a long line of horrific conditions plaguing Sudan since the outbreak of civil war in 2023, may just be the most serious one yet.

The IPC went on to identify at least twelve locations in Sudan that are either at risk of famine or where famine is already ongoing. More than half of these were found in its arid western region of Darfur, at the epicentre of much of the fighting, and with its capital, El Fasher, highlighted as most acutely affected.

The food crisis has its origins in the war that is consuming Sudan and shows no sign of ending. Only in the last weeks the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces - General Abdul Fattah Al-Burhan - only narrowly survived a drone attack at an army graduation ceremony on July 30th.

While just two days prior, on July 28th, Human Rights Watch published an 88-page report which documented extreme rates of sexual abuse suffered by women and girls amidst the brutal ongoing conflict, in key cities such as Omdurman and Khartoum as well as Darfur and other areas engulfed by the war.

So what is going on in Sudan, and why isn’t it being reported on? Welcome to the 20s Report.

Sudan suffering

The current ongoing civil war in Sudan involves a clash between two warring factions: the Rapid Support Forces (or RSF), a paramilitary group led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo A.K.A ‘Hemedti’, and the Sudanese Army or SAF, led by General Abdul Fattah Al-Burhan. Both sides have a wide array of influential backers, which have allowed this conflict to drag on and remain as bloody as it has been.

The war began last year following disagreement between the two power-hungry men over the merging of the RSF into the Sudanese Army. The conflict soon exploded onto the streets of Khartoum, as well as the nearby second city, Omdurman, and much of the rest of the country.

The story, however, as is often the case in this region of the world, would be incomplete without a local despot who usurped the country's power for many decades. A figure like that for Sudan was Omar Al-Bashir, who ruled the African country for 30 years, until 2019.

Al-Bashir was a military figure who’d risen to power in 1989, when he led a coup to topple the government of Sadiq Al-Mahdi, the only democratically-elected leader of Sudan to date. After a four-year transitional government, Bashir proclaimed himself President of Sudan in 1993 and remained so for the next 25 years, during which time he lay the landscape for the current civil war. He overhauled the political system and established a support network for himself largely chosen from the Bedouin Arab tribal group to which he belonged. His rule also saw a return to conservative Islamic social order and laws, which had been largely previously relaxed under the Mahdi government. Sharia law was introduced to Sudan in all but the three mostly-Christian regions of southern Sudan, alongside a strict penal system influenced by Islamic theology.

In 1993, the U.S. Department of State officially listed Sudan as a sponsor of terrorism due to evidence of its support for various organisations including al Qaeda. Al-Bashir even hosted Osama Bin Ladin in Sudan for several years in the mid-1990s, a man who was - already at that time - known as a sponsor of Islamist terror across the globe.

But perhaps the worst and most significant feature of Al-Bashir’s rule were his actions in the region of Darfur in the early 2000s.

Darfur, or ‘land of the Fur people’, is an arid region located in the west of Sudan. It is home to a population predominantly composed of Black Africans, mostly the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups, groups who are predominantly Muslim or Animist. These populations had lived uneasily alongside nomadic Arab tribes who also inhabited the region, with whom land disputes and accusations of the theft of livestock were common. The conflict erupted in 2003 when the local, Darfuri population - represented by the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement - rose up against the government of Sudan.

At the time, Sudan’s military mainly was tied up either fighting rebels in South Sudan or protecting oil pipeline projects along the Red Sea. So with government forces stretched, Al-Bashir armed local Darfuri Arab militias to fight against the rebels, basically giving them a free pass to wipe out the uprising through any means they saw fit. These Arab militia groups became known as the ‘Janjaweed’, or ‘the Devils on Horseback’, and they would become notorious for carrying out a barbaric campaign of violence, one of the worst the world has seen in the 21st century.

Over the next few years, the Janjaweed carried mass killings, widespread sexual abuse, pillaging and destruction of entire villages, and huge displacement of Darfur’s population, many of whom fled across the border into nearby Chad. By 2008, the UN estimated at least 300,000 people had been killed, and a further three million would be displaced by the combined force of the Sudanese army and the Janjaweed amidst a carnival of violence and brutality. The Janjaweed were highly mobile, and would swiftly cross the large expanse of the region on horses or in convoys of four-by-fours. For this reason, the War in Darfur is even sometimes referred to as the Land Cruiser War. This mobility would allow them to gut villages and move on, and also to target moving columns of displaced people, who would have to travel by foot.

The war continued for around 5 years, and was largely ignored by world media, allowing the violence to continue unabated. The U.S State Department described the events in Darfur as a ‘genocide’ already in 2004, but no decisive action was taken to prevent the violence, and the killings and displacement continued for many years thereafter.

At the forefront of the violence committed by the Janjaweed were several figures who became close political allies of Al-Bashir. One of these was Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a man praised and decorated by Al-Bashir for his actions in Darfur. Dagalo is commonly believed to have been at the very centre of the Janjaweed’s actions in Darfur, having personally organised many of the systemic pillaging and massacres which featured in it.

But no charges were ever brought by international prosecutors against Dagalo, and the War in Darfur began to subside in intensity after 2008 - mostly because the brutal tactics employed by the Janjaweed succeeded in suppressing the rebels.

The Janjaweed were converted into the private security force of Al-Bashir, gaining the new name of the ‘Rapid Support Forces’/RSF in 2013. Dagalo was named the leader of the RSF, and also gained the affectionate nickname of ‘Hemedti’ or ‘My Protector’ from Al-Bashir. He soon became one of the richest and most powerful men in Sudan, despite evidence of having perpetrated some of the worst violence in the course of the War.

The Fall of Al-Bashir And The Outbreak of the Civil War

Despite the vicious tactics employed by Al-Bashir to sustain his power, his fall eventually came anyway.

As time progressed, the scale of the violence committed by Al-Bashir’s government against its own people in Sudan began to gain some notice. And as accusations of genocide grew, Al-Bashir became the subject of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court in 2008.

This warrant never led to an indictment, and many African countries defied the order to comply with the ICC’s order to arrest him. But the cracks in the regime only grew. Sudan’s economy began to fail due to a combination of sanctions imposed by various countries due to the Darfur conflict, and also due to the oil revenue lost by the independence of South Sudan, which seceded in 2011. The country began to face an acute shortage of hard currency, followed by rapid inflation and a devaluation of the Sudanese pound. Popular discontent rose, and when the fall for Omar Al-Bashir finally came, it came hard and fast.

In 2018, amidst a steep economic crisis, Al-Bashir cut wheat and fuel subsidies, leading their prices to skyrocket. This turned out to be the last straw. Anti-government protests soon exploded onto the streets of Sudanese cities. Perhaps realising that the end was near for the elderly and childless Al-Bashir, or perhaps simply sensing a political opportunity, the army decided to join the citizens. On the eleventh of April 2019, the military overthrew Al-Bashir and imprisoned him. A transitional government was soon established under General Abdul Fattah Al-Burhan, a high-ranking general of the Sudanese Army.

Interestingly, the Janjaweed militia led by Hemedti also supported the coup. Hemedti "my protector" betrayed and helped put al-Bashir in jail, and himself became al-Burhan's deputy in the interim government.
Their cooperation was also the result of mutual benefit - al-Burhan needed the support of Hemedti and his RSF, which had considerable military strength, and Hemedti needed the legitimacy that his partnership with the army provided.

But while the transitional government was intended to spearhead a move towards a stable and democratic system of government, this plan did not last long. Violence begets violence. The transitional government quickly showed itself to be just as willing to use brutal tactics against protestors. In June 2019, the Khartoum Massacre took place, when Al-Burhan and Hemedti’s forces ended a pro-democracy sit-in by protestors by massacring the participants. More than 120 people were killed, hundreds were injured, and more than 70 women were raped.

The incident would be a chilling sign of the violence that was yet to come.

It's not hard to guess that in a state organized like a criminal organization, the moment an incumbent boss disappears from the picture, the pretenders to the throne don't think about how to transfer power to the people, but how to get their hands on it. Had there been only one clear contender, the struggle might have been "relatively" peaceful. Here, however, there were two candidates, and neither was willing to back down.

Al-Burhan, as chairman of the transitional government and head of the regular army, pushed for the swift and full integration of the Hemedti’s Rapid Support Force into the Sudanese army. Hemedti, however, resisted, fearing a loss of control over his formation and political position. Tensions continued for months and eventually escalated.

Finally, on April 15, 2023, regular fighting broke out between the two sides in the capital, Khartoum, opening another chapter in Sudan's painful history. The Sudanese Civil War had begun.

Przebieg wojny domowej (2023-obecnie)

When the conflict began, it quickly led to panic and confusion on the streets of Khartoum.

Foreign citizens were swiftly shepherded out of the country, and locals sought refuge where they could. This was a very different conflict from the faraway War in Darfur, which had taken place entirely in the isolated west and was therefore far out of mind for the inhabitants of Khartoum and Omdurman.

But those cities were now at the epicentre of the fighting. After brutal clashes, the city of Khartoum and Omdurman both fell under the almost complete control of the RSF in the summer of 2023. By now the conflict bypassed the one-year mark, the territory of Sudan was almost evenly split between the RSF in the West (including all all of Darfur) and the Sudanese army in the East. The government relocated to the relative safety of the city of Port Sudan on the Red Sea cost. The centre, including both major cities, remain contested up to this day, with massive fighting continuing there. And in the south, some small pockets of territory are controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement - a rebel group allied with South Sudan.

The scale of the conflict's humanitarian catastrophe is staggering. The International Rescue Committee announced that at least 15,000 people have been killed, but added that the true number could be as high as 150,000. The number of displaced people, according to the same source, is about 12 million (most of them internally displaced). In addition, about half of Sudan's population, or about 25 million people, are in need of humanitarian assistance.
Amidst all the violence and horror carried out in the war to date, the RSF has been particularly liable for some of the most heinous acts of the conflict. In fact, with the RSF in the picture, it was only a matter of time before the kind of barbarism carried out by the Janjaweed with impunity came to the surface.

This brutality was clear to the naked eye even at the beginning of the conflict. In June 2023, the governor of West Darfur, Khamis Abakar, brought attention to unspeakable violence engulfing the Darfuri city of El Jeneina. He was abducted and murdered only hours later by gunmen likely belonging to the RSF, in one of the few widely publicised political murders of the conflict.

One need to remember that The RSF and SAF are supported by a number of foreign state- and non-state actors, each with their own (primarily economic or strategic) reasons to become involved. The conflict has also seen the involvement of foreign fighters on both sides from across the central African region, and countries like Chad, Niger, Mauritania, and Mali. The RSF has enabled its fighters to share in the plundering of assets in the regions it has captured, and looted items from Sudan have made their way to markets across the Sahel region, which became known as so-called ‘Dagalo’ markets named after Hemedti.

Indeed, the economics of this conflict are its main driving force, and without them it would not even survive a month.

Sudan has vast reserves of gold. Many Sudanese believe that this valuable resource will one day reverse the country's dismal economic situation, especially in Darfur, where most of the deposits and mines are located. Meanwhile, the Darfur region is under the control of the RSF, making Hemedti a very rich man. Thus, by refusing to yield to Al-Burhan, Hemedti knew that, in addition to a strong paramilitary militia, he also had access to the economic resources necessary to wage a war of any kind.

The RSF leader therefore has the ability to sell gold, and the value of this resource allows him to make significant alliances. Perhaps the most important one he has made is with the sheikhs of the United Arab Emirates, who are known to take most of the gold from Darfur, refine it, and then resell it at a profit.

But how does Hemedti export gold to the Emirates when Sudanese ports are under the control of Al-Bruhan's army? He is aided by another local usurper to the throne - Lebanese General Khalifa Haftar. Haftar is the commander of the Libyan National Army, which controls the eastern part of Libya, which is also adjacent to Sudan's west, which is under the control of the RSF.

Haftar is supposed to facilitate the transfer of resources out of Sudan on behalf of the RSF, and the other way around, for a share of the profits of the whole enterprise. Naturally, Haftar, in its own internal gambit, is also supported by the UAE. The deal provides the RSF with a steady source of funding, as well as weapons and materials that have been crucial to its war effort and allowed it to make substantial profits in the early stages of the war.

A conflict of outside players

Now, despite all that, you may be tempted to think that even in a time of great internal crisis, a paramilitary organisation cannot be any match for the standing army of an entire country. But there are a few things which play in the RSF’s favour.

For one, they are battled-hardened.

The RSF are no longer a rag-tag bunch of paramilitaries. Aside from its veterans who saw experience in the Darfur War, the RSF was considered a part of the Sudanese army and thus received standard combat training in the 2010s. Some of the RSF’s fighters were sent as mercenaries to support the Saudi war effort in Yemen, gaining further experience of modern tactics and knowledge of assymetric warfare. The Sudanese fighters once numbered around 40,000 at the height of the conflict in Yemen, being offered high salaries by the UAE and Saudi Arabia to take part in their joint offensive against Houthi rebels.

The experience of having been employed to carry out the dirty work of Al-Bashir in Darfur and Yemen has allowed the RSF to see more or less consistent action since the outbreak of the War in Darfur in the early 2000s. This, in addition to the assistance and the arsenal of weapons provided by the UAE have converted the RSF into a well-supplied and dangerous fighting force.

Meanwhile, the Sudanese Army…didn’t really do much in that time, as Sudan was at peace and did not enter conflict with South Sudan even when the latter seceded in 2011. There is also some evidence to suggest that Al-Bashir did not entirely trust the SAF as much as he did the RSF, resulting in them being his primary preference for any military operations that needed execution.

Add to this the aforementioned gold and the command structure that has formed we get a kind of state within a state. Darfur's gold, however, has attracted the attention of not only Abu Dhabi, but also...Moscow. The precious mineral is seen as the main motivation for the presence of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group, who appeared in Sudan even before the war broke out. Access to gold in Darfur allowed Russia to offset the economic costs resulting from Western sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine. In return, Russia sent its mercenaries to Sudan, where they operate in tandem with the RSF to train and support their advances.

Perhaps they support them also in terms of modern weapons such as drones. As we mentioned in the introduction, Abdul Fattah Al Burhan - the country's current interim leader - was nearly killed in a drone strike late July. The very fact that the RSF are able to locate and attack the country's leader speaks volumes about their extensive intelligence and capabilities. All the more so because Al-Burhan was attacked in the town of Jubayt, which is close to the Red Sea. More than 500 km from the nearest RSF controlled areas!

Such long-range attack capability is a far cry from the Land Cruiser War, which largely involved men with rifles on horses and machine guns mounted on the back of cars.

Nevertheless, in addition to the Emirates and Russia, a third major player has been present in Sudan for some time - the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, contrary to appearances, Tehran is not supporting the same side as Moscow, but the opposing Sudanese Army.

Iran has been playing an active role in the conflict on the side of the SAF since at least the beginning of this year. The ayatollahs' motivation is to strengthen their foothold in Africa as part of their expanding foreign policy goals - and to gain access to the Red Sea coast, a strategic sea lane. In return, it provides the SAF with high-tech weapons such as drones, which have allowed the government to make gains on the battlefield and reverse some of the RSF's advances in the past year.

But if there is one other thing to understand about the conflict, it is the marked indifference of the world - near and far - which has allowed it to fester.

This is another reason why RSF has succeeded with impunity: for the world majority, the conflict remains another insignificant bloodshed in Africa. With the emergence of a number of other flashpoints in the world, none of the great powers wants to get excessively involved in a war that, let us recall, is being fought on the incredibly vast territory of Sudan. With the exception of parties such as Russia, the Emirates and Iran, which see the war as a means to an end.

This was already the case during the Darfur war, when very little was done to stop the extreme violence perpetrated by the Janjaweed against the largely defenseless population of Darfur. At the time, some speculated that the US Department of State was prioritising peace arrangements in South Sudan, and that the concurrent conflict in Darfur was a second priority as that took place.

Now, with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as the hanging war with Hezbollah, it is even harder for international actors to pay attention and act, despite the huge death toll of the current conflict.

Looking to the future

And what are the prospects for the future?

With the backing of Iran, the SAF has managed to make territorial gains in 2024, taking back some parcels of territory in central Sudan as well as the second city of Omdurman in June 2024. The RSF continues to control most of the capital city of Khartoum, but if the SAF can succeed in making gains, it may succeed in retaking that city too.

Especially since, according to the latest information, a major turnaround has taken place, as the Russians are said to have switched sides from the RSF to the SAF, perhaps under pressure from Iran or in order to adapt to the changing enviorment.

But what is likely to follow - if no peace arrangement succeeds - is a fracturing of the state and a frozen type of conflict similar to the division of land in Syria and in nearby Libya. Darfur remains uncontestably in the hands of the RSF, which it will likely seek to fortify and remain in control of indefinitely. This would leave the government in control of most of Sudan, but with a warlord in the form of Hemedti controlling a huge swathe of the western half of the country.

In fact, it is in the case of Libya that may serve as an example. As it stands, Libyan transitional government only controls about a quarter of the country’s territory, and the power of some of the warlords - such as Haftar - who oppose them remains vast.

Even though there is not a direct comparison that can be made between Libya and Sudan - they are vastly different countries, with different cultures, populations, topography, history and climates, nevertheless, the fracturing experienced by Libya took place in comparable circumstances to that of Sudan. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Libya has become an open house for the cheap export of gas and a supermarket for arms, which has in turn influenced the conflict in Sudan directly.

And if the conflict does become like Libya or Syria, this is certainly something that could work in Hemedti’s favour. Of the two Generals, Hemedti has much more to lose in the case of defeat in the war. Not only might he have to answer for a wide string of war crimes from both the current civil war and the War in Darfur, but he would also lose his leverage and security as the possessor of a massive private army.

So even if the SAF succeeds in pushing out the RSF from Khartoum and Omdurman, the RSF will likely dig in in Darfur, attempting to force a stalemate which would leave the region in the hands of Hemedti and allow him to continue to plunder its resources.

A ceasefire, on the other hand, would allow the RSF to rebuild its forces and resume its offensive at any time. The RSF in that case would also not have the burden of taking responsibility for a devastated country, rebuilding and restoring normal life in the battered cities of central Sudan, which will undoubtedly fall on the shoulders of the Sudanese government. The RSF in Darfur, on the other hand, would almost certainly continue its policy of depravity at the hands of the Hemedti and Janjaweed militias against the African population there.

All analyses of the issue discuss at length elements of strategy, grand geopolitics, or key players. But behind the facade of power struggles, we see a miserable landscape of human devastation.

A rampant, amoral RSF is responsible for terrible crimes. But let us not succumb to the illusion that Al Burhan's Sudanese army is the torch of civilisation.

SAF, for its part, is guilty of its own brutality. It has repeatedly carpet-bombed rebel-held areas with little concern for civilians located there, and also blocked aid access to RSF-held areas which could alleviate the human suffering. The SAF is also accused of having made use of foreign jihadist fighters to supplement its forces - and some have speculated that the involvement of the UAE has also been intended to stem the presence of Islamist factions, which the SAF is seen as being somewhat sympathetic to, as the descendant of the Islamist regime of Omar Al-Bashir.

Unfortunately, the toll of the conflict may not be known until the ending of hostilities: and it is likely to be astronomic.

The death count already likely greatly outweighs the total death from the war in Gaza, and may even reach the numbers of the war in Ukraine. Aside from this, the massive scale of sexual abuse is probably unmatched in its scale among those three conflicts. The pressure on the participants to bring an end to the conflict is growing, and with US and UN-led peace talks taking place in Geneva, there may be some hope for a solution.

But that motivation is checked by the various interest groups whose desire for the prolongation of the conflict is strong. If the peace talks fail, as happened with previous such talks in Saudi Arabia, it is likely that the conflict will only continue in its ferocity.

After the fall of Omar al-Bashir's regime, many Sudanese hoped that better times were finally ahead. But they have not come. Instead, the reaper as old as the world has taken its bloody toll, and his name was “The thirst for power”.

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