From Coup to Chaos

For a brief, extraordinary moment in 2019, Sudan appeared to be finding its way toward democracy. The 30-year dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir — an ICC-indicted war criminal — was toppled by a mass popular uprising. The military and civilian pro-democracy groups formed a fragile power-sharing Sovereignty Council, agreeing to a transition toward elections. The world cautiously celebrated. Sudan was removed from the US state sponsors of terrorism list. Foreign investment trickled in.

The Rapid Support Forces were the skeleton in the room. The RSF had evolved from the Janjaweed militias that committed genocide in Darfur during the 2000s — killing 300,000 people and displacing 2.7 million. Its commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — known universally as 'Hemedti' — had parlayed Darfur atrocities into a personal fortune and a paramilitary army of perhaps 100,000 fighters, paid for by gold mining concessions in Darfur and service in Saudi Arabia's Yemen war. Hemedti served on the Sovereignty Council alongside the SAF's General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan — two men who had built their careers on violence and had everything to lose from genuine civilian rule.

On October 25, 2021, Burhan and Hemedti launched a joint coup, dissolving the civilian government and arresting its leaders. International condemnation was swift but ineffective. Economic sanctions squeezed an already starving country. Civilian protest continued under brutal repression. Negotiations to restore civilian rule went nowhere. What was never resolved was the key condition of the transition: the integration of the RSF into the Sudanese military. The RSF was Hemedti's personal army and fortune — and he refused to give it up. By early 2023, the integration deadline was approaching and both sides were positioning their forces across Khartoum.