Inflation skyrocketed, goods were scarce and people were fed up.
On December 19th, 2018, a revolution started to spread throughout Sudan. After decades of living under President Omar Bashir’s brutal military regime, civilians pushed back and demanded a democracy in their country. A few months later, two powerful men helped take down Bashir in a coup and promised protesters the future they had demanded. Four years later, these same two men are now at war with each other, tearing Sudan apart and killing hundreds of civilians.
So how did Sudan go from this to this in such a short time? And how did these two powerful men go from partners to enemies? Sudan has a long history of coups, with leaders being brought down by military officers since the country gained independence from Anglo Egyptian rule. Colonel Omar Bashir took down a democratic government in 1985 and appointed himself as the head of state. He used a strategy called coup proofing, where he would surround himself with protectors but keep each one in check so they couldn’t overthrow him. He relied on the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) to crack down on an ongoing civil war in southern Sudan, and armed local Arab militias known as the Janjaweed to fight a war in Darfur. Both groups are accused of mass killing, rape, and the targeted displacement of civilians. In 2011, South Sudan gained independence, leaving Bashir in a weak position and Sudan’s economy tanked. Inflation skyrocketed, goods were scarce, and people were fed up, leading to the revolution in 2018. Many of the oil resources that sustained Sudan were located 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, and placed it under the NISS Sudan’s intelligence agency, another one of Bashir’s protectors. Even though they were supporting the 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 Bashir was busy making these two forces richer, civilians continued to struggle. Protests broke out in 2018 in the middle of a really bad economic crisis, which ultimately triggered the biggest revolution in Sudan’s history. Spontaneous protests broke out in different parts of the country, and then shifted 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.
On April 11th, 2019, the 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 formal regional commander in Darfur took charge of the South. Together, the two men gained control of Sudan, and people saw 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 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 having amassed a fortune and having positioned himself to play a statesman-like role almost better than Burhan himself, Hemeti did not rest on his laurels. He used his wealth from the gold mines to build relationships with influential people in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.
On December 5th, 2020, Burhan, Hemeti, and political parties signed a deal promising a new civilian-led transitional government by April 2023. However, the two men disagreed on a key part of the deal: the RSF would need to become part of Burhan’s army, which would limit Hemeti’s power. While Burhan wanted that to happen in two years, Hemeti proposed ten. This disagreement sparked the current conflict between the two men, resulting in hundreds of thousands of armed men being placed across the country.
Burhan’s air force has been responsible for many civilian casualties, and Hemeti’s finances have allowed him to arm more and more men on the ground. Hundreds of civilians have been killed, and thousands have fled Sudan. Ceasefires have routinely been broken and talks between the warring parties have gone nowhere.
What was once a hopeful revolution has been interrupted by these two men, leaving protesters feeling betrayed by the country’s de facto leaders and the international community that had claimed to support their hopes for democracy.