Rapid Support Forces (RSF) / al-Quwat al-Da'm al-Sari'

The Sudanese army said on 13 April 2023 that the mobilisation in the capital Khartoum and other cities of the paramilitary force headed by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo had raised the risk of confrontation. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) moves represented a "clear violation of law," the army said in a rare comment on an ongoing dispute that had hampered a planned transition to democracy. "These movements and deployments happened without the agreement of the leadership of the armed forces or even coordination with it," the army spokesman said.

Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, had said repeatedly in speeches that he did not want a confrontation with the army, a move that would spell prolonged insecurity across a country already dealing with economic breakdown and flare-ups of tribal violence. The RSF, which operates under a special law and has its own chain of command, said in an earlier statement that it deployed across the country as part of its normal duties.

Dagalo was deputy leader of Sudan's ruling military council. But he had recently pulled away from the military and found common ground with a civilian political alliance. Relations between the military and the RSF have worsened, forcing a delay to the signing of an internationally-backed agreement with political parties for a two-year civilian-led transition to elections. Central to Dagalo's disagreement with the military was his reluctance to set a clear deadline to integrate the RSF into the army.

The army, RSF, and internal security forces all had competing loyalties, interests, and cultures, opening up the possibility of different parts of the security sector going into battle against each other. Despite being a longtime al-Bashir ally, Dagalo took part in overthrowing the president when the 2019 uprising broke out. On April 11, 2019, Sudanese military officers deposed Bashir, and the RSF coalesced with the state military to form the Transitional Military Council. In April 2019, following continued protests, the TMC agreed to form a transitional government in partnership with a civilian pro-democracy coalition on July 17, 2019. On June 3, 2019, Sudanese forces led by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), largely comprised of Janjaweed militia involved in genocidal campaigns across Darfur for decades, opened fire on protesters at an army command headquarters in Khartoum, killing at least 127 people, at least 40 of whom were found in the Nile River.

The military and civilian elements agreed to a 39-month transition to democracy, with a Civilian-Led Transitional Government (CLTG) comprised of a predominantly civilian cabinet led by Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, a Sovereign Council, an executive body with civilian and military members chaired for the first half of the transitional period by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and a Transitional Legislative Council, which has yet to be formed. In October 2021, army General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy and the RSF leader, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo orchestrated a coup, upending a fragile transition to civilian rule that had been started after the 2019 removal of longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir.

On October 25, 2021, Lieutenant General Burhan, with the support of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, seized control of the government, deployed the military to the streets of Khartoum and Omdurman, and arrested and detained Prime Minister Hamdok and other civilian officials. The African Union Peace and Security Council convened on October 27, 2021, strongly condemned the coup, reaffirmed the mandate of the CLTG, and subsequently suspended Sudan from the regional body “with immediate effect … until the effective restoration” of the CLTG. Al-Burhan, a career soldier from northern Sudan who rose through the ranks under the nearly 30-year rule of al-Bashir, took the top job as the de facto ruler of Sudan after the coup. Dagalo, from Darfur’s camel-herding Arab Rizeigat people, assumed responsibility as his number two.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in Arabic El Quwat El Da’m El Saree’, were previously known as Janjaweed, or government-backed militias. In 2013, they were rebranded as the RSF. While fighting the rebels in Darfur, the group was known for its brutality, and was accused by Human Rights Watch of inflicting "a campaign of forcible displacement, murder, pillage and rape on hundreds of thousands of civilians".

RSF was created in 2013 when the Government faced a spike in rebel activity in Darfur and in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States (the Two Areas). The Government was seeking to regain control of increasingly restive Arab militias in Darfur and establish a new paramilitary unit distinct from the unreliable Musa Hilal.

The RSF troops reportedly numbered between 30,000 and 40,000, though by 2023 some estimates ranges as high as 100,000. The vast majority of them are from Darfurian Arab tribes; the first batch was made up mostly of kinsmen of “Hemmeti” from the Mahariya branch of the Rezeigat. However, recruitment has recently been extended to Darfurian African tribes (including rebel defectors) and to areas outside Darfur, such as Southern Kordofan. Initially placed under NISS, RSF has been part of SAF since January 2017, while maintaining a distinct status.

In April 2019, disobedience in Sudan's Army spread from the bottom up when the order to crush peaceful protesters was issued, and when some soldiers and officers, such as colonel Hamid Othman Hamid, sided with protesters, leaving the top ranks little choice in the end but to sacrifice al-Bashir, their commander-in-chief, to save their own skin. After all, once it starts, insubordination can quickly turn, out of fear of regime retribution, into outright mutiny.

There are a number of reasons why the RSF, whose core fighters come from the violent war zone in Darfur, were handed control of Khartoum. First, the ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC) stopped trusting the army ranks. Second, being largely from outside the capital, the RSF would likely show no hesitation cracking down on strangers. Third, having already engaged in atrocities in Darfur and elsewhere, they could be more willing to obey orders no matter how ghastly.

Credible reports, based on video evidence and eyewitness accounts by survivors of the sit-in massacre, were bodies were thrown into the Nile, have painted a horrific picture of killings, beatings, burning of tents, and widespread rape - tools previously used by the genocidal Janjaweed against defenceless Darfuri villages. Inexplicably, even the University of Khartoum next door was ransacked.

Yet, the RSF retain regional, if not international support. Crucially, they are backed by both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who want to ensure their continued participation in the catastrophic war in Yemen. Egypt, too, has shown its support, hoping the militia would be used to purge Islamists of the "former" Sudanese regime.

Add to that an often overlooked but valuable service that the RSF provide - namely controlling undocumented migration through Sudan to Europe. This might in part explain how Janjaweed leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemedti), a former camel trader accused of crimes against humanity, recently received top Western diplomats in his new lavish Khartoum office.

Wagner and other companies tied to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the businessman helping Russia invade Ukraine, are also involved in activities such as civil wars and resource extraction across much of Africa. In Sudan, Wagner’s presence has been less visible, but of growing concern to Western countries. Prigozhin’s companies likely won access to Sudan’s most lucrative gold mines around the time Bashir met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in late 2017, according to C4ADS, a Washington-based research organization. Mikhail Potepkin, a man who was employed by Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency – the organization commonly known as Russia’s troll factory – was named head of Prigozhin’s operations in Sudan.

In 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned several Prigozhin companies and employees for their work in Sudan, and other countries, including Meroe Gold and Mikhail Potepkin. “Prigozhin’s role in Sudan highlights the interplay between Russia’s paramilitary operations, support for preserving authoritarian regimes, and exploitation of natural resources,” the department said in a statement. The companies targeted “have directly facilitated Prigozhin’s global operations and attempted to suppress and discredit protestors seeking democratic reforms in Sudan.”

The Russian open-source research group CIT, meanwhile, documented evidence of Wagner security guards helping to suppress public protests in Khartoum in late 2018 – protests that eventually led to Bashir’s ouster a few months later. According to documents obtained by The New York Times from the Dossier Center, a London-based opposition research organization funded by exiled Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Wagner advisers advised Bashir to launch a social media campaign to undermine the anti-government protesters.

A former top-ranking Wagner commander named Aleksandr Kuznetsov, meanwhile, has been identified by CNN as being a key leader of Prigozhin’s gold-mining operations in Sudan. Kuznetsov has been sanctioned by the European Union and Britain for his alleged ties to Prigozhin. About a week after Bashir was ousted, a group of high-ranking Russian military officials flew to Khartoum on a corporate jet registered to a Prigozhin-affiliated company, according to Novaya Gazeta. It wasn’t clear if Prigozhin was on that flight. The same jet was used to fly several top Sudanese officials to Moscow not long after that, including a brother of Hemedti. In June 2019, Sudanese security forces, including members of Hemedti’s RSF, used heavy gunfire and tear gas to disperse a demonstration in Khartoum. More than 100 people were believed to have been killed.

The RSF was only nominally and onlly for a time under the SAF; in fact it reported directly to the president. The RSF continued to play a significant role in government campaigns against rebel movements and was implicated in the majority of reports of human rights violations against civilians. The government tightly controlled information about the RSF, and public criticism of the RSF often resulted in arrest or detention.

The burning of villages, killing of civilians, looting, rape and abduction of women and girls, and forced displacement of thousands are the hallmarks of RSF [Rapid Support Forces] incursions into armed opposition-held areas in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile states. The systematic stripping of the assets of the targeted populations, particularly livestock, appears to be intended to undermine livelihoods and dignity and condemn the people of these areas to lasting destitution.

The RSF was under the command of the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), which is accountable to the Sudanese President. The RSF militia was created in 2013 specifically to fight armed rebel groups throughout Sudan. Members of the RSF have been issued NISS identity cards. These IDs ensure them immunity under the National Security Services Act of 2010. In January 2015, a constitutional amendment gave the RSF the status of 'regular force'. In early 2017, the Sudanese parliament approved a bill recognising the RSF as special forces. They were supposed to report directly to President Omar al-Bashir, who was wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and war crimes committed in Darfur.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are accountable for widespread systematic crimes against civilians, constituting ‘egregious crimes’ against humanity and war crimes, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published in the 2015 report 'Men with no Mercy'.

The commander of Sudanese troops known as Rapid Support Force (RSF) Maj. Gen. Abbas Abdulaziz said that troop movements in operation zones and other areas is not a mandate of the governors stressed but is under the purview of Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) General Command. RSF were formed to help SAF in its military campaign which began last August through recruitment of troops from several states. Abdulaziz emphasized in an interview with pro-government Ashorooq TV that RSF are present in the field to finish up the summer plan in Darfur states to crush the rebels and then return to complete the remaining tasks assigned to it by SAF in coordination with other military divisions.

More than 10 years since armed conflict began in 2003, violence persists in the Darfur region, with government-rebel clashes increasing in 2013. Peace treaties signed in 2006, 2011 and 2013 have failed to end the fighting. Violence and displacement increased in Darfur in 2014 with the arrival of the government's Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who perpetrated attacks on armed groups, but were also accused of attacking civilians and their properties, raiding and burning numerous villages.

The members of the RSF had been drawn from paramilitary forces, notably the Border Guards, and other government-backed militia groups, including a variety of proxy militias, commonly known as janjaweed. These were armed by the government at the start of the conflict in Darfur and were the primary perpetrators of brutal attacks on non-Arab civilians, the activist group the Enough Project stated in January 2014. According to several sources, including Major-General Abdelaziz, the majority of the RSF troops are Darfuris recruited by Hemeti in September and October 2013.

Ethnic Nuba have also reportedly been recruited into the RSF. Civilians who have heard members of the RSF speaking claim that some of the fighters speak foreign dialects of Arabic, which they believe to be Chadian and Nigerian.

The RSF consists of at least five to six thousand troops, but the number might have grown. The about 6,000, mainly young, recruits were to be trained as paramilitary troops in camps near Khartoum, in order to fight along with the Sudanese army in South Kordofan. Large numbers of these militiamen were stationed in the area near El Obeid, capital of North Kordofan, from the end of 2013 onwards. After assaulting El Obeid's citizens, they were expelled in February 2014, and re-stationed in Darfur, reportedly to fight rebel groups. The North Kordofan governor then explained that the forces were called Rapid Support Forces, belonging to the operations body of the NISS.

The war over autonomy and resources, such as water and land rights, as well as control over gold mines, between various armed groups and the government continued. The government employed its regular armed forces, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudanese Air Force, as well as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), mostly comprising the so-called Janjaweed and the Popular Defence Forces (PDF).

During government offensives in Darfur in 2014-2015, the Rapid Support Forces led massive attacks on hundreds of villages, burning and destroying homes, and committing serious abuses, including rape and killings that may be crimes against humanity. Government forces also launched a major offensive with ground and air forces on Jebel Mara in 2016, destroying hundreds of villages and displacing up to 195,000 people.

In 2016 and 2017, attacks were perpetrated by Sudanese armed forces, including the Janjaweed and Rapid Support Forces, against helpless internally displaced people. In January 2016, Sudan’s armed forces, including the Rapid Support Forces and allied militia, launched coordinated ground and air attacks on populated villages in Jebel Marra, the rebel stronghold in Central Darfur. These attacks continued for much of the year, following Sudan’s ‘Operation Decisive Summer’ campaigns in Darfur in 2014 and 2015.

On 06 January 2018, in El Geneina, West Darfur, Rapid Support Forces (RSF) used live ammunition against a large group of high school and university students protesting poor economic conditions in front of the regional governor’s office. Several students were severely wounded and 19-year-old student Alzubair Ahmed Alsukairan died from a gunshot wound to the chest. The governor promised the police would investigate the student’s death. As of year’s end, no information on the investigation had been made public. In response to protests that broke out on December 19 and spread throughout the country, security forces fired live ammunition in Gadaref city, Atbara city, and the Al haj Youssef neighborhood in Khartoum, resulting in credible reports of at least 30 deaths.