The country was in a crisis.
On December 19th, 2018, a revolution began to spread throughout Sudan, after decades of living under President Omar Bashir’s brutal military regime. Civilians pushed back, wanting a democracy in their country. A few months later, Bashir was taken down in a coup by two men, who promised protesters the future they had demanded. However, four years later, these same two men were now at war with each other, tearing Sudan apart and killing hundreds of civilians.
Sudan has a long history of coups, with leader after leader being brought down by military officers. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has held tremendous power in the country for nearly a century. This power was first used soon after Sudan gained independence from Anglo Egyptian rule, with the first successful military coup taking place in 1958.
In 1985, Colonel Omar Bashir took down a democratic government and appointed himself as the head of state. To ensure his own power, he used a strategy called “coup-proofing”, where he surrounded himself with protectors but kept each one in check so they couldn’t overthrow him. This included strengthening the SAF and arming local Arab militias known as the Janjaweed.
The Janjaweed were brutal and focused on wiping out Darfuri rebels and civilians at Bashir’s direction. Together with the SAF, they killed thousands of Darfuris. In 2011, the civil war ended with South Sudan gaining independence, leaving Bashir in a weak position and Sudan’s economy in crisis. Many of the oil resources that sustained the country were based in the South, which was no longer under Bashir’s control. To strengthen his power, Bashir gave Hemeti and the Janjaweed official status as a paramilitary force called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in 2013. At first, the group was placed under the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) - one of Bashir’s protectors. Even though they were supporting the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) in the ongoing war in Darfur, in 2017, Bashir passed a law placing Hemeti directly under his command, making it clear that the RSF’s main purpose was to protect him. To maintain the RSF’s loyalty, Bashir gave Hemeti financial autonomy and allowed him to take control of some of Darfur’s gold mines, smuggle weapons and minerals into places like Chad and Libya, and send troops into war-torn regions in exchange for money. At the same time, Bashir continued to let the SAF have a hand in major industries, like weapon production and telecommunications, while civilians continued to struggle.
Protests broke out in 2018 in the middle of a really bad economic crisis. This ultimately triggered the biggest revolution in Sudan’s history, with spontaneous protests breaking out in different parts of the country and then shifting to Khartoum in the capital city. Bashir refused to leave office and the RSF, SAF, and other security sectors backed him and cracked down on the protesters who ultimately wanted democracy. But protesters didn’t back down for months and it became clear to the RSF and SAF that Bashir’s leadership wouldn’t be as useful to them anymore.
So on April 11th, 2019, they made a move that surprised civilians and Bashir. SAF commanders colluded with the RSF’s Hemeti and removed Bashir from power. Protesters celebrated Bashir’s removal, but they didn’t trust the man who made it happen. A day after the coup, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan - a former regional commander in Darfur - took charge of the South. Together, the two men gained control of Sudan, despite people seeing them as complicit in the violence in Darfur all those years ago, where they worked together - one as a member of the Sudan Armed Forces and one as a militia leader on the same side against large proportions of the population of Darfur.
And soon, the two men turned on protesters. When pro-democracy protests kept intensifying in Khartoum, Hemeti and his forces started cracking down. On June 3rd, 2019, the RSF killed over 100 people at a sit-in protest, and other massacres continued throughout the country. After this, the United States, with its Arab allies, the United Kingdom, Ethiopia, and the African Union, pressured Sudan’s military and protesters to accept a power-sharing agreement. In this new deal, representatives from both the military and protesters would be part of a transitional council. In this plan, the military would have control for 21 months and civilians for 18, meaning the military would eventually have to hand over power to civilians who would run the country.
The problem was, despite warnings from protesters, these two military men were put in charge of the council with Burhan as chair and Hemeti as vice chair. At first, the council acted in line with the agreement and installed a new prime minister, Abdallah Hamdok. But after multiple military interventions by these leaders, like a staged coup in October 2021, Hamdok resigned in January 2022. That made Burhan the de facto leader of Sudan and Hemeti as his number two again. But Hemeti was never quite comfortable with playing second fiddle. Despite amassing a fortune and positioning himself to play a statesman-like role, Hemeti has been just as successful as Burhan in building personal alliances with leaders in the Middle East, Europe and Asia by leveraging his wealth from gold mines. On December 5th, 2020, both men signed a deal to bring in a civilian-led transitional government by April 2023. However, the two men disagreed on a key part of the deal - the RSF needed to become part of Burhan’s army and Burhan wanted it to happen in two years while Hemeti proposed 10 years. This disagreement caused a rift between the two men, leading to the current conflict with hundreds of thousands of armed men across the country and an air force responsible for many of the casualties. Sadly, hundreds of civilians have been killed and thousands have fled Sudan, with ceasefires being broken and talks going nowhere. What was once a hopeful revolution has been interrupted by these two men and protesters are left feeling betrayed by the de facto leaders and the international community.