Sudan: RSF aren't just at war with SAF, they're at war with civilians. People think SAF can’t protect them

“The calls to get armed are not coming from the army. They’re mostly coming from civilians themselves,“ al-Sadig, told Al Jazeera. Sulieman Baldo, the founder of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker think tank, believes arming young men is irresponsible. “For me, these young recruits are really cannon fodder for ideological reasons,” he told Al Jazeera. “Sudan’s [political] Islamic movement is pushing for this kind of mobilisation in areas that are beyond the RSF’s control.” Read more.

Report from Al Jazeera
By Mat Nashed
Dated Sunday, 24 December 2023 - here is a copy in full:

Sudan’s civilians pick up arms, as RSF gains and army stumbles

Young men are grabbing weapons to fight with the army, defend their cities, raising fears of deepening ethnic conflict.

Sudanese military soldiers wave the Sudanese flag and hold up their weapons during the visit of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (not seen) in Heglig on April 23, 2012 [Reuters]

When the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) called on young men to enlist last June, Zakariya Issa* went to the nearest recruitment centre. He was one of thousands of young people who trained for 10 weeks in Wad Madani, a city just south of the capital Khartoum.

In September, he was deployed with 500 people to fight the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a group stronger than the army and backed by the United Arab Emirates. Many of his friends and peers were killed or wounded within a couple of weeks.

“I lost five of my friends,” Issa, 20, told Al Jazeera from Saudi Arabia, where he now lives. “They were more than friends. They were my brothers.”

The Sudanese army and allied groups are relying on young men with little or no military training to fight as foot soldiers against the RSF. Over the past week, recruitment has picked up across River Nile State since the RSF captured Wad Madani, Sudan’s second-largest city.

River Nile state is a traditionally privileged region that has produced many of the political and military elites in Sudan’s modern history. But now, army officers and figures from Sudan’s political Islamic movement, which ruled for 30 years under former autocratic president Omar al-Bashir, are calling on young men from this region to thwart the RSF.

New recruits told Al Jazeera that they are motivated to pick up weapons due to the risk that the RSF could attack their cities, loot their belongings and subject women to sexual violence.

Most view the RSF – which is primarily made up of tribal nomadic fighters from Sudan’s neglected province of Darfur – as invaders and occupiers. While the group has evicted thousands of people from their homes, army supporters are also exploiting ethnic undertones to recruit young men.

“I picked up a gun to defend myself, my ethnic group and my homeland,” said Yaser, 21, from Shendi, a city in River Nile State where thousands of people have reportedly picked up weapons in recent days.

“The RSF are not just at war with the army. They are at war with civilians,” he told Al Jazeera.

‘Cannon fodder’: Civilians arming themselves

After Wad Madani fell to the RSF, civilians across eastern and northern Sudan were devastated. The city was a haven for internally displaced people who fled Khartoum and surrounding towns earlier in the war. They are now on the move again.

“People mostly think that the army can’t protect them now,” said Suleiman al-Sadig,* a lawyer from Atbara, a city in River Nile State.

Recent RSF advances have compounded the panic. Photos and videos surfacing across social media show what appear to be children and young men arming themselves in River Nile State. According to residents and journalists, some of those recruits have gone to Wad Madani to fight the RSF, while others are staying behind in case of an attack.

The video from Al Matama shows SAF commanders arming kids/teens. At least they look like kids to me. This is both insane and negligent on so many levels. #KeepEyesOnSudan pic.twitter.com/JelIxVwdT6

— s🌻 (@justshayxo) December 21, 2023

“The calls to get armed are not coming from the army. They’re mostly coming from civilians themselves,“ al-Sadig, told Al Jazeera.

Sulieman Baldo, the founder of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker think tank, believes arming young men is irresponsible.

“For me, these young recruits are really cannon fodder for ideological reasons,” he told Al Jazeera. 

“Sudan’s [political] Islamic movement is pushing for this kind of mobilisation in areas that are beyond the RSF’s control.”

In one photo on social media, which Al Jazeera could not independently verify, one of the young recruits is seen captured by the RSF and tied to the windshield of a car.

A former soldier, who is in close contact with officers in the army, added that new recruits are often the first people to die in battle.

“They have no combat or military background and they just carry weapons. They die quickly,” he told Al Jazeera.

Ethnic targeting

Over the last two decades, River Nile State has attracted many young men from Arab and non-Arab tribes in search of work and stability. Many were uprooted by the state-backed Arab tribal militias – later repackaged as the RSF – which crushed a mostly non-Arab rebellion in Darfur in 2003.

These young men are now being accused of spying on behalf of the RSF based on their ethnicity and tribal affiliations. According to local monitors, many have been arrested, tortured and even killed by military intelligence and by civilians carrying arms in northeastern cities.

On December 19, Zeinab Noon* spoke with her male cousins who are all between the ages of 16 and 20. They told her that they captured RSF spies in Shendi.

“[They said] they’re torturing them, so there is a sense of paranoia,” Noon, who lives outside of Sudan, told Al Jazeera. “I don’t think they know [for sure if they’re really spies].”

The Darfur Network for Human Rights (DNHR), a local monitoring group, said in a statement that these attacks are “linked to incitement to ethnic violence” in River Nile cities.

Jawhara Kanu, a Sudanese expert with the United States Institute for Peace, said that the ethnically targeted attacks risk pushing vulnerable people from Darfur and Kordofan, a province in central Sudan, into the arms of the RSF.

“These people are going to find themselves in a situation where they are going to be tortured [by parties aligned] with SAF unless they choose to join the RSF for protection.”

Ending the war

Despite growing calls to bear arms, some activists are pushing for an end to the war and for young men not to fight. So far, their efforts appear to be in vain, according to al-Sadig from Atbara.

He said that there was a protest held in his city on December 23. Young men were demanding that the governor arm them, so that they could defend their city and join the army in battles across the country.

RSF abuses in Wad Madani are also fuelling calls for mobilisation. More than 300,000 people are fleeing the city, mostly on foot. RSF fighters are also reportedly looting cars, hospitals, homes and markets, adding to a hunger crisis.

In one video circulating on social media and which Al Jazeera could not independently verify, an RSF fighter declares that it is “his right” to rape women in cities he conquers.

Al-Sadig says that news of abuses travels wide and is terrifying civilians in the River Nile region.

“Every single day, young men are being told by people in their community that the RSF is going to come and get you and that they will take your homes, kill your children and rape your women,” he told Al Jazeera.

Non-violent activists like al-Sadig hope that the war will stop soon. On December 22, local media reported that top army chief Abdel Fatah al-Burhan had agreed to sit down with RSF leader Mohamad Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.

While an agreement could spare Sudan further bloodshed, al-Sadig is waiting to see where the RSF attacks next. He told Al Jazeera that he will pick up a weapon if he has to.

“I don’t want to pick up arms. But if the RSF targets my home, or my children or my wife, then of course I will defend them,” he said.

*Some names have been changed for safety reasons. 

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

View original: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/24/sudans-civilians-pick-up-arms-as-rsf-gains-and-army-stumbles

ENDS

Sudan: Could Arab tribal chief Hilal undercut Hemeti?

NOTE from Sudan  Watch Editor: I have just visited the archives of this site Sudan Watch 2004. The news headlines at that time seem to show we've gone full circle over past 20 years and are now back to square one. Here is an excerpt from one of the first reports reprinted here in 2004, followed by a recent report featuring the Arab tribal chief Mr Musa Hilal now aged 63.

Sudan Watch - Sunday, August 22, 2004

Janjaweed Leader Moussa Hilal - interview with UK Telegraph and IslamOnline.net

Aug 22: UK Telegraph news report by Philip Sherwell in Khartoum, copied here in full:

 

Tribal leader accused over Darfur says he was acting for government 

The sheikh accused by the United States of co-ordinating Janjaweed militiamen has admitted that he was "appointed" by Sudan's government to recruit Arab tribesmen to "defend their land". 

In an interview with The Telegraph, Musa Hilal scorned calls for his arrest on the eve of this week's visit to Sudan by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and the United Nations' deadline for Sudan to begin its promised crackdown on the Janjaweed. 

"I don't care what my enemies say about me," he said, jabbing his finger. "I have no concerns about being arrested. I don't think the Sudanese government would be stupid enough to take that decision." 

Mr Hilal has been identified by the US State Department as the most senior of seven Janjaweed leaders allegedly responsible for the ethnic cleansing conducted against predominantly black African villagers by Arab militiamen in the province of Darfur. 

Mr Hilal, 43, a tall man who has three wives and 13 children and leads a tribe of more than 200,000 people, denies the accusation. He was not an "agent" of the government, he said, but acknowledged allegations that the Khartoum government was using the camel and horse-riding Arab militia to suppress the rebellion. 

"I am one of the tribal leaders responsible for collecting people for military service for the country," he said, claiming that he organised his followers to defend themselves against Darfurian rebels. 

"I was appointed by the government to organise people to defend their lands but legally, not illegally. They were defending themselves against the mutineers." 

Read full story: https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2004/08/janjaweed-leader-moussa-hilal.html

________________________

Report from AlJazeera.com

By Mat Nashed

Dated 3 May 2023 - full copy:

Could an old tribal foe undercut Sudan’s Hemedti?

The RSF could be more vulnerable in its stronghold in Darfur, where a rival foe is challenging Hemedti.

PHOTO: Musa Hilal (centre right) celebrates with former President Omar al-Bashir (centre left) at the wedding of the former's daughter [File: Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters]

After two weeks of armed conflict, Sudan’s feared paramilitary leader, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, has fought the army to a deadlock in the capital of Khartoum.

But his Rapid Support Forces could be more vulnerable in their stronghold in Darfur, where a rival has challenged Hemedti for tribal supremacy, analysts and residents told Al Jazeera.

Enter Musa Hilal, a respected tribal chief from the same Arab Rizeigat tribe that Hemedti hails.

Back in 2003, Hilal fought on behalf of the government against mostly non-Arab armed groups, who were rebelling against what they said was the state’s neglect and exploitation of Darfur. According to Human Rights Watch, Hilal’s forces – the Popular Defence Forces, called “Janjaweed” by the rebels – were accused of committing summary executions and using rape as a weapon of war.

Between 2003 and 2009, about 300,000 people were killed in the armed conflict, as well as from disease and famine brought on by the war. But while Hilal was scorned worldwide, he was rewarded back home.

In 2005, Sudan’s former leader, Omar al-Bashir, put Hilal’s fighters under the army’s control and tasked them with protecting Sudan’s frontiers.

Three years later, al-Bashir appointed him as his special adviser and even awarded him a seat in parliament in 2010.

“The thing with these militia leaders is that they start off as proxies [for the central government] and then they end up having their own political ambitions,” said Hafiz Mohamad, a Sudanese researcher for Justice Africa, which advocates for human rights across the continent.

Despite Hilal’s ascension in Khartoum, he eventually returned to Darfur after growing frustrated at the government’s continuing neglect of the region.

The fallout prompted al-Bashir to turn to Hemedti – then a little-known trader and a former fighter – to command a new armed group called the RSF. One of Hemedti’s early tasks was arresting Hilal for refusing to disarm his forces.

Now, Hilal could look to settle scores by helping the army weaken the RSF.

“When Bashir created the RSF, he gave all sorts of resources to Hemedti. That’s really when this rivalry started. Hilal started a rebellion against the government and one of Hemedti’s first tasks was to contain him,” Mohamad said.

Mobilising forces?

In March 2021, Hilal was pardoned after spending six months in prison, before Hemedti and army commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan – the two generals now fighting each other – upended the country’s democratic transition through a coup in October 2021.

Hilal has kept a low profile since his release, yet some analysts believed that the army has been trying to co-opt him – and fighters from his tribe – to undercut Hemedti.

“Hilal has been under Military Intelligence protection since his re-emergence,” one expert, who did not wish to disclose his name for fear of losing important sources and access to Sudan, told Al Jazeera.

Signs of a warm relationship between Hilal and the military have been reported. In June 2022, Hilal and his Revolutionary Awakening Council participated in peace talks with a number of other armed groups from Darfur, according to the latest United Nations Panel of Experts report on Darfur.

Sudan’s army sent the head of military intelligence, Major General Mohamed Ahmed Sabir, to mediate talks between the factions under the auspices of Promediation, a French NGO that assists mediation efforts between state and non-state groups.

The discussion centred around the peaceful return of Sudanese mercenaries, many of whom are loyal to Hilal, from Libya.

Months later, in the lead-up to the war between the army and RSF, Arab activists in Darfur reported that the military was recruiting from their clan in order to form a new border force that could undercut Hemedti.

The military has not denied that it was recruiting from Darfur, yet it did refute that it was coveting fighters from a certain tribe or clan. However, Hilal’s role and whereabouts remain uncertain.

“Rizeigat leaders were warning against an ongoing campaign to recruit fighters. The mobilisation is ongoing, but where Hilal fits in is not clear,” said Suliman Baldo, the founder of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker, a think tank covering political affairs in the country.

“The fact that all these [Rizeigat] tribal leaders were complaining about [recruitment], shows that it was an intense activity,” he added.

From strongmen to politicians

While Hilal and Hemedti are both from the Rizeigat, they are from two different clans within it.

The former is from the Mahamid and the latter from the Mahariya.

But, similar to Hilal, Hemedti evolved from being a militia fighter to having his own political ambitions.

The difference is that while Hilal maintains a loyal following in North Darfur, Hemedti has been able to cultivate relationships with regional backers, such as the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Eritrea.

Those powerful friends give Hemedti and the RSF an outsized advantage against any attempt by Hilal to fight him, said Anette Hoffman, an expert on Sudan for the Clingendael Institute, an independent Dutch think tank.

“If there were no foreign players involved, Hilal would be able to mobilise through his tribal links, including whatever links he has in Chad,” she told Al Jazeera. “But with such powerful backers, Hilal just doesn’t compare any more to Hemedti.”

Despite Hilal’s disadvantages, Hoffman expected him to still try and mobilise fighters, which could make the fighting in Darfur significantly bloodier in the weeks and months to come.

“If we see Hemedti get killed at some point, then we could see a disintegration of the RSF and also of the Rizeigat as an ethnic group,” she said. “Hilal would then play a role that leads to more suffering and more fighting and access to arms. He would help to turn things uglier than they already are.”

For non-Arab communities in West Darfur, the scarier scenario is if Hilal and Hemedti put their differences aside in order to fight the army, said Zakaria Bedour, a local human rights monitor in the province.

She stressed that Mahamid militias and communities are already receiving support from the RSF in order to target non-Arabs in el-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur. The latest violence is due in part to a power vacuum in the region, prompting Arab militias to try and grab control over land and water resources.

The attacks have killed nearly 200 people, according to local doctors. Internally displaced camps sheltering non-Arab communities were also burned to the ground, while markets, hospitals and warehouses belonging to international relief organisations were looted.

“If [Hemedti and Hilal] get along, there will be consequences for the African tribes and the internally displaced people. [Hilal and Hemedti] remember the displaced people as being in opposition to them [in previous wars],” warned Zakaria.

“The consequence would make the [Arab] forces much bigger than the [armed non-Arab groups] in [West Darfur].”

Play Video - Duration 01 minutes 11 seconds

Video posted on social media documents destruction in Sudan

Play Video - Duration 01 minutes 13 seconds

Video shows destroyed Sudanese food market

KEEP READING

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list 2 of 4

UN refugee agency warns more than 800,000 may flee Sudan

list 3 of 4

Sudan fighting in its 18th day: A list of key events

list 4 of 4

The journey out of Sudan

View original: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/3/could-an-old-tribal-foe-undercut-sudans-hemedti

[Ends]

Is Darfur sliding back into hell? Spate of violence in ‘ungovernable’ Darfur, Sudan stokes fears of war

NOTE from Sudan Watch editor: Sadly, here we are again… (Thanks CW!) 

Is Darfur sliding back into hell? 

Spate of violence in ‘ungovernable’ region stokes fears of war. 

Hopes for lasting peace scatter as the region barrels towards a series of tit for tat tribal attacks – a grim echo of a not-so-distant past. 

A local power struggle is ongoing in Darfur. 

As the Sudanese currency tanks, the control of gold supplies has become incredibly important and many experts believe that Hemeti is the most powerful man in the country. 

He is also perhaps Russia’s top ally in the region, and spent a week in Moscow at the beginning of the Ukraine invasion. Read more:

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced – a grim echo of the past
CREDIT: RAMZI HAIDAR /AFP

From: The Telegraph, UK

By WILL BROWN, AFRICA CORRESPONDENT

Published Monday 23 May 2022; 4:21pm

Is Darfur sliding back into hell? Spate of violence in ‘ungovernable’ region stokes fears of war

Hopes for lasting peace scatter as the region barrels towards a series of tit for tat tribal attacks – a grim echo of a not-so-distant past

It was the first genocide of the 21st century. A once peaceful land governed by traditional leaders split along tribal fissures and turned into a killing field the size of France. Some 300,000 people were shot, brutalised or starved to death.

After two decades of horrors in Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, Ethiopia and now Ukraine, the name Darfur has fallen out of the international consciousness – a distant memory of famished children and men on horseback with Kalashnikovs that the world would rather forget.

But last month, events in southwestern Sudan scattered hopes of a lasting peace and sent Darfur barrelling towards a series of tit for tat tribal attacks.

On April 22, the small town of Kreinik and some 16 villages around it in the West Darfur region were surrounded by hundreds of armed men. Some came on horses, others on motorbikes or in Toyotas decked out with high calibre machine guns.

The men came from the Arab Reizegat tribe. The townsfolk were mainly members of the black ethnic Massalit community. Two Arabs had been recently killed in the town and the gunmen were out for revenge.

The attackers went on a killing spree and then stormed into the Geneina, the region’s capital. The UN said more than 1,000 armed Reizegats swept into the town. According to the governor of the region, the vastly outgunned regular government forces withdrew into the local garrison.

The Reizegats pillaged the town and by the time it was all over, some 200 people had been shot or butchered including medical staff at the main hospital. Tens of thousands had been displaced, a grim echo of a not-so-distant past.

“It is destined to continue and escalate. I don’t expect the violence to subside any time soon. Darfur is ungovernable right now for any armed security force,” said Suliman Baldo, at the International Centre for Transitional Justice and a top expert on Darfur. But why now? Why is Darfur slipping backwards after years of peace negotiations and tens of billions of dollars spent on peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts?

Unresolved tribal competition

The borderland area between Sudan, South Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic is probably the most ungoverned space on earth. Much of what’s going on is a mystery – but there are clearly several factors at play behind the spate of violence.

First, a local power struggle is ongoing. While Darfuri history and communal relations defy simplistic stereotypes, a key factor at the root of the recent spate of violence is a longstanding and unresolved tribal competition for access to resources, according to Mr Baldo.

Darfur is not the endless barren desert portrayed in glossy NGO brochures pleading for funding. Parts of the region are incredibly wealthy with good pasture, arable land and vast quantities of gold.

As Sudan’s tattered economy struggles with global shocks of the pandemic, war in Ukraine and a regional drought, competition over these scarce resources is increasing.

“This is strongly reminiscent of the conflict we’ve seen in Darfur before running along tribal and racial fissures,” said Jonas Horner, an independent expert on Sudan. “The root causes of those conflicts were never addressed.”

Events some 700 miles away in the Sudanese capital are also playing a major role.

For much of the last century, Darfur has been a periphery area that elites in the bustling metropole Khartoum have tried to dominate for resources. The current situation in Khartoum is tense and experts say power struggles are spilling out into the periphery.

Sudan’s old Islamist dictator, Omar al-Bashir – who once played different Darfuri groups against each other and terrorised Darfur with bands of Arab janjaweed militiamen – was swept away in a revolution in 2019 after almost four decades in power.

A liberal former UN-staffer, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, was charged with guiding Sudan along the road to full democracy as part of a complex transitional government. But he was ousted in a coup in October 2021.

Now two major groups are tussling for control. On one hand, is the Sudanese Armed Force (SAF), headed up by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan – who is now the de-facto head of state and in many ways represents the old interests of the old centralised elites.

On the other hand there is Hemeti, a Darfuri warlord from the same Arab Reizegat tribe who carried out last month’s massacre. Hemeti heads up a well-armed militia movement called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which was formed out of the old janjaweed raiders and controls some of Darfur’s major gold mining areas.

Locked in a simmering struggle

As the Sudanese currency tanks, the control of gold supplies has become incredibly important and many experts believe that Hemeti is the most powerful man in the country. He is also perhaps Russia’s top ally in the region, and spent a week in Moscow at the beginning of the Ukraine invasion.

Both the SAF and RSF are locked in a simmering struggle which keeps coming perilously close to outright conflict. There are multiple eyewitnesses and media reports indicating that uniformed RSF soldiers supported the Rizeigat Arabs when they attacked the Massalit last month.

Even though the SAF forces have a duty to protect Sudanese civilians, they did not want to confront the RSF in Darfur – most probably because it could have escalated into an even larger fight.

Mr Baldo said the recent attacks shows just how incompetent and ethnicised Sudan’s security forces are, and how little control the Sudanese state has in rural areas.

“The massacre is an indictment of the military-led government in Khartoum, in place since the October 25, 2021 coup. When the military seized power their claim was that they – as security forces – needed to step in to provide security,” Mr Horner said.

“Recent evidence in Darfur and elsewhere sees them failing completely in their most fundamental task,” he added.

Russian mercenaries could also be a factor in the recent spate of violence. Mercenaries working for the Wagner group are involved in diamond and gold mining in the Central Africa Republic and have been accused of carrying out massacres close to the Sudanese border.

This could be feeding into local power dynamics in the Darfur area, upsetting a complex web of local interests in ways which are not fully understood.

Another factor is Chad. The country’s former dictator Idriss Déby used to be the West’s go-to strong man in Central Africa. Mr Deby’s well-trained desert army helped keep a lid on many of the nastiest groups in the region for years, guaranteeing his dictatorial regime strong Western support.

But since Mr Déby was killed last year, allegedly while fighting with his troops on the frontline, his son Mahamat Idriss Déby has struggled to fill his father's shoes. The Chadian security forces are struggling to exert the same amount of influence in Chad’s borderland areas.

This could, Mr Horner says, be giving oxygen to some of the more violent groups in Darfur.

PHOTO AND CAPTION: Darfur has fallen out of the international consciousness – a distant memory that the world would rather forget CREDIT: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

PHOTO AND CAPTION: A child refugee from the Darfur region of Sudan pictured at a refugee camp in Chad in 2004 CREDIT: Scott Nelson/Getty Images

PHOTO AND CAPTION: A local power struggle is ongoing in Dafur CREDIT: MARCO LONGARI,/AFP

PHOTO AND CAPTION: Supporters of Sudan's former President Omar Hassan al-Bashir protest in Khartoum in 2008 CREDIT: MOHAMED NURELDIN ABDALLAH /REUTERS

View the original here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/darfur-sliding-back-spate-violence-ungovernable-region-stokes/