The mutiny of Wagner PMC fighters lasted about a day – and led to the fact that the rebels and their head Yevgeny Prigozhin had to retreat. In Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world, where Prigozhin has his own business interests , the rebellion of field commander Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (Khamidti) and his army is developing in a completely different way. Fighting between the regular army and the once-loyal Rapid Reaction Forces has been ongoing since April and has already resulted in thousands of casualties. In late June, rebel leader Hamidti announced a two-day unilateral ceasefire, not the first in two months. After that, the conflict, which was caused by the unwillingness of the “Rapid Reaction Forces” to finally go under the command of the army, will flare up with renewed vigor.
How two generals overthrew the government and crushed the revolution
Sudan, a country of 40 million people, ranks 23rd in the world in terms of proven oil reserves and 10th among exporters of gold . Since gaining independence in 1956, the country has experienced more than a dozen military coups (six of which were successful) and two civil wars , during which at least one and a half million people died. The current conflict between the two military leaders also began with a revolution and a military coup.
Lieutenant General Muhammed Hamdan Dagalo (more commonly referred to simply as Hamidti), 49, has led the Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) since its inception in 2013. Then a combat-ready structure was needed to fight the rebels in the Darfur region – the RRF was brought under the control not of the army, but of the National Intelligence and Security Service. According to the director of the Sudanese research center Confluence Advisory Kholud Khair, President Omar al-Bashir, who was worried about his vulnerability to the military, was personally interested in an alternative force resource. However, the de facto Rapid Reaction Forces have existed for much longer.
An alliance of armed groups of nomadic tribes of Arab origin, the Janjaweed has been active since at least the late 1980s and has repeatedly manifested itself in conflicts in Sudan and neighboring countries. Like other warlords of the Janjaweed-turned-JRF, its leader, Hamidti, has been repeatedly accused of crimes against humanity, including ethnic cleansing in South Darfur, where Sudanese fighters burned down entire villages, shot unarmed men and systematically sexualized women.
During the Sudanese revolution in 2019, the Rapid Reaction Force was also noted for its particular cruelty. By that time, mass protests in Sudan had not subsided for a year already: they began in December 2018, after the price of bread in the country rose sharply three times. Despite the declared state of emergency, repressions and periodic shutdowns in the country of the Internet, the protesters continued to demand the resignation of Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for 30 years. In mid-April, representatives of the Sudanese Armed Forces removed al-Bashir from power and placed him under house arrest on charges of corruption.
The next day, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan headed the Transitional Military Council, a specially created body of several representatives of the army and special services. This initially reassured the protesters: during the protests, al-Burhan actively participated in negotiations with the street. For months, the military administration seemed to be making concessions to the protesters, releasing political prisoners from jails and firing top officials in al-Bashir’s government.
However, the key demand of the protesters – the immediate transfer of power to civilians – refused to comply with the Transitional Military Council, and already on June 3, the military junta sent the Rapid Reaction Force to disperse a peaceful sit-in protest in Khartoum. During the dispersal, the RRF used firearms, more than 100 people were killed , dozens of women reported sexual violence by soldiers.
A month later, representatives of the Transitional Military Council and the civilian coalition Forces for Freedom and Change, in the presence of international observers, signed an agreement on a gradual transfer of power. To this end, an 11-member provisional Sovereign Council (with five seats for the military) was convened , and 39 months later, in November 2021, general free elections were scheduled .
True, the Sovereign Council lasted even less. Already in October 2021, “in order to avoid a civil war”, the head of the council, General al-Burkhan, dispersed it – again with the help of the Rapid Reaction Force. Having thus carried out the second military coup in two years, al-Burhan de facto became the first face of Sudan, although officially the country with a republican system still has the post of prime minister .
How al-Burkhan and Hamidti quarreled
Hamdan Dagalo helped al-Burhan not only in overthrowing the al-Bashir regime and suppressing protests. In recent years, its role in politics and economics has grown markedly. Hamidti served as al-Burhan’s deputy in the Sovereign Council, held peace talks with the rebels in 2020, and traveled to Moscow to conclude “security agreements” with Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev.
According to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in recent years, the number of “Quick Reaction Forces” under the command of Hamidti has reached 100,000 fighters (for comparison: the CIA estimates the size of the Sudanese regular army at 200,000 people). They began to participate more often as mercenaries in regional military conflicts – for example, in Yemen and Libya .
Since 2017, the RRF has controlled gold mining operations in the Jebel Amer region of Darfur, the easternmost region of the country on the border with the Republic of Chad. As investigators from Global Witness found out , mining revenues, bypassing the country’s budget, through the companies of Hamidti’s relatives, settled precisely on the field commander’s account at the National Bank of Abu Dhabi. By the beginning of 2020, the general promised to return control of the mines to the government of Sudan.
According to former civilian member of the Sovereign Council of Sudan, Siddig Tower, the apparent problems in relations between the two generals began with the dissolution of the council in 2021. After the second military coup in two years, al-Burkhan began to return representatives of the pre-revolutionary, Bashirov regime to key posts . This did not bode well for Hamidti.
The political elite of Sudan is traditionally dominated by people from the regions around Khartoum and the Nile River basin, while Hamidti comes from the Shoah Arab clan from the east of the country and, according to his biography described by Al Jazeera journalists, after the third grade of elementary school the future general traded in camels. According to Alex de Waal, a researcher on African elites at Tufts University, Khartoum elites agree that Hamidti cannot rule Sudan “because he is an uneducated Darfurian.”
At the same time, Hamidti’s political independence, his economic interests and power resources made the Darfurian general one of the most powerful people in the country – and an obvious competitor to al-Burhan. As Kholud Khair of Confluence Advisory explains : “They [al-Burhan and Hamidti] started lobbying for different sources of profit, different diplomatic courses, different domestic policies. We got two states in one.”
In December 2022, al-Burhan, Hamidti and representatives of the Forces for Freedom and Change signed a framework agreement. It assumed a two-year period for the transfer of power from the military to civilians. According to the document, the “Forces of Freedom and Change” were to choose a prime minister, who would be endowed with the status of supreme commander. At the same time, the army, which managed to acquire a network of business interests in various sectors of the Sudanese economy, was obliged to transfer all non-defense assets under the control of the Ministry of Finance. The SRF was finally to be placed under the official command of the Sudan Armed Forces.
If experts doubted the intention of General al-Burhan to honor the agreement from the very beginning, Hamidti looked more like its beneficiary. Firstly, as Michael Young, editor of the Middle East branch of the Carnegie Center, notes, the agreement effectively equalized Hamidti and al-Burhan, and secondly, it opened the way for the former to fight for power in the 2024 elections . Back in January of this year, Kholud Khair predicted the armed confrontation that the document would lead to: “It [the agreement] only increased tension between al-Burhan and Hamidti, which could escalate into a military conflict if the stakes are high enough.”
The forces of the parties are approximately equal – the conflict can drag on for years
April 11 was the deadline for al-Burkhan and Hamidti to agree on the procedure for transferring the RRF to the command of the army. The head of the armed forces insisted on a period of two years, but Hamidti indicated that it would take his structure 10 years to gradually transition to the status of an army unit. Both generals pulled their soldiers to Khartoum, and already on April 15, shooting began in the capital .
Despite the superiority of the Sudanese forces in the air, fighting in the capital and other cities has been going on for more than two months, including for strategic facilities: Khartoum airport, the presidential palace and the building of the main national television channel Sudan TV. Both sides have repeatedly accused each other of attacks on mosques, churches, hospitals and other civilian facilities. On Sunday, June 25, the RRF reported the successful capture of the headquarters of the Central Reserve Police in Khartoum.
As of mid-June, more than 3,000 people have been killed and more than 6,000 injured in clashes since April, according to the Sudanese Ministry of Health . UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi estimates that more than two million Sudanese have been forced to leave their homes in two months. Local residents say that since June 22, there has been no electricity in Khartoum, and water supply has stopped working in some areas.
The tactics of street fighting, which Hamidti adheres to, have so far leveled the advantage of the official military forces in the air. But even if the army succeeds in driving the rebels out of the capital, they are unlikely to give up control of their home region of Darfur in the east of the country, says Africanist Teresa Nogueiro Pinto. She considers the protracted conflict to be the most likely scenario – in this case, rebel groups that are located on the borders with Chad and South Sudan can also join it.
At the very beginning of June, the US Treasury announced sanctions against companies associated with both the official army and the Rapid Reaction Force. So far, this is the most decisive of attempts to influence the situation from the outside. Both parties to the conflict have their allies. The main external source of support for al-Burhan is Egypt, where the regular military is also in power . It is important for the country to maintain the most loyal leader in Sudan in case of a potential conflict with Ethiopia, whose mega-project “Great Renaissance Dams” threatens to shallow the waters of the Nile.
Hamidti, on the other hand, has repeatedly made it clear that he is open to dialogue with Ethiopia: the general flew there to negotiate the disputed territories in January last year. According to analysts at the British consulting agency Maplecroft, if the RRF tries to seize control of Sudan’s oil pipelines, South Sudan could intervene in the war. The country’s budget is critically dependent on oil exports, and this is carried out through an oil pipeline on the territory of the northern neighbor.
Hamidti’s potential allies include several regional heavyweights. His fighters participated on the side of the Saudi coalition in the war in Yemen, and Hamidti has long-standing business relations with the United Arab Emirates, where 100% of the gold mined in Sudan was sent last year .
Hamidti’s name is also often mentioned in connection with Russia. In April, CNN, citing Sudanese diplomatic sources, reported that the Wagner PMC was transferring ammunition to the RRF through Libya. At the same time, as OCCRP investigative journalists found out last year, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s structures had previously purchased weapons themselves with the help of Sudanese military intelligence, and the Sudanese company Meroe Gold, owned by a Russian businessman, received preferential concessions for gold mining .
However, unlike Prigozhin, at the official level, the Kremlin contacts primarily with the central authorities of Sudan. The country became one of the first and few states whose government recognized the annexed Crimea as Russian territory in 2014, when Omar al-Bashir was in power. The official Armed Forces of Sudan are 87% equipped with Russian-made military equipment , and Sergei Lavrov signed agreements on the opening of a naval base of the Russian Armed Forces in Port Sudan with the military regime under the leadership of al-Burkhan. Therefore, in the current conflict of the Sudanese generals for Russia, Federico Donelli, a researcher of international relations from the University of Trieste, believes , the victory of either side is acceptable.
Source : Meduza