Islamists wield hidden hand in Sudan conflict. Burhan calls for Sudan’s young civilians to fight against RSF

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: This article shows a photo of Hemeti dated 2019. Not seen his face since he was demoted to a rebel. Two unverified voice messages from him are online. Can't find news of his whereabouts. Is he still alive? No-one's asking. Rumours online say he's in a Kenyan hospital, not true says Kenyan President Ruto in a recent video news report. 

Four writers of this article use the words "conflict" and "war"to describe Sudan's current crisis. Many writers casually use the words "war" and "genocide" whether true or not. Words have power. Young people now rely on social media for news, mainstream media is not seen as trustworthy. 

The article is followed by a cartoon from a report at Radio Dabanga titled 'El Burhan calls for Sudan's 'young and capable' civilians to fight against RSF'. 

The caption for the cartoon says 'Civilians who were killed for their protests against the actions of the military and Rapid Support Forces are now being asked to defend Sudan for Lt Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan. 

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Article at Reuters.com
By Khalid Abdelaziz

Writing by Michael Georgy and Aidan Lewis, Editing by William Maclean
Published June 28, 2023, 5:05 AM GMT+1 - here is a full copy:

Exclusive: Islamists wield hidden hand in Sudan conflict, military sources say

Summary

• Ex-intelligence agents fighting alongside army-sources
• Army has leant on Bashir-era veterans since 2021 coup
• Conflict pits army general against ex-militia leader

[1/5]Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy head of the military council and head of paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), greets his supporters as he arrives at a meeting in Aprag village, 60 kilometers away from Khartoum, Sudan, June 22, 2019. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo

DUBAI, June 28 (Reuters) - Thousands of men who worked as intelligence operatives under former president Omar al-Bashir and have ties to his Islamist movement are fighting alongside the army in Sudan's war, three military sources and one intelligence source said, complicating efforts to end the bloodshed.

The army and a paramilitary force have been battling each other in Khartoum, Darfur and elsewhere for 10 weeks in Africa's third largest country by area, displacing 2.5 million people, causing a humanitarian crisis and threatening to destabilise the region. Reinforcements for either side could deepen the conflict.

The army has long denied accusations by its rivals in the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that it depends on discredited loyalists of Bashir, an Islamist long shunned by the West, who was toppled during a popular uprising in 2019.

In response to a question from Reuters for this article, an army official said: "The Sudanese army has no relation with any political party or ideologue. It is a professional institution."

Yet the three military sources and an intelligence source said thousands of Islamists were battling alongside the army.

"Around 6,000 members of the intelligence agency joined the army several weeks before the conflict," said a military official familiar with the army's operations, speaking on condition on anonymity.

"They are fighting to save the country."

Former officials of the country's now-disbanded National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), a powerful institution composed mainly of Islamists, confirmed these numbers.

An Islamist resurgence in Sudan could complicate how regional powers deal with the army, hamper any move towards civilian rule and ultimately set the country, which once hosted al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, on a path for more internal conflict and international isolation.

Reuters spoke to 10 sources for this article, including military and intelligence sources and several Islamists.

In a development indicative of Islamist involvement, an Islamist fighter named Mohammed al-Fadl was killed this month in clashes between RSF forces and the army, said family members and Islamists. He had been fighting alongside the army, they said.

Ali Karti, secretary general of Sudan's main Islamic organisation, sent a statement of condolences for al-Fadl.

'OUR IDENTITY AND OUR RELIGION'

"We are fighting and supporting the army to protect our country from external intervention and keep our identity and our religion," said one Islamist fighting alongside the army.

Bashir's former ruling National Congress Party said in a statement it had no ties to the fighting and only backed the army politically.

The army accused the RSF of promoting Islamists and former regime loyalists in their top ranks, a charge the RSF denied. Army chief Abdel Fattah Burhan, who analysts see as a non-ideological army man, has publicly dismissed claims that Islamists are helping his forces. "Where are they?" he cried out to cheering troops in a video posted in May.

The military, which under Bashir had many Islamist officers, has been a dominant force in Sudan for decades, staging coups, fighting internal wars and amassing economic holdings.

But following the overthrow of Bashir, Burhan developed good ties with states that have worked against Islamists in the region, notably the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The Gulf states provided Khartoum with significant aid.

Nowadays, former NISS officers also help the military by collecting intelligence on its enemies in the latest conflict. The NISS was replaced by the General Intelligence Service (GIS) after Bashir was toppled, and stripped of its armed "operations" unit, according to a constitutional agreement.

Most of the men from that unit have sided with the army, but some former operations unit members and Islamists who served under Bashir entered the RSF, one army source and one intelligence source said.

"We are working in a very hard situation on the ground to back up the army, especially with information about RSF troops and their deployment," said a GIS official.

Reuters Graphics

BASHIR-ERA VETERANS

The army outnumbers the RSF nationally, but analysts say it has little capacity for street fighting because it outsourced previous wars in remote regions to militias. Those militias include the "Janjaweed" that helped crush an insurgency in Darfur and later developed into the RSF.

Nimble RSF units have occupied large areas of Khartoum and this week took control of the main base of the Central Reserve Police, a force that the army had deployed in ground combat in the capital. They seized large amounts of weaponry.

But the army, which has depended mainly on air strikes and heavy artillery, could benefit from GIS intelligence gathering skills honed over decades as it tries to root out the RSF.

On June 7, fire engulfed the intelligence headquarters in a disputed area in central Khartoum. Both sides accused the other of attacking the building.

After Burhan and RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, carried out a coup in 2021 which derailed a transition to democracy, Hemedti said the move was a mistake and warned it would encourage Islamists to seek power.

Regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia and the UAE had seen Sudan's transition towards democracy as a way to counter Islamist influence in the region, which they consider a threat.

Publicly, the army has asserted its loyalty to the uprising that ousted Bashir in 2019.

But after the military staged a coup in 2021 that provoked a resurgence of mass street protests, it leaned on Bashir-era veterans to keep the country running. A taskforce that had been working to dismantle the former ruling system was disbanded.

Before the outbreak of violence, Bashir supporters had been lobbying against a plan for a transition to elections under a civilian government. Disputes over the chain of command and the structure of the military under the plan triggered the fighting.

About a week after fighting broke out in April, a video on social media showed about a dozen former intelligence officials in army uniforms announcing themselves as reserve forces.

The footage could not be independently verified by Reuters.

Several senior Bashir loyalists walked free from prison in Bahri, across the Nile from central Khartoum, during a wider prison break amid fighting in late April. The circumstances of their release remain unclear. Bashir is in a military hospital.

[2/5]Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir addresses supporters during his visit to the war-torn Darfur region, in Bilal, Darfur, Sudan September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/File Photo

[3/5]A Sudanese national flag is attached to a machine gun of Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) soldiers as they wait for the arrival of Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, deputy head of the military council and head of RSF, before a meeting in Aprag village 60, kilometers away from Khartoum, Sudan, June 22, 2019. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo 

[4/5]A burned vehicle is seen in Khartoum, Sudan April 26, 2023. REUTERS/El-Tayeb Siddig/File Photo

[5/5]Sudan's General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan walks with troops, in an unknown location, in this picture released on May 30, 2023. Sudanese Armed Forces/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

View original: https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/islamists-wield-hidden-hand-sudan-conflict-military-sources-say-2023-06-28/

[Ends]

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Post script from Sudan Watch Editor:

Cartoon by Omar Dafallah, published in Radio Dabanga's report below.

Caption: Civilians who were killed for their protests against the actions of the military and Rapid Support Forces are now being asked to defend Sudan for Lt Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan 

- Cartoon by Omar Dafallah (RD)

Read more in report at Radio Dabanga, Thur 29 Jun 2023: El Burhan calls for Sudan’s ‘young and capable’ civilians to fight against RSF https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/el-burhan-calls-for-sudans-young-and-capable-civilians-to-fight-against-rsf )

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- - -

UPDATED Fri 30 Jun 2023 00:25 GMT+1 - added the following:

Report at Sudan Tribune

Published Tues 27 Jun 2023 - here is an excerpt:

Burhan calls on Sudanese youth to join the army

Sudan’s political parties have called for an end to the war and negotiations to integrate the RSF ahead of an inclusive political conference. For their part, the armed groups in Darfur that have signed a peace deal have declared their neutrality.

The SPLM-N, led by Malik Agar, is now fighting alongside the army after its full integration. In contrast, the SPLM-N led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu in the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile has recently launched attacks against the Sudanese army, speaking about its failure to protect civilians.

Al-Burhan announced a one-day truce on the first day of Eid and reaffirmed the commitment of the armed forces to transfer power to a civilian government chosen by the Sudanese people. He further denounced the ongoing violations against civilians in Darfur as “ethnic cleansing and genocide.”

Read more: https://sudantribune.com/article274719/

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Jan Pronk: "Sudan? Europe is busy with itself"

NOTE from Sudan Watch Ed: This report was written in Dutch by Prof Jan Pronk of The Netherlands, UN Special Envoy to Sudan from 2004 to 2006. 

Google Translator enabled me to produce the following translation but it doesn't do justice to his excellent English, communication and writing skills. 

Hopefully, readers will make allowances for this version that's been stripped of the personality and character of a great humanitarian by a machine.

Jan Pronk (pictured) was UN Special Envoy to Sudan from 2004 to 2006.

Opinion editorial from NRC Netherlands - https://www.nrc.nl/

By JAN PRONK

Dated 05 May 2023 - full copy, translated from original Dutch version:

Jan Pronk: "Sudan? Europe is busy with itself"

Sudan Diplomatic pressure was minimal, economic sanctions were not forthcoming, the arms trade flourished. In the run-up to the civil war in Sudan, the international community has looked away, writes Jan Pronk

Sudanese refugees just across the border in Chad, near Koufroun.

Photo Gueipeur Denis Sassou / AFP)

Was to prevent the civil war in Sudan, which erupted last month? When conflicts arise mainly from deeper internal contradictions – ethnic, religious or economic – it is difficult to get a grip on them from the outside. We learned that lesson. International intervention consists mainly of humanitarian aid. 

And UN peacekeeping operations, if they take place at all, are given a limited mandate: protect victims and try to stabilize the situation so that conflict parties can seek a political solution themselves. But no matter how limited that ambition is compared to thirty years ago, the results are small. More and more countries in Africa and Asia are plagued by internal conflicts of violence. The number of victims and refugees is increasing alarmingly.

Sudan, too, has been hit by deep divisions since it gained independence in 1956. The civil war between North and South claimed hundreds of thousands of victims. He ended in 2012 with the declaration of South Sudan as an independent state. The genocide in Darfur, shortly after the beginning of this century, is not yet history. Throughout Sudan, North and South, ethnic conflicts continue to cause casualties. 

Throughout Sudan, North and South, ethnic conflicts continue to cause casualties. Contradictions between Islamic fundamentalists and others are becoming sharper. The distance between the population in the Nile Delta and beyond is increasing. Economic inequality is widening. Young people see less and less perspective.

But the battle between President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan's army and the militias of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (aka Hemedti) is mainly about power and control over the country's wealth. Other contradictions were subordinated to the interests of the army and paramilitaries. 

But while the underlying contradictions cannot be easily influenced from the outside, the outside world did have the opportunity to prevent the current brutal power struggle. That has not been done.

On horseback and by camel

When an uprising broke out in Darfur in 2003 against the regime in Khartoum, President Bashir, who had come to power in a military coup in 1990, tried to defeat the guerrillas by deploying militias of Arab tribes.

The army couldn't do it alone. Many soldiers were from Darfur themselves and unwilling to go all out. The militias did. They were given carte blanche and made no distinction between rebels and unarmed civilians.

The army cooperated with them by carrying out bombing raids. The population fled in panic and fell prey to pursuers on horseback and by camel. Villages were set on fire and wiped off the map. Immediately afterwards, the militias disappeared like snow in the sun, until another attack. Four hundred thousand people died.

Two million others fled to camps in Darfur and Chad, across the border. They were received by the UN and aid workers, but were not safe there.

Bashir and his predecessors had used the same tactic before, in the fight against the South. It was a tried and tested method and it cost Khartoum little. The militias were allowed to loot and loot at will. 

In Darfur they were known as the Janjaweed: 'Devils with a horse and a gun'. They did not need heavier weapons to kill women, children and unarmed elderly men. Large parts of Darfur were ethnically 'cleansed'.

Villages were set on fire and wiped off the map

The international uproar over the genocide was great. Then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan personally negotiated with Bashir in Khartoum and reached an agreement. The Janjaweed would be disarmed. But that didn't happen. The Security Council protested, but did not act. 

The killing continued. Negotiations between the government and the rebels resulted in a peace agreement, but that did not last. The army attacked villages where it suspected that the villagers were sheltering rebels, even though the inhabitants themselves adhered to the truce.

The international outrage over the actions of the Janjaweed and the army was not followed up. Bashir was summoned by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He didn't come.

If he visited another country, he was obliged to arrest him. That didn't happen. He visited Qatar, met the new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, who was content to shake his hand. 

The Security Council kept quiet so as not to jeopardize Bashir's agreement to South Sudan's coming independence. The regime got away with everything. So does the Janjaweed. Diplomatic pressure was minimal. There was no political pressure. Economic sanctions as well. The arms trade flourished. 

The Janjaweed were transformed into Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The former genocide perpetrators received support from the European Union to guard Sudan's borders and stop refugees who wanted to move to Europe via Chad and Libya. Brussels hypocrisy at its best.

Gulf states jump into the hole

In 2018, civilians revolted against the regime. For the first time in thirty there was a loud call for democracy. Bashir was jailed on charges of corruption — not war crimes.

The new ruler Burhan promised to cooperate in the formation of a civilian government. It came for a while, but was sent away two years later by the military and the RSF with combined forces. The Janjaweed-new-style resumed cooperation with the army.

It was agreed to integrate the militias into the army, but they now had so many weapons and money that they felt strong enough to resist. That was the beginning of this civil war.

The civilian population was defeated and slaughtered. The outside world had looked to the side for the umpteenth time. Foreigners were picked up in haste, as they were in Afghanistan, Rwanda and Vietnam. It stands in stark contrast to the EU's treatment of African, Arab and Asian refugees trying to escape war, oppression and genocide.

China, Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are jumping into the gap left by Europe. The EU lacks a vision of Sudan and other countries in the region. Things are just as bad there. In Chad it was unsettled, in Ethiopia war was fought this year. Eritrea and Egypt are ruled by dictators.

Somalia is being held hostage by the al-Shabab terror group. In Uganda, repression of dissenters is on the rise. Eastern Congo and the Central African Republic are prey for warlords. Libya is falling apart.

Europe is busy with itself. The problems are indeed great. But those who look away from the problems across the border become problem owners. We already are.

View original: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2023/05/05/soedan-europa-heeft-het-druk-met-zichzelf-a4163865

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Gulf states are mapping Khartoum’s future

Article from Chatham House, UK

Written by MOHAMED EL AASSAR

Senior Journalist at BBC Monitoring’s Middle East and North Africa team

Dated 29 July 2019

Gulf states are mapping Khartoum’s future

Fate of power sharing deal in Sudan rests in the hands of wealthy donors

Photo:  Sudanese deputy head of the Transitional Military Council, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo

Since Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese leader, was forced to step down in April by pro-democracy street protesters, the governing Transitional Military Council has received strong backing from the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Bashir and Saudi Arabia have a long and tangled history. For many years, the two were sworn enemies. But since 2014, Saudi Arabia has co-opted Bashir to remove him from Iran’s sphere of influence. Money flowed in and Saudi lobbying helped remove United States sanctions on Sudan. Iranian cultural, medical and military facilities were closed and diplomats expelled.

In 2015, Sudanese troops joined the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Similarly, the UAE wanted to ‘turn’ Bashir from his Islamist roots, and thus deprive its long-term enemy the Muslim Brotherhood of a safe haven in Khartoum.

All this changed earlier this year. As the street protests began to threaten Bashir’s grip on power, the Saudis and Emiratis started to look to a post-Bashir world.

Despite the Gulf monarchies’ known aversion to Arab uprisings, Saudi and UAE media were uncharacteristically upbeat in their coverage of Bashir’s overthrow – in many cases even appearing to support the protest movement.

This contrasted with Gulf rival Qatar’s Al Jazeera, which depicted the crisis as a conflict between military and civilian rule, and warned of a ‘coup’ against Bashir.

This didn’t help the Sudanese president, however. A past master at playing Gulf rivals off against each other, this time he had suddenly lost his touch.

After Bashir                                                                             

At the height of the protests he visited his long-time Qatari patron to ask for Doha’s money and backing. He returned empty-handed. For its part, the UAE reportedly refused to extend further support until he purged his administration of Islamists. Something he refused to do.

After the fall of Bashir, Saudi Arabia and the UAE announced a $3 billion aid package to meet Sudan’s most pressing needs. At about the same time, Sudanese media were gripped by the return of Major- General Taha Othman al-Hussein to Khartoum. Once Bashir’s chief of staff, he had fallen out with his former boss and turned up in Riyadh as a Saudi royal adviser.

He returned to Khartoum at the head of an Emirati delegation. It is widely believed that he was the architect of Sudan’s participation in the Yemen conflict, having overseen the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as part of his earlier role at the presidency.

As well as playing a much-feared security enforcement role in Sudan, the RSF also provides the main component of the Sudanese forces fighting in the Saudi-led coalition against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Sudanese are posted at Yemen’s volatile border with Saudi, have fought in battles for control of Yemen’s west coast and provide security in cities in the coalition-controlled south.

The Yemeni rebels call them ‘mercenaries’ and ‘Janjaweed’ – the latter a reference to the RSF’s role in laying waste to Darfur in the early 2000s.

The Sudanese media don’t like them much either. They too refer to the forces as Janjaweed and accuse them of terrorizing civilians and carrying out ‘barbaric and brutal assaults’ against peaceful protesters.

Their leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who is also known as Hemeti, is loathed by the opposition. Facebook groups have branded him ‘a devil’ and the RSF the ‘Rapist Savage Forces’.

A former camel trader turned military leader, he was described by the influential pro-opposition website Dabanga as a man who has ‘never entered a military college, even for a single day, never trained or attended any military course, and never achieved any academic or any military awards’.

When Hemeti recently boasted about the large Sudanese contingent in the coalition in Yemen, another opposition website questioned why the lives of 30,000 Sudanese were being put at risk in a war in which Sudan has neither ‘a camel nor a mule at stake’. A column in the privately owned Sudanese newspaper Al-Jaridah said the Sudanese military ‘do not represent us and are not authorized to speak in our name when they say that Sudanese soldiers will remain in Yemen’.

Hemeti’s central role in the Transitional Military Council (TMC) and the violent dispersal of protests have not helped improve the military’s popularity. In April, videos circulated on social media depicted the Sudanese army ‘protecting’ the demonstrators outside military headquarters in Khartoum. Now the media make little reference to Sudan’s armed forces.

Saudi changes tack                                                              

As negotiations between the opposition and the military leaders stalled, the Saudis shifted tactics.

Their media prominently featured veteran Sudanese opposition figure Sadiq al-Mahdi, who was calling for compromise between the opposition and the military.

Saudi-owned, Dubai-based Al Arabiya TV tried to present itself as an objective observer. It gave equal air time to opposition and pro-TMC voices and regularly hosted representatives of the Sudanese Professionals Association, the group that had spearheaded the protests.

To their credit, Al Arabiya’s Sudanese reporters regularly reframe loaded questions by anchors and question TMC accusations against the protest movement in their live two-ways.

In July, the military and the opposition finally signed an agreement on a joint sovereign council that will rule during a transitional period.

Whether or not this compromise deal holds, Sudan’s future will continue to be heavily influenced by Gulf rivalries – backed by huge amounts of Gulf cash.

AUTHOR: Mohamed El Aassar is a Senior Journalist at BBC Monitoring’s Middle East and North Africa team

SOURCE: https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/twt/gulf-states-are-mapping-khartoum-s-future