Sudan: Russia opposes a UN peacekeeping in Darfur

Despite some gaps and errors, essential reading: “The Ongoing Turf War in Sudan: Violent clashes between elements of Sudan’s security forces threaten the country’s progress toward democracy,” by Samuel Ramani, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace https://t.co/45xFBQ9q2F pic.twitter.com/R3i3iQc8X2

— Eric Reeves (@sudanreeves) February 21, 2020

South Sudan: a country on its knees - millions of lives at stake as ‘unity government’ announced

• “People are tired. Corruption is the medicine of the day.”
• The last time Kiir and Machar clashed, an estimated 380,000 people perished and nearly two million were displaced in a wave of terror and famine which subsumed the country from December 2013 to October 2018.
• Both government and opposition forces “intentionally targeted targeted civilians, often on the basis of ethnicity”, reported Amnesty International in a detailed 2018 study of the conflict.
• While many were killed by gunfire, others were “burned alive in their homes, hung from trees and rafters, or run over with armoured vehicles”. Thousands more were subjected to “rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, sexual mutilation, torture, castration and forced nudity”.
• It was the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Read more below.

South Sudan: a country on its knees

Report from The Telegraph.co.uk

By Paul Nuki, Pictures by Simon Townsley

Dated week ending 22 February 2020

Millions of lives at stake as ‘unity government’ announced

After a devastating civil war, life in South Sudan hangs by a thread. Can the world's newest nation find a path to unity? 

There are few places left on earth where mobile phone use is not ubiquitous, but South Sudan is one of them.

Yet in this scarcely developed nation of tukul huts and herdsman there is hardly a family among its 11 million population who is not anxiously awaiting news from the capital Juba.

This Saturday, February 22, is the deadline for President Salva Kiir and his former deputy turned rebel leader Riek Machar to stand down their rival armies and form a “unity government”.

It’s the long awaited centrepiece of a fragile peace accord which paused the country’s five year civil war 16 months ago. Only if the two self-styled ‘big men’ sign is the peace likely to hold. 

With the US threatening sanctions and fatigued aid agencies saying they may pull out, the stakes could hardly be higher.

Much of South Sudan's population of 11 million is anxiously awaiting the outcome of peace talks in Juba

With just 48 hours to go, there were positive noises. "We had a meeting with the president on the outstanding issues. We have agreed to form the government on 22 February”, Machar said on Thursday.

Only a few dare to dream that a deal this weekend would set South Sudan, the world’s newest but fourth least developed nation, on a path to modernity.

A country the size of France, it has only 186 miles (300 km) of paved road and 90 per cent of its population are without access to electricity or clean water. An estimated 60 per cent rely on food dropped by World Food Programme planes and helicopters to survive.  

The best that can be hoped for, say observers, is that a deal will avert fresh military calamity. 

“If they can shake hands it would help cement the peace deal and allow the UN and aid organisations like us to keep things ticking over,” said Geoff Andrews, country director of Medair, a Swiss NGO which has been in the country since 1992 and runs its biggest emergency aid programme.

“We talk about failed states but this is a non-functioning state”, says another NGO. “The things that define a state, its institutions, are virtually non-existent”

Two-year-old Ibrahim weighed only a third of what he should when he arrived at the clinic

He is just one of the severely malnourished children receiving treatment from Swiss NGO Medair

Franco Duoth Diu, deputy governor of Southern Liech State which saw some of the most intense fighting, says that unless a deal is done change will be forced on the rival leaders.

“These two men will be looking at something very different unless they can agree,” he warns. “The pressure is from the international community but also the community here.”

“People are tired. Corruption is the medicine of the day.”

What everyone fears, and many are braced for, is no deal at all. The last time Kiir and Machar clashed, an estimated 380,000 people perished and nearly two million were displaced in a wave of terror and famine which subsumed the country from December 2013 to October 2018.

Both government and opposition forces “intentionally targeted targeted civilians, often on the basis of ethnicity”, reported Amnesty International in a detailed 2018 study of the conflict.

While many were killed by gunfire, others were “burned alive in their homes, hung from trees and rafters, or run over with armoured vehicles”. Thousands more were subjected to “rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, sexual mutilation, torture, castration and forced nudity”.

It was the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Across the country, 99 under-fives die per 1,000 births

A mother stands at the grave of her two-year-old child, who died from diarrhoea

A herder with malnourished cattle

This month the Telegraph travelled extensively in South Sudan to document the humanitarian relief effort in the run up to Saturday’s deadline. 

It’s undoubtedly a country on its knees, aptly described by one commentator as a “kleptocracy gone insolvent”, but also a place full of youthful ambition, its average age just 18.

In a tarpaulin-clad clinic run by Medair on the outskirts of Renk, a market town in the north of the country, dozens of pregnant young women queue for check ups. 

They have been tempted in by a volunteer network of local women who preach the benefits of antenatal checks and good hygiene in a bid to cut child deaths and deaths in childbirth; a sort of Avon for health which reaches 10 or more walking or “footing” hours into the bush.

The country’s maternal mortality rate at 789 deaths per 100,000 live births, is the fifth highest in the world - 87 times higher than in the UK where the corresponding figure is just nine.

Macca, a 30 year old mother of seven, is six months pregnant and only half jokes she would like 15 children in total. “I’m replacing the ones lost in the war”, she says, “I’m working for my country.”

She is not unusual. Women in South Sudan have an average of nearly five children, largely because the ruthless economics of the place demand it. 

“I want to have 10 children so I have enough if some die,” says Amel, a 23-year-old mother of two. “Without children who will look after us?”

A few metres from the antenatal clinic, the toll of infant mortality is all too evident. In a “stabilisation” room Medair staff are busy reviving distressingly listless toddlers, several of whom have been brought in only a hours away from death. 

Across the country, 99 under-fives die per 1,000 births, compared to just four in the UK. In Renk where acute childhood malnutrition is running at 32 per cent, the odds are even worse. 

Since the end of 2013, conflict has cost almost 400,000 lives and left six million people, of a population of 11 million, desperately hungry

“Malaria, diarrhea or pneumonia are what kills most but it’s because they are malnourished that they are so vulnerable,” says Jimmy Freazer who runs the unit.    

Two-year-old Ibrahim is just a third of his proper weight and has all the signs of a child on the brink. His feet and stomach are swollen, his mouth is white with thrush and his eyes are glazed and unresponsive. His baby sister is almost as big as him having won the battle for his mother’s breast.

“The sudden weaning of children can be a problem,” says Freazer, “Too many stop breastfeeding when they become pregnant. They think they need to save it for the next one.”

At the other end of room, Achol, a little girl of just eight months, is considerably worse. She has a drip in her arm and otherwise still, her tiny chest is heaving.  

Her mother, Nayana, is exhausted from trying to stem a tide of vomit and diarrhoea. The fear in her eyes is so intense that you want to duck her gaze. We leave her - wrongly as it turns out - to what we assume is her infant’s last few hours.

Sudanese civilians collect water form the Nile, in Renk district. Dirty water is a primary cause of disease

When South Sudan won independence from the north in 2011, its people made the fatal mistake of assuming that with independence comes freedom. 

The new government, while promising democracy, adopted the oppressive security infrastructure of the north and set about dividing what little wealth the country had between themselves.

There have yet to be elections and the International Monetary Fund calculates that real incomes in South Sudan today are about 70 per cent lower than in 2011.

Despite taking over about 75 per cent of old Sudan’s oil reserves, the vast majority of the population still relies on subsistence agriculture and gathers charcoal for fuel.

Worse, given the country’s reliance on food aid, the only large scale farms are said to be owned by government acolytes and export much of what they produce abroad. 

A boy plays in the Nile's dirty water

An abandoned ambulance at the military hospital in Renk

A boy with his donkey, carrying water to sell

The Nile runs through the centre of the country and, with modest investment, could be used to irrigate millions of hectares of fertile scrubland. 

But the only machines evident are old Blackstone pumps made in Stamford, England, a decaying relic of the time Britain held sway here. Even then much of the produce was exported.  

“This should be the food basket of the region”, an agricultural adviser with the International Red Cross says. “On the up side, what is grown is organic and the land retains its potential.”

As the deadline for the formation of a unity government looms, rebels in t-shirts and sandals marched alongside government troops outside Juba earlier this week in a display meant to reassure international monitors that progress is being made.

Then on Thursday, Machar said he had agreed to form a unity government by Saturday's deadline. Kiir confirmed the agreement, adding that he will appoint Machar as first vice president on Friday.

"We are going to discuss the security arrangement for the protection of all opposition forces and members," Kiir added.

Eight-month-old Achol with her mother. The malnourished infant is being treated for vomiting and diarrhoea

Just five days after she was admitted to the clinic, Achol is looking much better

There remain two key obstacles to a lasting deal, say analysts. The two rival armies need to be merged into a single force and control over the country’s oil revenues need to be split equitably, ensuring a balance of power.

While the big men quarrel and the nation waits, basic medical science and good care were working their magic in Medair’s health clinic.

Only five days after her arrival, little Achol was sitting up, putting on weight and playing with her delighted mother. 

“I would like to see a point in South Sudan where girls are more likely to complete their education than die in childbirth,” said Natalie Page, Medair’s senior health adviser in South Sudan.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Achol will live to see that dream become a reality if a deal is done this weekend.

View Original: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/south-sudan-peace-deal/

South Sudan: UN report finds all sides of conflict guilty of starving their citizens, govt embezzled funds. Govt struggles to merge soldiers under peace deal

On Thursday 27 February 2020, the same day the rival leaders agreed to proceed with implementing the peace deal, the UN released a new report. It finds that all sides of the conflict were guilty of starving their citizens and that the government had embezzled funds that could have gone toward humanitarian support. Read more.

Photo: A picture made available on 18 October 2016 shows Sudan People's Liberation Army soldiers (SPLA) mounting an armored personnel carrier (APC) during a military operation against Sudan People's Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) in Eastern Nile State, South Sudan, 16 October 2016.

South Sudan struggles to merge armed forces under peace deal

Report from New Europe - www.neweurope.eu

By ELENA PAVLOVSKA

Dated Saturday 29 February 2020, 00:23

South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar agreed to form a unity government last Saturday, paving the way towards ending more than six years of war that has left at least 400,000 dead and forced 4 million from their homes.

As part of the compromise, the country’s parliament endorsed the incorporation of the 10 states and three administrative areas into the constitution.

However, key issues of the 2018 power-sharing deal are yet to be completed. One of the biggest challenges that remain is merging of both government and opposition forces into the country’s military.

The soldiers come from different sides, and are not in equal numbers, as they are supposed to be according to the deal. The opposition says it is difficult to transport soldiers from their areas to the training centers, which are in poor conditions. The army also complains it has only received a small part of the funds for the training.

On Thursday, the same day the rival leaders agreed to proceed with implementing the peace deal, the UN released a new report. It finds that all sides of the conflict were guilty of starving their citizens and that the government had embezzled funds that could have gone toward humanitarian support.

View Original: https://www.neweurope.eu/article/south-sudan-struggles-to-merge-armed-forces-under-peace-deal/

Sudan: Blood, sand and gold: victor’s city rises from ashes of Sudan’s civil war

The ruthless leader of country’s Arab militia has grand plans for the remote western province. But the transformation of Zurrug risks more unrest. Full story:

Blood, sand and gold: victor’s city rises from ashes of Sudan’s civil war

Report from the The Observer - www.theguardian.com

Observer dispatch Darfur

By KLAAS VAN DIJKEN

Dated Saturday 29 February 2020, 17.05 GMT

Photo: Children at the school in Zurrug sing anti-racism songs that praise the Rapid Support Forces. Photograph: Klaas van Dijken/Lighthouse Reports

Zurrug is one of the few towns on Earth that has yet to appear on Google maps. After nightfall, its sparse shacks are illuminated by campfires that throw shadows over pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns – the only hint of the violent past of this outpost in Darfur, Sudan’s troubled western province.

The town is being built on the spoils of a brutal war that once tore at the conscience of the world. The victors in that conflict have grand plans for this settlement based on a winner-takes-all vision for their home region – a vision that clouds the future of the whole of Sudan.

The Observer was given unprecedented access to this remote area of Darfur by the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group whose influence stretches from Sudan’s borderlands with Chad and Libya to the capital, Khartoum, where protesters last year toppled 30-year dictator Omar al-Bashir.

The RSF wants to show off a future city as evidence of the peace it has brought to this contested land. To the vanquished – scattered in their millions across desperate refugee camps within and beyond Sudan’s borders – Zurrug is an insult being built on stolen land.

Darfur and Bashir were back in the headlines last month when Sudan’s transitional government agreed to hand over the ousted president to the international criminal court to face charges of crimes against humanity. These crimes took place in Darfur from 2003, when Bashir unleashed Arab militia, with the backing of the Sudanese army, to crush an insurgency by black African tribes. What began as ethnic clashes over land and water escalated into a crisis that prompted western public demonstrations, celebrity activism and a genocide investigation.

Those armed herders were known at the time as the Janjaweed, or “devils on horseback”. Today they are called the RSF. Their leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – long referred to as Hemedti – is Bashir’s heir apparent. A renowned and ruthless commander, he was called by Bashir “my protector”, a role that helped him become the wealthiest man in Sudan.

Zurrug is a world away from Khartoum, where riverine Arab elites created a metropolis thanks to their dominance of politics and economy. This makeshift town is a 10-hour drive across the vast plateau from Darfur’s northern city of El Fasher.

In its current form, Zurrug’s market has stalls hawking anything from Chinese phones to sacks of beans. The prefab clinic and school are speckled with the letters “UN”, a reminder that they have been jerry-built from the wreckage of the shrinking peacekeeping mission to Darfur, Unamid.

Photo: Rapid Support Forces on the way from Kutum towards Zurrug. Photograph: Klaas van Dijken/Lighthouse Reports

According to plans seen by the Observer, Zurrug will become a city. The documents call for residential areas, a hospital and town squares. Officials from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates visited in 2018 promising to help finance the work, including an international airport.

For now, two water towers mark the entrance to the town, placed there to slake the thirst of the camels, which vastly outnumber either people or vehicles. The largest house belongs to Juma Dagalo, the area’s chief and Hemedti’s uncle. “We were nomads, but now we want to develop ourselves, so we have to settle and send our children to school,” he said.

In his telling, Zurrug belongs to his ethnic group, the Mahariya, having been gifted to them by their former colonial masters, the British. The chief, who brought Hemedti up, says the land was empty.

This story of empty land is bitterly disputed by community leaders in the camps in north Darfur. They claim Zurrug is on land they inhabited for centuries before being forced to leave by the RSF, who used the same tactics – murder, rape and robbery – as the Janjaweed. One of these communities is the Zaghawa, a black African ethnic group who bore much of the brunt of the war crimes alleged in Bashir’s ICC indictment.

Mohamed Ibrahim, a Zaghawa chief or umda, said: “What Juma Dagalo is saying is not true. Zurrug was not empty land. We have our farms there but we cannot harvest. The RSF denies us access.”

Injustice and asymmetric war on civilians dominated much of the three decades that Bashir spent in power. His hold on office relied on a complex of alliances that spanned the Islamists, the army and support among the Arab middle class. Last year the regime collapsed as demonstrators in the cities demanded a civilian government. But insiders claim that Bashir stepped down only when Hemedti refused to use the RSF to crush the demonstrations. The protector switched allegiances from Bashir to the protestors in a move that saw him expand his support base far beyond Darfur.

“I stood beside the Sudanese people,” Hemedti told the Observer from his gilded residence in Khartoum. “A massacre would have happened herein Khartoum, a genocide would have happened on 11 April without our existence.”

The RSF is sanctioned by the state but its allegiance is to Hemedti, not Sudan’s army. His leadership of what is effectively a private army has reportedly helped him make a fortune from gold, construction and alleged smuggling. Hemedti denies that the men he commands perpetrated atrocities, either in their former guise as the Janjaweed or more recently as the RSF.

Today, Hemedti, whose Mahariya clan is part of the populous Rizeigat tribe, is vice-chairman of the sovereign council, the transitional body that is meant to guide Sudan to a new civilian government. But his credentials as protector of the people were stained in June last year when soldiers – many in RSF uniforms – attacked a civilian sit-in in the capital. More than 150 people were killed and many woman were raped. Hemedti denies ordering the violence and blames elements of the former regime seeking to discredit him. His denial is dismissed by most of the protest groups.

Photo: Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, the RSF leader. Photograph: STR/AP

Meanwhile, a struggle is being waged inside the Sovereign Council, and on the streets, to make good on the promise of a transition to civilian rule. The army retains a powerful, possibly decisive voice on the council. Straddling it all is Hemedti, not beholden to Sudan’s army, confident in his wealth and political support. He has the backing of influential Gulf States, cemented by sending the RSF to fight in Yemen alongside Saudi proxies in yet another gruesome conflict.

For now, Hemedti prefers to whitewash the RSF’s recent and deeper past, saying his forces have brought safety and stability to Darfur. On the issue of land, he appears magnanimous: “Whoever took land or built anything on land which is not his, he has to leave it. Everybody has to take his own old land.”

But those who have done the taking in north Darfur are overwhelmingly Hemedti’s own Mahariya people. His uncle, Juma Dagalo, has toured the region enticing members of his own ethnic group to come and settle in Zurrug and six other proto-towns around it. Each one has the same school and clinic, recycled from the UN bases. The teachers and doctors are on Hemedti’s payroll. Water towers, a practical and symbolic way of staking claim to land, have started to appear – all financed by the RSF.

A report last year from the UN panel of experts for Darfur concluded that development around Zurrug was meant to lure people from the cities. It also warned that it had the potential to “become a new source of conflict”.

The land issue is far from buried, and Darfur is part of the same negotiations between Sudan’s transitional government and various rebel groups that saw Bashir offered up to the ICC. Whatever those talks conclude, the facts on the ground are already being changed, with mono-ethnic settlements expanding every day.

After dark in Zurrug the children of the Mahariya gather around a single lightbulb to recite passages from the Qur’an. During the day they sing songs that mash up anti-racism slogans with praise for the RSF. These anthems would ring hollow with the disenfranchised Zaghawa, who have formed committees in their camps and written letters to Sudan’s new leadership. They have had no response and their leader, Mohamed Ibrahim, warns: “If we can’t solve this peacefully, we will take up arms again.”

View Original: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/29/darfur-towns-rise-out-of-ashes-of-sudan-war

Sudan: Militia strike gold to cast a shadow over Sudan's hopes of prosperity

Supported by wealthy foreign backers, a feared paramilitary outfit controls Sudan’s most lucrative industry, complicating the country’s path to democracy. Read more:

Militia strike gold to cast a shadow over Sudan's hopes of prosperity

Analysis from The Guardian UK

Written by Ruth Michaelson (funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)

Dated 10 February 2020, 07.00 GMT

Photo: Sudanese Rapid Support Forces display gold bars seized from a plane that landed at Khartoum airport as part of an investigation into possible smuggling. Photograph: Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters

Ornate, heavy necklaces gleam on stands above stacks of thick filigree bangles in the windows of Khartoum’s gold market. The gold is Sudanese, dug from the rich mines that span the country.

Shop owner Bashir Abdulay hands over a palm-sized lump of pure gold with two small bore holes as he explains how the prized metal goes from mine deposit, through middlemen, to Khartoum.

Abdulay describes the Jebel Amer gold mine in Darfur [ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-darfur-gold/special-report-the-darfur-conflicts-deadly-gold-rush-idUSBRE99707G20131008 ], one of several controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group whose leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo [ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/29/hemedti-the-feared-commander-pulling-the-strings-in-sudan ] is now a central figure in Sudan’s transition to democracy.

“There are many people working there, some work on their own, others for the RSF. Everyone has his place, and the RSF have theirs,” he says, the metal twinkling in the bright shop lights. “The RSF have a big place producing gold, and selling it on their own.”

The RSF seized control of the Jebel Amer gold mine in Darfur in 2017, immediately making Dagalo, known as Hemedti, one of Sudan’s richest men. The RSF and Hemedti also control at least three other goldmines in other parts of the country, such as South Kordofan, making them a key player in an industry that produces Sudan’s largest export [ https://oec.world/en/profile/country/sdn/ ].

After the 2019 uprising that overthrew [ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/11/sudan-army-ousts-bashir-after-30-years-in-power ] former dictator Omar al-Bashir, Hemedti became part of the transitional military council and the sovereignty council designed to shepherd Sudan to democracy before elections are held in 2022.

Despite tentative government efforts to wrestle parts of the gold industry away from Sudan’s security services and back under state or private control, questions remain about whether Sudan [ https://www.theguardian.com/world/sudan ] can truly transition to democracy while the politically powerful RSF run a parallel economy all of their own.

To buy gold from the RSF, where do you go? Abdulay answers without hesitation: “Al Gunade have an office upstairs on the second floor,” he said, gesturing at the ceiling, unapologetically connecting the two organisations.

Al Gunade is a mining and trading corporation with deep ties to Hemedti and the RSF. Hemedti’s brother Abdul Rahim Dagalo and his sons are the three owners of Al Gunade, while reported RSF deputy Abdul Rahman al-Bakri is the general manager.

According to one of the documents [ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6469821-Al-G.html#document/p1/a530944 ] obtained by the anti-corruption NGO Global Witness, Hemedti himself sits on the board of directors.

Photo: Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, head of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, at a meeting in Khartoum. Photograph: Ümit Bektaş/Reuters

After reviewing evidence of the activities of Al Gunade and the RSF, Global Witness concluded [ https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/conflict-minerals/exposing-rsfs-secret-financial-network/ ] that “the RSF and a connected company have captured a swathe of the country’s gold industry and are likely using it to fund their operations”.

The organisation obtained bank data and corporate documents that, they say, show the RSF maintains a bank account in their name at the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (now part of the First Abu Dhabi Bank) in the United Arab Emirates, providing “evidence of the financial autonomy of the RSF”.

The UAE is by far the largest importer of Sudanese gold in the world. Global trade data from 2018 shows it imported [ https://trademap.org/Country_SelProductCountry.aspx?nvpm=1%7c729%7c%7c%7c%7c7108%7c%7c%7c4%7c1%7c2%7c2%7c1%7c1%7c2%7c1%7c1 ] 99.2% of the country’s gold exports. The Gulf nation has also subcontracted RSF militiamen to fight in Yemen [ https://apnews.com/d5705f44afea4f0b91ec14bbadefae62 ] and Libya [ https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/1-000-sudanese-militiamen-arrive-in-libya ], providing funds to the RSF.

The relationship between Sudan’s gold, wealthy foreign backers and the RSF militia is concerning observers. Global Witness believes the RSF is “an organisation whose military power and financial independence poses a threat to a peaceful democratic transition in Sudan”.

A former camel-trader, Hemedti gained his nickname from the words “my protector”. Before taking part in the coup that toppled him, he was the right-hand man of former dictator Bashir. Hemedti’s RSF grew out of the infamous Janjaweed militia active in Darfur, described as “men with no mercy” and accused of war crimes in a 2015 Human Rights Watch report [ https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/09/09/men-no-mercy/rapid-support-forces-attacks-against-civilians-darfur-sudan ].

HRW found that during the RSF’s campaign in Darfur, the militia were responsible for “egregious abuses against civilians … torture, extrajudicial killings and mass rapes”, as well as “the forced displacement of entire communities; the destruction of wells, food stores and other infrastructure necessary for sustaining life in a harsh desert environment”.

Last June, the RSF were accused of attacking peaceful protesters [ https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/11/17/they-were-shouting-kill-them/sudans-violent-crackdown-protesters-khartoum ] to disperse a sit-in in Khartoum calling for a handover to civilian rule. Protestors and observers said [ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/06/sudan-remove-rapid-support-forces-from-khartoum-streets-immediately/ ] the RSF brought the violent methods deployed in Blue Nile, South Kordofan and Darfur to the capital, shooting, stabbing, burning or crushing the skulls of at least 104 civilians, dumping bodies in the Nile, and raping at least 70 men and women.

Photo: Members of the Rapid Support Forces secure a site in Khartoum. Photograph: Ümit Bektaş/Reuters

The RSF have consistently denied their involvement. An investigation is ongoing.

“Hemedti himself, he understands the process of transition personally,” says Montaser Ibrahim, a former human rights defender who works with the RSF as an “unofficial consultant” on human rights. “This is one of the reasons that led me to deal with him.”

His new role has led to criticism from some in human rights activism, but Ibrahim sees the RSF as champions of minority rights, and Hemedti as a challenge against political elites.

“Hemedti is a revolutionary,” he says. He dismisses any notion of the RSF’s involvement in violence against protesters, branding accusations of war crimes against Hemedti and the Janjaweed as “propaganda”.

Both of Al Gunade’s two offices above Khartoum’s gold market are accessed via a dank staircase where bare wires jostle for space on the filthy walls.

Behind the tinted windows of Gunade’s offices, a kilogram gold bar sat on a lacquered wooden desk among office stationary, an ostentatious paperweight that may be the real thing. A man who repeatedly refused to give his name referred all questions about Al Gunade to the central bank, opening the office door to indicate that no further discussion would be accepted.

Sudanese authorities have begun attempts to overhaul the gold trade, dissolving mining companies involved with the former regime’s security services. Sudan now allows private traders to export gold [ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-gold/sudan-opens-up-gold-market-in-bid-to-raise-revenue-idUSKBN1Z81M2 ] provided 30% of deposits remain in the central bank.

An official from Sudan’s mining ministry, who cannot be named as they are not permitted to brief the media, said extra checks are made to screen out companies associated with the previous regime. The official said that the people behind a company mattered less than whether or not it followed the rules. 

“Now even if the head of the transitional military council came himself, he has to go with the regulations,” the official said.

Photo: Goldmine workers wait to get their raw gold weighed at a shop in the town of al-Fahir in North Darfur. Photograph: Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters

Mohammed Tabidi, a Khartoum gold trader, says the new gold trading laws are a world away from those under the previous government that forced traders to buy gold from Sudan’s security services, or face arrest. “It’s a free market now,” he says.

He is hopeful about the possibilities of free trade amid a powerful black market and spiralling inflation that make daily life a struggle for many. Around the corner from the glistening mall where Tabidi works, men perch on bonnets in a car park, flicking fat wads of Sudanese pounds to signal their trade to drivers passing through. The official rate of 25 Sudanese pounds to the dollar is obsolete compared with the black market rate of 75, maybe even 80.

Tabidi says that while gold companies associated with other security services were rendered obsolete by the overhaul, Al Gunade remained.

“There is no company similar to Al Gunade [now],” he says. “There is nothing else like it.” The law is in flux, he says, and it is up to the authorities whether Al Gunade will continue.

“If export opens for traders, maybe Al Gunade won’t work,” he says. “But if they get a deal with the ministry of finance, they can.”

“Hemedti now is vice-president,” he said. “There are some things I can’t talk about.”

The RSF said [ https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/global-witness-response-to-news-that-head-of-sudans-rapid-support-forces-preparing-to-hand-over-gold-mining-areas-to-hamdouk-government/ ] in December that they would hand control of Jebel Amer to the government. Who will reap the profits remains very much in question, given the lack of transparency in Sudan’s gold industry and the difficulties in controlling a supply chain plagued by smuggling and remote sites controlled by militias. There are also few safeguards in place to prevent the RSF and Al Gunade operating illegally.

Richard Kent of Global Witness is critical of the RSF’s claim: “We welcome the development because it is potentially very beneficial to the Sudanese people and gold industry, but it’s still unclear exactly what this means,” he says. “Does this mean giving up the Al Gunade concession, reinstating some kind of civil or traditional administration – and if so how would that work, would it be independently appointed by the civilian government?”

Political transition offers the tools needed to transform Sudan’s most lucrative industry, cleaning up ministries and the supply chain. But there is a long road ahead before the Sudanese gold industry reaches the standards set by international observer bodies such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

“There needs to be a level of transparency in the process,” Kent says. “The RSF and to a lesser extent other security agencies haven’t demonstrated [that] in other areas of their business until now. The reality is, there are still a lot of individuals associated with the intelligence agencies riddled throughout the industry and ministries. As long as general intelligence service and the RSF still have a hold over natural resources and over governing institutions, it’s very hard to see how the gold industry would be able to implement the internationally accepted standards it needs to improve and attract investment.”

Sipping tea outside a French cultural centre where he is taking classes, the RSF’s consultant Ibrahim, an avid reader of Paulo Coelho, says: “The RSF looks like a rebel force. But we need to use them to change the political situation in Sudan.”

Ibrahim’s role illustrates the RSF’s hints of reform and change. While Ibrahim is very concerned about being misunderstood, he declines to say whether he is paid, what the job actually entails or whether he believes there are receptive RSF ears for his talk of human rights.

“Hemedti believes in the revolution – I know you might be shocked by this,” he says.

Ibrahim maintained that the only way forward for Sudan’s transition is for cooperation between civil society and the security sector. He believes he is part of the solution, not the problem. “The security sector in Sudan can’t be cut from the political process,” he says. “This doesn’t contradict the idea of democracy.”

Formerly a “a political adviser” to the Sudan Liberation Army, Darfur-based militants, Ibrahim says he became a prisoners’ rights campaigner during Bashir’s regime and his latest role is the apex of a long journey in Sudanese politics. He has created an organisation within the RSF intended to provide training “for NGOs and civil society”. But not the RSF themselves? “No,” he answers dismissively.

Members of the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), an umbrella trade union association that spearheaded the mass protests leading to Bashir’s overthrow, are confident that Sudan’s path towards democracy isn’t threatened by the RSF or their economic interests, says their spokesman Dr Mohanad Hamid.

“Hemedti is dangerous not because he’s one of the richest men in Sudan, but because he has an army, a militia in pure terms that’s independent from the Sudanese army – this is the issue,” he says. “Of course the economy is one of the main concerns, [but] peace is also one of the main concerns.”

Photo: Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, centre, waves a baton as he arrives for a rally in the village of Abraq, about 60km north-west of Khartoum. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images

Hamid is confident that Hemedti and the RSF’s wealth won’t present a problem, provided their businesses are eventually brought under state control. “It’s all of four months since the beginning of the transitional period – this process is years,” he says. “If we get all the money back into the ministry of finance at the end of the three years it will be great, but we’re still waiting.”

Other SPA representatives, like Dr Batoul Altayeb, are unfazed by the RSF.

After protesters staged a mass demonstration [ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/13/sudanese-protesters-demand-justice-after-mass-killings ] against the RSF and the military following the Khartoum massacre, the SPA believe people power can contain the force of the RSF.

“We did it before and we will do it again,” says Altayeb calmly. “[The sovereign council] includes the RSF because they know that peace is the key before the economy. Democracy is on the way – it’s a process, not just an outcome.”

This article was corrected on 10 February 2020 to clarify the ownership structure of Al Gunade. This article was amended on 11 February 2020 to add additional comments from the Sudanese Professionals Association. About this content This website [above] is funded by support provided, in part, by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The journalism and other content is editorially independent and its purpose is to focus on global development.

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