Sudan: Military has far too much power (Eric Reeves)

• The RSF is still effectively under the command of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemeti”). And the further from Khartoum one travels, the more fully the RSF seems a force unto itself—nowhere more so than in Darfur, where since the formation of the RSF under Hemeti’s command in 2013, many hundreds of thousands of people—overwhelmingly from the non-Arab/African tribal groups of the region—have been killed or displaced. And the killing and displacement continue. 
• What about control of the Jebel Amir gold mining region? Does anyone really think that Hemeti will willingly give up control of a hugely lucrative area he wrested from former janjaweed leader Musa Hilal several years ago? 
• If history is any guide, the most likely outcome of recent negotiations will be a slow but eventually wholesale reneging on the agreement as soon as international attention turns away from Sudan—and that will not be a long wait.
• Will Hemeti disclose fully his stake in the large industrial conglomerate Al Junaid Industrial Group, based in the United Arab Emirates? And the role of his brother in the company? And the investments of National Intelligence and Security officials who have been reported as having invested in Al Junaid?
• Will all arrests be made only by policemen?
• One of the intentions of the military could be met tomorrow if a signal were sent to the international community that it should begin to prepare to bring assistance to all parts of South Kordofan and Blue Nile—and that restrictions on aid delivery in Darfur will also be ended.  Read full story:

Analysis from Radio Dabanga.org

By Dr Eric Reeves - NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS, USA

Published Wednesday 07 August 2019

The Constitutional Charter and the future of Sudan

FCC leader Ahmed Rabee and Hemeti with copies of the Constitutional Declaration during the signing ceremony in Khartoum on August 4 (Picture SUNA).

The “Constitutional Charter” (CC) signed on August 4 is an inspiring read, if stripped from the grim context in which it has been brought into being—if we forget the many hundreds who have been killed, wounded, raped, and tortured in the course of the uprising that has brought at least the hope of civilian governance into sight. The insistence on human rights, the rule of law, individual liberties, press freedoms, tolerance, and indeed the priority of peace—all of this provides at least the ghostly outline of a what a free and just Sudan—truly at peace with itself—might look like.

But what has been stipulated in the CC and what seems likely in the near future seem to me two very different things, and I am far from alone in my misgivings. Canvassing Sudanese social media over the past three days—and for months prior to this—I find two major concerns, fundamental issues that many feel have not been addressed by the CC.

The first, and most frequent, is that far too much power has been left in the hands of the military, now a hybrid military, with both the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) nominally under the command of the “Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces” (CC §34).* Moreover, many have observed that the RSF is left fully intact, a force unto itself, and still effectively under the command of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemeti”). And the further from Khartoum one travels, the more fully the RSF seems a force unto itself—nowhere more so than in Darfur, where since the formation of the RSF under Hemeti’s command in 2013, many hundreds of thousands of people—overwhelmingly from the non-Arab/African tribal groups of the region—have been killed or displaced. And the killing and displacement continue.

In Khartoum itself, all evidence points to a concerted plan by the RSF to undertake what has come to be known as the “June 3 Massacre,” in which more than 150 people were killed (perhaps many more), dozens of women and girls raped, and widespread violence of a sort not seen even during the uprising of September 2013. It is impossible to believe that the orders for the deadly clearance of protesters in front of army headquarters did not come from the Transitional Military Council, and indeed “Lt. General” Hemeti (he has no formal military training, a fact reflected in the lack of discipline throughout the RSF). Unsurprisingly, the RSF was again responsible for the deadly violence in El Obeid on July 29.

The second criticism, voiced in various forms, is that the fundamental economic issues in Sudan—a nation struggling under the burden of an economy that has largely collapsed—are nowhere addressed with any specificity. This is perhaps to be expected of an interim constitutional document, but the greatest hindrance to economic rehabilitation in Sudan has long been the inordinate amount of the national budget devoted to the military and security services. All independent Sudanese economists I’ve encountered estimate that the percentage is between 50% and 70% of all national expenditures.

Will the military men who play such a large role in what was to have been a movement to bring about civilian governance in Sudan willingly give up this previously compulsory largesse, provided by the ordinary people of Sudan? Senior officers have enjoyed what is by Sudanese standards a lavish salary and lifestyle: will they give this up in the interest of the nation? And what about control of the Jebel Amir gold mining region, about which so much has been made in recent years? Does anyone really think that Hemeti will willingly give up control of a hugely lucrative area he wrested from former janjaweed leader Musa Hilal several years ago?

The point many Sudanese seem to be making is that the greatest obstacle—both to peace in the country and to economic rehabilitation—is the continuing central role of the armed forces in Sudan’s governance over the next 39 months. It may be that the members of the soon-to-be-dissolve Transitional Military Council (TMC) will no longer be able to move with the same ease of executive fiat as was the case during the al-Bashir years. But there are all too many “work-arounds” evident in the constitutional text, as well as the massive inherent power of the “deep state” that so many Sudanese worry about. 30 years of tyranny, corruption, war, and kleptocracy cannot be whisked away with any document, no matter how eloquent or impressively democratic. And Hemeti has proved himself at once hugely ambitious and unreservedly deceitful and expedient.

Here it is important to remember that the al-Bashir regime abided by not one of the agreements it signed during its long tenure: not the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (annexation of Abyei is only the most egregious violation of the various Protocols of the CPA, signed in January 2005); the Nuba Mountain ceasefire (January, 2002); the Darfur Peace Agreement (Abuja, 2006); the peace agreement with the Eastern Front (October 2006); the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (July 2011); and the list goes on and on. If history is any guide, the most likely outcome of recent negotiations will be a slow but eventually wholesale reneging on the agreement as soon as international attention turns away from Sudan—and that will not be a long wait.

But such an outcome has one terrible downside for the military, if it indeed seizes national power: the economy will continue its collapse, and we may be sure that protests will resume, with anger even greater, political frustration even more intense. It’s hard to say what the economic consequences of eight months of sustained demonstrations, protests, and strikes has been—but it has been enormous, and the people of Sudan have seen just how powerful they are. Without a massive shift in economic priorities, which will entail cooperation from Sudan’s work force, agriculture will continue to decline; the ability to finance critical imports—including food, medicine, and refined petroleum products—will further diminish; and inflation that has brought so many Sudanese families to the very edge of survival continues to roar ahead, even as the Sudanese Pound continues its precipitous collapse.

More Challenges

Even now, of course, we must note Sudanese concern about what is not in the CC, and that is the July agreement between the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) and the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF). The armed opposition has universally rejected the CC of August 4, and several political parties in Khartoum have now insisted that any real path forward requires much more participation from those in the armed movements, and especially civil society elements from the regions where the movements have been most active: Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile. Pessimism is in no short supply.

How will we know if this broadly shared pessimism is warranted? Usefully, the text of the CC provides for some early tests of the military’s willingness to embrace the ideals set forth:

[1] “All people, bodies, and associations, whether official or unofficial, are subject to the rule of law” (§ 5.i). Will we see any change in Darfur, where the rule of law has been only a vague rumour for two decades and more? Where rape, murder, abduction, and pillaging are virtually daily events?

[2] “Upon assuming their positions, members of the Sovereignty Council, Cabinet, governors or ministers of provinces or heads of regions and members of the Transitional Legislative Council submit a financial disclosure including their properties and obligations, including those of their spouses and children, in accordance with the law”(§18.i). Does this apply to RSF commander Hemeti? Will he disclose fully his stake in the large industrial conglomerate Al Junaid Industrial Group, based in the United Arab Emirates? And the role of his brother in the company? And the investments of National Intelligence and Security officials who have been reported as having invested in Al Junaid?

[3] “The General Intelligence Service is a uniformed agency that is competent in national security. Its duties are limited to gathering and analysing information and providing it to the competent bodies. The law defines its obligations and duties, and it is subject to the sovereign and executive authorities by law” (§36). Can we expect to see an end to the arrests and torture for which the “former” National Intelligence and Security Services are notorious? Will all arrests be made only by policemen? These questions are also raised by §45: “Every person has the right to freedom and security. No one shall be subjected to arrest or detention, or deprived of freedom or restricted therefrom except for cause in accordance with procedures defined by law.”

[4] §56 speaks of “the right to access the internet, without prejudice to public order, safety, and morals…” Will we see this? And who decides what is a threat to “to public order, safety, and morals”? Is the conditionality of this language a way to justify future internet shutdowns?

[5] §64 speaks of the State undertaking “to provide primary health care and emergency services free of charge for all citizens, develop public health, and establish, develop and qualify basic treatment and diagnostic institutions.” Does this mean that the ghastly humanitarian embargo imposed by the al-Bashir regime will at long last be lifted from large areas of South Kordofan, after eight years of suffering, hunger, and denial of assistance?

This last test of the intentions of the military could be met tomorrow if a signal were sent to the international community that it should begin to prepare to bring assistance to all parts of South Kordofan and Blue Nile—and that restrictions on aid delivery in Darfur will also be ended.

In short, we could know very soon whether the Transitional Military Council, prior to its dissolution, means to send a signal of good faith. I’m not holding my breath.

* All citations are from a translation of the version of the Constitutional Charter that was signed on 4 August 2019, prepared by International IDEA (www.idea.int).

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the contributing author or media and do not necessarily reflect the position of Radio Dabanga.

Eric Reeves is a regular contributor and commentator to Radio Dabanga. He is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, who has spent the past 20+ years as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the USA and internationally **.
His book about Darfur (A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide) was published in May 2007. He has recently published Compromising with Evil: An archival history of greater Sudan, 2007 — 2012 (available at no cost as an eBook)

View Original: https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/op-ed-the-constitutional-charter-and-the-future-of-sudan

Sudan: Janjaweed's international path to power (Part 10)

"He [Hemeti] has a mercenary force that he’s now willing to rent out to the region" -Cameron Hudson, former CIA analyst.  Read more below.

Article from Middle East Eye.net

By KAAMIL AHMED

Dated 28 August 2019 14:25 UTC

Gold, weapons, fighters: Sudanese Janjaweed's international path to power

Now better known as the RSF, Sudan's fearsome paramilitary group has a long history of involvement in foreign countries that has continued unabated since the uprising

Photo:  Sudan's Janjaweed have moved gold, guns and fighters across borders as they have grown into one of Sudan's most powerful forces (MEE/AFP/Illustrated by Mohamad Elaasar)

Perched on pick-up trucks adorned with machine guns and baskets of rocket-propelled grenades, the notorious Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were an unsettling sight for Khartoum when they began fanning out across the Sudanese capital earlier this year.

Already infamous for their origins in the Janjaweed militias - the “devils on horseback” accused of genocide in Darfur - the now-formalised paramilitary group was no longer rampaging through Sudan’s margins, but dominating street corners in the heart of the capital. 

Amid a tussle over Sudan’s future following months of protests that brought down three-decade ruler Omar al-Bashir, the RSF has become one of the country’s most powerful forces, and many consider their commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, otherwise known as Hemeti, to be Sudan’s de facto leader. 

Removing them has appeared impossible, despite the demands of protesters who despise the RSF for the deadly violence it has unleashed on demonstrations.

The joint civilian and military government now taking shape secures Dagolo’s position as a leader and his RSF as effectively equal to the army within the military. 

The RSF's rise involved doing Bashir’s bidding domestically, but also becoming an enforcer for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, transforming its image from a militia that raided villages mounted on horses and camels to one of a significant regional actor. 

Yemen was not, however, the first time the Janjaweed played a role with implications beyond the limits of Darfur.

Photo:  Heavily armed RSF fighters have been stationed around Khartoum and Sudan since Hemeti's rise to power (AFP)

The path Janjaweed leaders have followed to wealth and power has also involved moving weapons and fighters over borders with Libya and Sudan’s other neighbours, exporting the products of a gold mining monopoly to the United Arab Emirates and taking advantage of Europe’s desire to stem the flow of refugees from Africa. 

That international inclination does not appear to have been tempered by the increased burden of controlling Sudan’s capital, with more than 1,000 troops reportedly deployed to Libya and sales of weapons to militias in neighbouring Central African Republic continuing over recent months. 

“[The RSF] is another name for the Janjaweed, repackaged in a new form, with more resources, which it managed to get both domestically and also from abroad,” Professor Ali Dinar, a senior lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of African Studies, told Middle East Eye. 

“The RSF is a country inside a country. It has its own economic investment, it has its own political relations with countries. There is a lot going on.”

Along the borders: Libya, Chad, Central African Republic

Darfur’s long borders with Libya, Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR) are not nearly as hard as they appear to be on the map. They are porous, traversed by both traders and herders whose tribes span across boundaries and do little to halt the movement of transnational militias. 

So when Hemeti signed a $6m lobbying deal in May that proposed sending military support for east Libya-based Khalifa Haftar, it was far from the first time fighters or weapons would be moving across those borders.

The fall of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and the subsequent division of the country led to a surplus of weapons that often made their way south. But long before that, in the 1980s, Gaddafi was linked with the flow of weapons south of the Sahara. 

“Gaddafi, both before and after he fell, was a fountain of weapons for the greater Sahel region,” said Sudan researcher Eric Reeves, describing how even now much of the RSF’s modern weaponry seems to have come from Libya. 

When Gaddafi launched a series of wars against Chad throughout the 1980s, he stationed in Darfur his Islamic Legion, a paramilitary force founded to Arabise the Sahel. There, they were hosted by the Um Jalul tribe and the father of future Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal.

According to a CIA dispatch in 1986, Libya sent convoys of military equipment, technicians, special forces and other individuals, described as aid workers but who had military training. 

The New York Times reported two years later that Chadian officials accused Libya of “smuggling in rifles in sacks of flour” by using roads built under the pretence of aid to transport weapons.

Around the same time, tensions were growing between nomadic Arab communities like Hilal’s, who were losing their traditional grazing lands to a changing environment, and indigenous agricultural communities like the ethnic Fur. 

The tensions had by 1987 led to the creation of a group named the Arab Gathering, which in a letter to Sudan's then-president Jaafar Nimeiri, promoted a vision of Arab supremacy that reflected Gaddafi’s pan-Arab ideals.

“Dating back a long time ago, [there was] a kind of war between different Arab groups who settled in the region and the Fur who were there," Dinar said. "There was this conflict throughout the 80s with a lot of destruction from both sides, and this issue intensified with access to arms during the Chadian war.”

The Sudanese government, he said, did little to intervene and even potentially benefited from the tensions. Later, the government would tap into these Arab communities to form the Janjaweed. 

Hilal was one of those Arab Gathering members, and by the 2000s he was telling his Janjaweed fighters to "change the demography of Darfur and empty it of African tribes” - playing a crucial role in a state-sponsored campaign the UN estimates killed at least 300,000 people.

Photo:  A picture taken in April 2004 shows the village of Khair Wajid after being burnt by Janjaweed militias in the western Darfur region of Sudan (AFP/Photographer Julie Flint)

Two decades after Gaddafi’s incursions into Chad, another Chadian rebellion launched from Darfur in 2008 would help cement Hemeti's ties to Bashir’s government - at a time when various Janjaweed militias were fracturing and even rebelling against the government after their initial campaign against Darfuri rebels slowed down. 

Hemeti himself briefly defected, before returning to the government's side and being deployed with 4,000 men near the border to support Chadian rebels trying to topple President Idriss Deby - who himself had come to power with Khartoum’s support. 

According to a cable sent by the US charge d’affaires at the time, Khartoum’s need for fighters to support the Chad offensive led it to agree to Hemeti's conditions which it had previously rejected, including the formal integration of his forces, the promotion of his commanders and a payment of 3bn Sudanese pounds, then worth close to $120m. 

By 2012, another Janjaweed leader was recruiting fighters to leave Darfur for a foreign war: Moussa Assimeh.

Assimeh gave himself the title of general when he became one of the leading commanders of a grouping of militias known as the Seleka, which drew mostly from Muslim inhabitants of the CAR to topple the government in Bangui. 

The Seleka temporarily achieved their goal, but the violence unleashed on Christian Central Africans along the way prompted a backlash against Muslims, and the Seleka coalition soon fell apart. More than 5,000 were killed in fighting between communities, according to a count by the Associated Press. 

Though Assimeh was not part of Hemeti’s Janjaweed faction, Africa Confidential reported that some of the fighters who fought in CAR were later absorbed into the RSF. 

According to UN reports, the RSF has continued to sell weapons, equipment and pick-up trucks used to transport fighters to CAR militias, despite a peace agreement signed with the government. These sales have continued to involve Assimeh and even Hilal, despite the latter's imprisonment in Sudan since 2017.

The reports detail how militias take their vehicles for repair in southern Darfur’s town of Nyala, while Hemeti has himself met with Noureddine Adam, one of the most influential leaders of the Seleka rebellion. 

Across the Red Sea: Gold, weapons and the war in Yemen

When Bashir needed fighters to send to Yemen to support his Saudi and Emirati allies in 2015, it was to Hemeti he turned. 

The RSF was in the perfect position to provide troops to fight on the ground in Yemen, providing a physical presence to complement Saudi and Emirati air strikes, by recruiting in Darfur and reportedly, even across the border in Chad. 

“It’s not a secret. People were recruited specifically from south Darfur, from Nyala, to Yemen and were promised a lot of money,” said Dinar. “When you think of the unemployment rate in Sudan in general and that region of Darfur in particular... Instead of going and working as a civilian, you go and maybe you won’t come back.”

Hemeti himself has claimed he has 30,000 fighters in Yemen. 

According to Cameron Hudson, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former CIA analyst, Bashir used the RSF to deepen his relationship with the Saudis and Emiratis - but the relationship also helped Hemeti grow in stature himself. 

“He’s been on the ground in Yemen and has routinely gone through Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, meeting with military and political figures around battle plans in the Yemen campaign and has earned their trust and respect,” Hudson said. 

After Sudanese forces, apparently led by the RSF, dispersed in Khartoum a months-long peaceful sit-in in June against military rule, killing more than 100 protesters in the process, Hemeti’s forces swept across the city, some of them in UAE-made military vehicles. 

[Sudan Watch Ed: Above tweet by Christiaan Triebert @trbrtc Jun 6, 2019

"Here's a sharper picture of one of the Emirati-made NIMR Ajban 440A. It's driving north along Bashir Elnefeidi Street in Khartoum, #Sudan" 
View the original tweet and comments here: https://twitter.com/trbrtc/status/1136723968323440640 ]

After the military council took over from Bashir, with Hemeti officially named deputy leader, it was promised $3bn in aid from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Hemeti’s relationship with the Gulf has not relied solely on weapons however. He has also found fortune in Darfur’s gold mines. 

The mines of Jebel Amer had been attracting small-scale gold miners from the area and even across the borders in Chad and Central African Republic since 2010, but they quickly fell into the hands of the Janjaweed. 

Hilal’s forces built a monopoly, making money by imposing duties on prospectors and mining, and exporting gold themselves. 

The UN estimated that from 2010 to 2014,  $4.6bn worth of gold was illegally exported to the UAE from Sudan. 

By 2017, Hemeti was in charge of those mines, having taken them over during a government-sponsored disarmament campaign in Darfur during which the RSF defeated Hilal’s forces and imprisoned the rival Janjaweed leader. 

“Gold is money, gold is power and I think that whoever controls that gold has a lot to say in politics,” said Dinar. “Though the government of Sudan knows that, instead of putting its own hand on it, it subcontracts it to Hemeti and Hemeti has to show his loyalty.”

North towards the Mediterranean

On the long route north to Europe via the Mediterranean, Sudan is both a stopping point for and a source of refugees. 

The European Union, wanting to both stem this movement of people and the numbers dying during the crossing, started the Khartoum Process in 2015 to invest in projects in the Horn of Africa.

While the projects were aimed at improving the living conditions refugees were fleeing in their countries, they also involved working with border forces to stop people from reaching Libya, the main embarkation point for Europe. 

In Sudan, it was the RSF who took on these responsibilities. Though the EU denies it ever provided funds directly to the RSF or the Sudanese government, a UN employee told MEE that the EU’s partner organisations do.

Hemeti himself has claimed the RSF works on Europe's behalf to "protect their national security” by stopping thousands of migrants.

Meanwhile, a September 2018 report by Dutch think tank Clingendael cited interviews with migrants claiming the RSF had also been involved in trafficking people to Libya.

“The EU looked the other way, it didn’t complain about this,” said Sudanese researcher Suliman Baldo, a senior advisor at the Enough Project, which campaigns for solutions to major conflicts in Africa. “It didn’t complain that the RSF were implicated in several incidences of being involved in human trafficking.”

“The EU needs to seriously subject itself to a thorough review of the negative consequences it has had, chief among them that it legitimised a deadly militia.”

Hemeti’s lobbying deal signed with Canadian firm Dickens and Madson in May promised the development of more international links beyond Africa and the Middle East, dangling the possibility of securing meetings with US officials - including President Donald Trump.

The firm also promised to lobby Russia, with which Sudan already has a strong relationship. Russian security firms train the Sudanese military and since 2018 have been operating in southern Darfur, training fighters from the CAR, according to Amsterdam-based Sudanese broadcaster Radio Dabanga. 

A mercenary force

The US charge d’affaires in Khartoum wrote in February 2008 that the “ruthless Janjaweed” militias of Darfur had shown in their dealings with the Sudanese government that they were pragmatic and concerned above all, about preserving their own political and economic interests. 

“[They] will go with whoever offers them the best deal,” he wrote. 

Over the following decade, various Janjaweed militias have continued to engage in both domestic and regional missions, serving their own interests as well as that of the government's. 

According to Hudson, the large force Hemeti now commands will always need work to keep the fighters satiated and loyal, which increases their likelihood of continuing to work beyond Sudan’s borders.

“He needs to keep them fed and he needs to keep them happy,” said Hudson. “He has essentially a mercenary force that he’s now willing to rent out to the region and that should be a concern to all the states in the region.”

“I think the message to the Saudis and Emiratis is that he may be your man in Khartoum, but be aware that one day he might sell his services to the highest bidder.”

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

The notorious militia leader seizing control of Sudan's future

Read More »

View original:  https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gold-weapons-and-fighters-international-path-sudans-janjaweed-took-power-and-fortune

Flooring Hemeti Dagalo the monster from Darfur Sudan may require more than unarmed protesters

• The interim vice president, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagalo, was in charge of the brutal janjaweed militias. Now he is calling the shots in Khartoum
• By creating the janjaweed and relentlessly empowering them under Hemeti, the Sudanese regime has created a monster it cannot control
• In 2006, armed with new equipment, he led several hundred men on a raid across the rebel-held area of North Darfur. The janjaweed rammed non-Arab men with their pickup trucks and raped women in the name of jihad—according to witnesses I met at the time
• When Sudanese troops joined the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, Hemeti’s RSF played a key role alongside a Sudanese army contingent
• Even those who used to laugh at his blunt speeches stopped seeing him as a joke and now saw him as a threat to their democratic hopes
• Given that the Bashir regime repeatedly failed to abide by its international commitments to disarm the janjaweed, it seems even less likely now

Full story below.

From Foreign Policy

By JÉRÔME TUBIANA 

Dated 14 May 2019, 2:34 PM

The Man Who Terrorized Darfur Is Leading Sudan’s Supposed Transition

The interim vice president, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagalo, was in charge of the brutal janjaweed militias. Now he is calling the shots in Khartoum.

Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagalo, the deputy head of Sudan’s military council, speaks at a news conference in Khartoum on April 30. ASSOCIATED PRESS

After Omar al-Bashir was deposed on April 11, Western diplomats made no mistake about who was in charge. Ambassadors from the United States, Britain, and the European Union did not shake hands with the transitional military council’s president, the little known army general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan; they met with his younger deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known by the nickname “Hemeti.” 

The story of how an uneducated 40-something chief of the janjaweed—the Arab militias that brought death and destruction to Darfur 16 years ago—became more powerful than his seasoned mentors in the Sudanese junta is, to many, a mystery. 

In fact, Hemeti is the main legacy of Bashir’s 30-year rule. Bashir himself was a product of an alliance of the army and the Muslim Brotherhood, unseen elsewhere in the Arab world, but the army grew tired of the wars it had to fight in Sudan’s south, and the Islamists fragmented. When a new war began in Darfur in 2003, Bashir was convinced by Darfuri Arab hard-liners that turning their youths to militias would allow him to win. But by creating the janjaweed and relentlessly empowering them under Hemeti, the Sudanese regime has created a monster it cannot control and who represents a security threat not only for Sudan but also for its neighbors.

It seems that for a few days after Bashir’s ousting Khartoum’s civilian opposition trusted that it could negotiate a civilian transition with Burhan and Hemeti. Darfuris were more skeptical, given that they were more intimately familiar with the new men in charge. Burhan was a military intelligence colonel coordinating army and militia attacks against civilians in West Darfur state from 2003 to 2005, at a time when Hemeti was already a known warlord, who would gradually become the janjaweed’s primary leader. 

During its first, most intense years, the war in Darfur led to the deaths of several hundred thousand non-Arab civilians and displaced about 2 million people, earning Bashir an arrest warrant for genocide from the International Criminal Court. 

I met Hemeti a couple of times in 2009, first in a vaguely Orientalist furniture shop he owned in South Darfur’s state capital of Nyala (one of his early business efforts), from which I was driven to a more private office setting. He was a tall man with the sarcastic smile of a naughty child—yet he was then the newly appointed security advisor to South Darfur’s governor, his first official government position, obtained through blackmail and threats of rebellion.

Hemeti hails from a small Chadian Arab clan that fled wars and drought in Chad to take refuge in Darfur in the 1980s. As he told me, his uncle Juma Dagalo failed to be recognized as a tribal leader in North Darfur state, but South Darfur authorities welcomed the newcomers and allowed them to settle on land belonging to the Fur tribe, Darfur’s main indigenous non-Arab group. The place, called Dogi in the Fur language, was rebranded Um-el-Gura, “the mother of the villages” in Arabic, an old name for Mecca. The authorities also armed Dagalo’s followers, who, as early as the 1990s, began attacking their Fur neighbors.

Hemeti was then a teenager who, as he told me, dropped out of primary school in the third grade to trade camels across the borders in Libya and Egypt. When the Darfur rebellion began in 2003, he became a janjaweed amir (war chief) in his area, leading attacks against neighboring Fur villages. To justify joining the government-backed militias, he said the rebels had attacked a caravan of fellow camel traders on their way to Libya, allegedly killing 75 men and looting 3,000 camels. That fell short of his own brutal record as a militia leader. 

In 2006, armed with new equipment, he led several hundred men on a raid across the rebel-held area of North Darfur. The janjaweed rammed non-Arab men with their pickup trucks and raped women in the name of jihad—according to witnesses I met at the time.  His violent methods even created tensions with accompanying army officers. 

At the same time, Chad and Sudan began a proxy war through their respective rebel groups. The Chadian government used its own Arab officials to push the janjaweed to betray Khartoum. Bichara Issa Jadallah, a cousin to Hemeti, was then the defense minister in Chad. In 2006, he invited the janjaweed leader to the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, and had him sign a secret nonaggression pact with the Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movement, behind the back of Khartoum. 

Shortly afterward, Hemeti announced that he had become a rebel. He then received a visit from a TV crew working for Britain’s Channel 4, which shot a documentary in his camp—his first exposure to TV—a medium to which he has become addicted since. But the journalists reportedly came late, and, as they were filming, government negotiators were also in the camp, bargaining over the price to bring Hemeti back into the government fold.

He remained a rebel for only six months before going back to Khartoum’s side. “We didn’t really become rebels,” he told me in 2009, sitting in his governor advisor’s chair. “We just wanted to attract the government’s attention, tell them we’re here, in order to get our rights: military ranks, political positions, and development in our area.” 

Other janjaweed leaders were increasingly critical of the government, including the most powerful among them, Musa Hilal, who in 2013 quit his post as presidential advisor in Khartoum and began forming his own movement. At the same time, some janjaweed were openly fighting the Sudanese intelligence service in downtown Nyala. Hemeti was one of the few janjaweed leaders to remain loyal to Bashir’s government. 

Consequently, Hemeti was picked to lead the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an enhanced paramilitary force—initially in an effort to retake control of the janjaweed, but it didn’t work out as planned. The RSF became uncontrollable and engaged in looting, killing, and rape in Darfur, as well as in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states.

The RSF also began exporting Darfur’s violence to central Sudan, ransoming civilians at highway roadblocks north of Khartoum and taking part in repressing demonstrations in the capital in September 2013, when at least 200 protesters were killed. First under the intelligence service, then under the direct control of the presidency, the force became Bashir’s praetorian guard, whose role was to protect the president from protests or from any coup attempt by the army—it turned into a third pole of power within Sudan’s security apparatus, rival to both army and intelligence. Hemeti was appointed brigadier general.

Then, in 2016, as Europe began cooperating with Sudan to curb migration flows, Hemeti’s men began to intercept migrants, from Sudan itself as well as other parts of the Horn of Africa, on their way to Libya, exhibiting them on local and foreign TV stations to demonstrate to the European Union that they were the right people for the job. In fact, the RSF played a double game and filled their cars with migrants whom they sold to Libyan traffickers, who would then often jail them in torture houses. Since Muammar al-Qaddafi’s fall in 2011, migrants in Libya are commonly tortured until they call relatives and convince them to pay a ransom to set them free; those who cannot pay are turned into slaves. But on Sudanese national TV, Hemeti claimed to be acting on behalf of the EU, which he also threatened with reopening the border if he was not paid a ransom for his “hard work.”

When Sudanese troops joined the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, Hemeti’s RSF played a key role alongside a Sudanese army contingent led by Burhan, then the ground forces chief of staff. The two men got along well. They reportedly had meetings with Emirati and Saudi officials, discussing the post-Bashir era and telling them that they were the men the Emirati, Saudi, and Egyptian regimes were looking for: Arab military leaders who were not Islamists friendly with Qatar, Iran, or the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. 

The RSF reportedly received Saudi and Emirati support, including money and weapons. Recently, at a press conference, Hemeti claimed to have set aside some $350 million to save Sudan’s finances and explained that he obtained this money for his role in Yemen and mining gold in Sudan. (He had competed with Hilal for gold concessions and eventually managed to have his rival arrested in 2017.)

In another recent TV appearance, Hemeti described how, in April, Bashir asked him and other military leaders to open fire on protesters, quoting an Islamic law supposedly allowing a ruler to kill 30-50 percent of a population in order to save the rest. He said he then decided “not to resist the change” and not oppose the protesters. 

The first head of the transitional military council, Gen. Awad Ibn Auf, resigned after 24 hours, reportedly disagreeing with Hemeti, who preferred Burhan. In the following days, Hemeti continued his public relations campaign, visiting a wounded protester in the hospital. But at a press conference on April 30, he made clear who he was, accusing the protesters of being drug addicts and stating he could not tolerate them continuously “blocking the streets.” Even those who used to laugh at his blunt speeches stopped seeing him as a joke and now saw him as a threat to their democratic hopes. 

Indeed Hemeti positioned his troops—reportedly 9,000 soldiers who were already in Khartoum and 4,000 who came recently from Darfur—at strategic locations all over the city, ready to fight protesters, the army, or anyone else. (On Monday, protest leaders blamed the RSF when five demonstrators and an army major were shot.) 

Hemeti is reportedly backed by some of the same Darfuri Arab politicians who created the janjaweed 16 years ago. If they rise to power, it would threaten to “steal the revolution from the people,” as one protest slogan put it, transform Sudan from a military regime into a militia state, and replace Islamism with Arab supremacism. 

While the West seems passive, other countries are more worried, especially Chad. In recent years, in spite of his cousin still being a close advisor to Chad’s president, Idriss Déby, Hemeti has appeared more hostile to the Chadian regime and may be supportive of an Arab takeover in N’Djamena. Chad’s president took power a year after Bashir in Sudan, and Bashir’s fall might legitimately worry him. While relying largely on his own non-Arab Zaghawa tribe, Déby also accommodated other groups, not least Arab politicians who held key positions such as the defense and foreign ministries. 

Even so, ambitious Chadian Arab politicians might not refuse Hemeti’s armed support. The RSF’s ranks include hundreds of Chadian Arab youths and ex-rebels against Déby who took refuge in Sudan. Such combatants may well be more interested in regime change in Chad than in Sudan, risking an unprecedented exportation to Chad of Darfur’s racist violence. 

Given that the Bashir regime repeatedly failed to abide by its international commitments to disarm the janjaweed, it seems even less likely now.

Even in the most optimistic scenario—whereby a new civilian government in Sudan tries to disarm the janjaweed—at least some of them will inevitably get involved in armed activities across Sudan’s borders, in countries where they have already been active, including Chad, Libya, and the Central African Republic. There are also reports that janjaweed were among Sudanese who joined jihadi groups in Mali. 

The janjaweed’s strength is now comparable to that of the Sudanese regular forces or other armies in the region. Opposing them by force could trigger bloodshed, making the stakes of the ongoing negotiations higher than ever before. 

Flooring the monster may require more than unarmed protesters.

Jérôme Tubiana is a researcher and journalist who has covered conflicts in Chad and Sudan for more than 20 years and the author of Guantánamo Kid: The True Story of Mohammed El-Gharani.

SOURCE: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/14/man-who-terrorized-darfur-is-leading-sudans-supposed-transition-hemeti-rsf-janjaweed-bashir-khartoum/

Can Sudan Achieve Peace and Democratic Transition? (Dame Rosalind Marsden)

Article from Chatham House, UK

Written by DAME ROSALIND MARSDEN

Associate Fellow, Africa Programme

Dated 09 August 2019

Can Sudan Achieve Peace and Democratic Transition?

• Sudan has a unique opportunity to embrace democratic transition but there is no room for complacency
• Comprehensive reforms and a united democratic front will be key to achieving peace, freedom and justice, as will continued international pressure

Photo: Sudanese demonstrators in Khartoum celebrate a hard-won transitional agreement on 4 August 2019. The agreement provides for a joint civilian-military body to oversee a civilian government and parliament for a three year transition period. Photo: Getty Images.

A compromise agreement

After more than seven months of peaceful pro-democracy protests, leading to the fall of former President Omar al Bashir’s regime in April, Sudan’s Transitional Military Council (TMC) and the opposition coalition of the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) agreed on 4 August to form a civilian-led transitional government, paving the way for democratic transition. 

The agreement is a step forward but still leaves considerable power in the hands of the military. Given the power imbalance between the military and unarmed civilians, the FFC concluded that a compromise was needed in order to establish a transitional government, however imperfect, so that civilians could push their reform agenda from inside government and avoid a political vacuum. Such a vacuum could leave room for counter-revolutionary coups or escalating violence by Sudan’s many security forces.

The TMC realized the limits of its power when its attempt to halt the revolution with a brutal crackdown on 3 June backfired, sparking international outrage. Defiant protestors continued to demonstrate, with many Sudanese determined to sustain the revolution and the FFC able to mobilize mass support.

Strong African and international pressure for the rapid formation of a civilian-led transitional authority, US/UK diplomatic intervention with the TMC’s backers, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, and a coup attempt by counter-revolutionary Islamist forces may all have persuaded the TMC that they had to strike a deal with the pro-democracy movement.

Will Sudan have a genuinely civilian-led transitional government?

Mediated by the African Union and Ethiopia, the deal provides for a transitional period of three years and three months to prepare for national elections in 2022. During this period, the government will be composed of three transitional bodies: a joint military/civilian Sovereign Council acting as a collective head of state, with six civilian and five military members; a civilian prime minister and Cabinet of technocrats; and a Legislative Council to be formed within 90 days.

The constitutional declaration initialled on 4 August builds on a power-sharing deal agreed in July and details the powers and responsibilities of the three bodies. A signing ceremony is expected to be held on 17 August with the members of the new government to be announced shortly afterwards.

Some opposition forces have criticized the agreement for being too weak, particularly as the military will chair the Sovereign Council for the first 21 months and will be able to veto its decisions. FFC negotiators point to gains made in the constitutional declaration, such as confirmation that the FFC will have 67 per cent of the seats in the Legislative Council, the increasingly powerful RSF Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia will come under army control and government officials will not enjoy blanket immunity from prosecution.

But political dynamics will matter more than pieces of paper. The unity of FFC forces has been strained by the negotiation process, continuing street violence and internal bickering. If civilian authority is to prevail, the FFC will need to create a united political front.

Ending Sudan’s internal wars

While civilian rule and civic rights are the main demands of protestors in urban areas, Sudanese living in conflict zones attach more importance to achieving peace and ending the marginalization of Sudan’s peripheries.

The armed movements in the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), which fought for years against Bashir’s regime, have stressed that peace and democratization must go hand in hand if the revolution is to enable people in the peripheries to become equal citizens and take full part in national elections – putting an end to long-established forms of governance which favoured a privileged political elite in Khartoum.

The constitutional declaration recognizes that achieving a comprehensive peace settlement should be the first priority for the transitional period and includes a peace agenda developed with the SRF.

However, the SRF are calling for the constitutional declaration to be amended before it is signed so that formation of the transitional government can be calibrated with the peace talks. Solutions will also have to be found for the armed movements who remain outside the agreement.

Other challenges facing the new transitional government

The incoming transitional government will face huge challenges, including strong public pressure for justice and accountability, especially for the 3 June massacre, and a national economy in collapse that will require immediate stabilization and fundamental structural reforms.

The biggest challenge facing the government will be dismantling the Islamist deep state created over thirty years by the former regime, which took control of all state institutions and key sectors of the economy, including hundreds of businesses owned by the military-security apparatus.

Key to dismantling the deep state will be the implementation of a comprehensive programme of security sector reform aimed at establishing a professional and inclusive national army and reducing the power of the intelligence service.

Much will depend on whether it is possible to control the RSF by reducing its funding from the Gulf states and the gold trade, as well as containing the political ambitions of its commander, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemeti), who will be an influential figure during the transition.

Recruiting from Chad and Niger as well as from the Janjaweed Arab militia in Darfur, the RSF is an ill-disciplined transboundary militia, which could destabilize Sudan as well as the wider region. As a first step, the RSF should be withdrawn from all law enforcement activities across Sudan.

Another challenge will be to ensure proper representation of youth and women in the new governance structures. These groups were the driving force of the revolution but have been largely excluded from FFC decision-making bodies. Including these new social forces and other marginalized groups in the political process will be crucial if Sudan is to transform established patterns of power and privilege. 

Robust support for security sector reform, as well as political and economic restructuring should be prioritized by the international community if there is to be any prospect of democratic transition, development and stability. Given its size and strategic geopolitical position, the stakes in Sudan and for the wider region are high.

With its vibrant civil society, plural political environment and new social forces, Sudan has a unique opportunity to embrace democratic transition and equal citizenship. If this opening is wasted, the country could be plunged into further chaos or revert to military dictatorship. 

View original article here:  https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/can-sudan-achieve-peace-and-democratic-transition