167 - Gang Fights Become Violent: Sudan's War and Putin's Meddling
The ongoing vicious conflict between Sudan’s army and its theoretically subordinate Rapid Support Forces (RSF), originally a para-military militia, is a contest over power and license to plunder. More deadly and across larger swaths of land, it is nevertheless reminiscent of battles over turf and territory between rival criminal gangs in Haiti and antagonistic drug trafficking cartels in Mexico. In its Sudanese context, it also echoes Putin’s attempt to subjugate Ukraine to boost a dictator’s ambitions for total loyalty and imperial grandeur.
The struggle in Sudan between the regular armed forces and the irregular RSF fundamentally arose out of a deadly jockeying for primacy, and spoils, between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the national army and Sudan’s nominal head-of-state, and his number two, Lt. General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hameti, who commands the RSF. Together they ousted President Omar al-Bashir, a wanted criminal despot indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), and a dictator who ruled Sudan from 1989 until his local imprisonment in 2019.
Burhan’s army has an extensive, shady, business empire, with its tentacles (as in Egypt) into most economically productive areas. Hemeti has sold security services to other countries; the RSF operated as a guard force in the Yemeni war, under the auspices of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Hemeti also profits from gold mines run by Russians. Hemeti says that Burhan must “die like a dog,” and Burhan calls Hemeti a “criminal.”
Already, this fraternal struggle has cost nearly 200 civilian lives and caused 1,800 casualties. Hospitals have been invaded by militants and diplomats robbed and harassed. Armed men from both factions roam the streets of Khartoum, the capital, and other major cities.
Ever since 2019, Burhan and Hameti have been locked in an uneasy alliance at the head of Sudan, initially together with civilians who nominally ran the country but were constrained by the two generals. Massive street protests had helped forces loyal to Burhan and Hameti end Bashir’s rule. But the resulting transition happened only partially, and the two generals pushed the civilian government aside in 2021, grabbing full power for themselves despite massive protests on the streets of Khartoum that have continued weekly until early April, when the two generals unleashed their troops.
Hameti is challenging Burhan for control of Sudan. He has long sought to dominate Sudanese politics, getting his start as head of the vicious Arab janjaweed marauding mercenaries who perpetrated genocidal attacks against Africans in Darfur, Sudan’s very large westernmost province, in 2003-2006. About 300,000 Darfuri Africans lost their lives; 3 million were internally displaced. Bashir presided from afar over the slaughter, but Hameti’s legions did the damage directly.
Ever since those terrible days, Hameti has gained position, stature, power, and wealth (from plunder). Last year and last year he allied himself to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Russian Wagner Group and made two trips to Moscow. The Wagnerites are prospecting for gold in Darfur and possibly near Port Sudan. Near that city on the Red Sea, too, Hemeti and Putin’s Russia are planning to construct a major naval base. Hemeti played go-between. There is every reason to believe that Hemeti made his move this month against Burhan with direct backing, or promises of, support, from the Wagner Group. Hemeti is in league with Putin’s African aspirations.
Egypt backs Burhan, preferring a despot from the regular armed forces rather than an ambitious upstart like Hemeti. So, Egypt might use its military might to sally up the Nile to Burhan’s defense if Tuesday’s spotty 24-hour cease fire is not extended into a longer lasting truce. As of Wednesday, the fighting continued all around Khartoum.
Civilians in Sudan will be at great risk until the armed forces come under the political control that was contemplated in 2019 and only partially realized before last year’s military coup. Even so, even if a civilian government can be restored, the Hemeti problem will remain. He needs to be imprisoned or exiled and the RSF dismantled. (The ostensible reason for this week’s major battles between Burhan and Hemeti and their respective armies was Burhan’s insistence that the RSF be merged into the regular armed forces and come under his ultimate command, leaving Hemeti without a separate hegemonic instrument. The Russians could not have wanted Hemeti reduced in power, either.)
The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a multi-country organization for the Horn of Africa; the Arab League; Egypt; the UAE, and the United States will all try to mediate between Burhan and Hemeti -- whether or not the cease fire holds. But whether the mediators can both arrange a permanent, sustainable, truce and simultaneously restore viable civilian rule is questionable unless and until the two generals can be induced to return to the sidelines. Even then, peace in Sudan, and the possibility of societal uplift and economic advance, will always be in doubt until the RSF is dissolved and Hemeti removed.
After all, the battles of last week and this week occurred both in the Khartoum and in outlying population centers far to the south and west. The influence of the RSF will have to be removed from those distant places as well from the capital. Furthermore, the peoples in some of those remote sections of Africa’s third largest land mass (after Algeria and Democratic Republic of Congo) are food insecure (45 million people are being fed by the World Food Program) as well as embedded in warfare. Parts of the south and Darfur are in deep drought; given the recent fighting, refugees hardly know where or how to turn.
Finally, it will be important for mediators to remove the Russians, inherent destabilizers now allied to Sudan’s least progressive contender. The prospective Russian naval base needs to be scuttled and gold prospectors removed. But, in the short run, and to regain civilian rule, the mediators will need to assure Burhan (and Egypt) that he can still preside over the armed forces.
It is time for all army forces to return to barracks and civilians to resume ruling. But, to keep the armies in check, a new civilian government will need outside developmental assistance and – just possibly – external military help to keep Sudan’s soldiers in their barracks.