Mohamed Hamdan ‘Hemedti’ Dagalo goes on an African tour to secure regional support and political legitimacy.
When Sudan’s civil war erupted in April between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group’s leader, Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, went into hiding.
Many speculated he had been seriously wounded or was even dead until he appeared in a photo-op with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Wednesday.
The next day, Hemedti visited Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, ostensibly to discuss strategies to end Sudan’s conflict. He also passed through Ghana and Djibouti.
Analysts believe Hemedti’s real motive was securing regional support to capture all of Sudan from the army.
Last month, the RSF captured Gezira state – a breadbasket for Sudan – giving the group the clear upper hand against the army.
But rather than leverage military success in negotiations to end the conflict, Hemedti appears to have ambitions to rule all of Sudan, according to analysts, Sudanese journalists and diplomats.
“Hemedti desperately needs people to feel that the RSF is a governing force. I think this is why Hemedti went to meet heads of state,” said Kholood Khair, a Sudan expert and founding director of the think tank Confluence Advisory.
But Hemedti went to Uganda the day before he was supposed to meet al-Burhan for ceasefire talks in Djibouti. IGAD postponed the talks for “technical reasons”.
On Monday, Hemedti met with Sudan’s former prime minister and the leader of a newly formed civilian bloc, the Coordination of Civil Democratic Forces (Taqaddum), Abdallah Hamdok, in Ethiopia.
Taqaddum has announced it also invited al-Burhan to meet at another date, but there has been no information about whether that invitation has been accepted.
Khair believes Hemedti and al-Burhan are both partaking in – and derailing – mediation efforts to buy time for their military operations.
“This is all a red herring … to gain some international kudos while at the same time trying to gain some ground [in the war],” she told media.
Red herring
In October, the RSF captured several army garrisons across the sprawling western region of Darfur, just as the US-backed mediation talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, were about to resume after a lengthy hiatus.
Jonas Horner, an independent expert on Sudan, told media the RSF’s expansion as it takes more states to the north and east is not sustainable.
“I think so many Sudanese … are never going to be comfortable with the RSF governing them,” he added.
Despite committing a myriad of human rights abuses, the RSF is trying to bring law and order to regions under its control, Sudanese journalist Mohamad el-Fatih Yousif said from Darfur.
He told media that the paramilitary has created a department called Civil and Political Management, whose paid employees are responsible for repairing basic services like hospitals, electricity grids and water stations in South Darfur’s capital, Nyala.
“There is relative safety right now in Nyala,” el-Fatih Yousif said. “All the RSF fighters that were looting Nyala left. They all went to Gezira state.”
The RSF has also established a local police force in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, most of which it controls. Police forces have also been instructed to maintain order throughout Darfur.
Many activists and analysts are mocking the group’s ostensible attempt to combat criminality and blame the RSF for most of the theft, violence and lawlessness in the country.
“This is a farce,” tweeted Lauren Blanchard, an expert on Sudan and a specialist in African affairs at the Congressional Research Service.
“Will the RSF’s police force arrest RSF forces for the killing, looting, property destruction, occupation of houses, sexual violence, and other crimes in which they have been implicated in Khartoum and other areas?”
While almost nobody in northern and eastern Sudan will accept living under Hemedti, European countries will cooperate with the RSF if it captures the entire country, according to one Western diplomat who spoke to media on the condition of anonymity.
He said that in the interest of stemming migration from Africa to Europe, the European Union is already signing partnerships with strongman leaders such as Tunisian President Kais Said and an eastern Libyan militia connected to renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar.
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