Sudan’s Ghosts of Darfur Come Back to Haunt It

Twenty years after the war in Darfur began, this new chapter of conflict is one of global consequence because of a potent cocktail of tribal alliances, ruthless warlords, international backers, and coveted minerals.

In 2019, protests led two generals to remove the country’s longtime dictator, Omar al-Bashir. However, the alliance between the Sudanese Armed Forces, now led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, ended on April 15 after the two sides turned their guns on one another.  Hemeti cut his teeth—and plenty of other things—in the war in Darfur a few decades ago. He hails from the border region between Chad and Darfur in Western Sudan and slowly built his militia into a powerful force through the exploitation of natural resources and violence. Most Sudanese rulers throughout its history have come from the center, but the revolution brought Hemeti to Khartoum. Today, Hemeti’s forces are ever closer to capturing the capital of Khartoum, with the SAF holding just a few positions.

Khartoum is a mess. What’s arguably worse is Darfur. The 2019 revolution meant a new chapter of violence in Darfur. I visited the epicenter of this new conflict, West Darfur, in 2021 to understand the drivers of conflict. That year, more than 442,000 people had to move because of attacks that were mostly conducted by Arab-identifying tribes, affiliated with the RSF, on non-Arab groups. However, the conflict was largely ignored by diplomats who were focused on Khartoum politics. 

That disregard contributed to the conflict today. The current situation across Darfur is a patchwork of horrific atrocities and accounts of war crimes that will likely get worse. More than 110,000 people have fled to neighboring Chad, but many Darfurians are unable to escape. Most urgent is the situation in West Darfur.

The Scale of War in Sudan

A comparison of satellite photos shows the extent of damage between March 31 and May 8 in El Geneina, Sudan, with burned buildings scarring the landscape.

Planet Labs/Courtesy of C4ADS

“Talking to many who survived brutal violence in West Darfur, notably from non-Arab communities, it is striking how for many of them the killings are based on ethnicity, and include arson, the loss of homes and loved ones, the destruction of food and the way of life,” said Mohamed Osman, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, from refugee camps in Chad. “It is a throwback to the early days of the conflict in Darfur.”

A tenuous local cease-fire collapsed in North Darfur after a recent RSF offensive. “The RSF reportedly attacked and took control of the main SAF base in [Kutum], as well as an unspecified number of neighborhoods, and burned parts of one of the four major camps [for internally displaced persons] in North Darfur” read an internal U.N. report obtained by FP. 

There is no doubt that the violence is among the worst since the war in Darfur began in 2003. U.N. officials have warned that crimes against humanity may be occurring. Yet due to the explosive combination of regional and ethnic alliances in Central and West Africa, what starts in Darfur may spread across the continent.

Arab nomads on horses fleeing violence pass by village women in Eastern Chad on Nov. 17, 2006. Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images

Hemeti is a member and de facto leader of the Rezigat Mahariya clan. The Mahariya are part of a broader group of Arab-identifying tribes that stretches some 1500 miles east from Niger to Darfur. The Rezigat are a semi-nomadic group that has moved through the region for centuries. Hemeti has successfully formed alliances with political and tribal leaders in this belt through a combination of ethnic solidarity and incentives. For example, diplomats reported that RSF troops were guaranteeing the security of Niger President Mohamed Bazoum, who hails from the same Arab tribal network, after his 2021 election. Hemeti’s cousin is reportedly Bichara Issa Djadallah, a member of the Chadian Transitional Military Council and twice the country’s defense minister.

As a result of these political alliances, Hemeti has bolstered his own RSF forces with recruits from across the region in his fight against the SAF. U.N. officials said that soldiers from Hemeti’s RSF have been identified as belonging to allied ethnic groups from Chad, Niger, Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon, and even Mauritania.

“Across West and Central Africa, there is a broader demographic shift that Hemeti is part of,” explained Mohammed al Taishi, who was a former member of Sudan’s sovereignty council and an influential figure in the Taʽisha tribe in Darfur. “The traditional French alliances in West Africa are disappearing. From the Atlantic Ocean in Senegal all the way to Sudan and the Red Sea on the other side, you are seeing the political and demographic power of Arab groups.”

A man walks through a destroyed medical storage building in Nyala, Sudan, on May 2. AFP via Getty Images

The power of tribal identity to mobilize violence was never more apparent to me than in 2021, when a man served me tea as he explained why he burnt down a village from the Masalit ethnic group, a non-Arab group in Darfur. We were on the outskirts of El Geneina, in West Darfur. The man serving me tea was from an Arab group, and he pointed to a thin dirt road beside us.

On the other side of the dirt road lay the ruins of the Krindig displacement camp that once housed around 40,000 people, mostly Masalit. Charred gray houses sprouted between overgrown weeds. Earlier that year, a member of his tribe was killed in a misunderstanding. An Arab man had wandered, at night, into a market that was off-limits. He was killed by Masalit, and after another misunderstanding, the mourning family was attacked when they tried to collect the body.

Although he had lived across the street from the Masalit village and was friendly with his neighbors, the man serving me tea felt he had to protect his community in Darfur. For centuries, tribes have served as de facto authorities, social identities, protection rackets, and welfare agencies. The man joined a neighborhood defense force from his tribe. They were bolstered by allied Arab militias from around West Darfur who wanted to protect their relatives. Together, they attacked the Masalit village. They emptied their magazines and burned the mud-brick homes. The point of the attacks, an Arab leader explained to me, was to “make the Masalit and the [former] governor move into the city” of El Geneina. On June 14, that former governor of West Darfur, Khamis Abbakar, accused the RSF of genocide in an interview. Hours later, the RSF reportedly arrested and killed him, and paraded Abbakar’s dead body on social media.

In a Sudan Sovereignty Council Press Office photo, Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Burhan, commander of the Sudanese army, visits troops in the Little Fasaka region on the Sudan-Ethiopia border on June 27, 2022. Sudan Sovereignty Council Press Office/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The tangled ethnic dynamics are further complicated by support from Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar, a Russian proxy and longtime ally of Hemeti. Western diplomats said that Haftar has supplied Hemeti with weapons since the April 15 onset of fighting. In response, Sudan’s army, bolstered by Egyptian pilots and air support, bombed a supply of weapons destined for the RSF. 

The fortunes of Darfur and Hemeti are likely to be influenced by Russia and the United Arab Emirates. Both countries are key partners in Hemeti’s gold mining operations, which help finance the RSF. Wagner, the Russian mercenary group, has operated in parts of Darfur and the Central African Republic to export minerals with the coordination of Hemeti. Some also fear that Russia will back the Chadian Arab tribes as Moscow seeks to undermine the traditional French-backed governments in Central Africa.

A senior U.N. official estimated that some $18 billion has been spent in peacekeeping missions and humanitarian aid in Darfur since 2003, yet the grievances are still there. There are few levers the West has left to pull to curtail violence in Darfur. Two peacekeeping missions in Darfur failed to address the root causes of violence. A third is unlikely to be approved by Russia at the U.N. Security Council. Even if the UAE enforces Western sanctions on the RSF, which is unlikely, it will have a limited impact on preventing localized outbreaks of fighting and Arab mobilization. Perhaps before the outbreak of civil war in April, there was an opportunity for Western governments to push for important reforms in Darfur that would have stemmed violence. 

The Biden administration has not been, so far, on top of its game in Sudan or Darfur. U.S. President Joe Biden or National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan could change that. They’ve shown little appetite so far, and Darfurians had already felt abandoned. 

When I was in El Geneina, a survivor of the attack on the Krindig camp in 2021 explained his mindset after facing years of attacks without help.

“I have been displaced three times because of fighting,” he said. “I always ask myself why this is happening to me, and the only reason I can think of is that I have been cursed.”