It was the first time the militia commander had been seen in public for months. “Please don’t listen to any rumour-mongers,” urged a haggard-looking Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti. “They want to break you,” continued the head of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group widely accused of genocide. His rare video address, broadcast on January 31st, was meant to rally the RSF’s last remaining troops in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. Many of his militiamen have been fleeing west across the Nile river. His pleas may have been in vain. The RSF’s days in the city look numbered.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the national army, is on a roll. The rival RSF captured most of Khartoum soon after civil war broke out nearly two years ago and swept through the agricultural heartlands of the Nile valley, the SAF’s traditional stronghold. But the pendulum has been swinging back in the army’s favour. In January it took Wad Madani, one of Sudan’s biggest cities (see map). Then it broke the RSF’s siege of the army’s headquarters in the capital. It is advancing fast along the Nile towards the presidential palace in the heart of Khartoum, capturing several important bridges and the national oil refinery on the way.
If the army regains full control of Khartoum, it could be a turning point in a war that has displaced 12m Sudanese and caused one of the world’s worst famines in decades. Last month General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the SAF’s leader and Sudan’s de facto president, made his first appearance in the capital since being forced to relocate to Port Sudan on the Red Sea in mid-2023.
His arrival sparked bullishness bordering on triumphalism among the army and its supporters. The general vowed to expel the RSF “from every corner of Sudan”. “It is not conceivable or acceptable that the RSF should have any military or political role in the future Sudan,” says a Sudanese diplomat. On February 9th the SAF pledged to form a new government of “technocrats”.
The RSF appears to be in turmoil. Despite its fighting agility and advanced weaponry supplied largely by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (which denies this), the group has struggled to consolidate its early battlefield gains. In areas they occupy, local defence groups and tribal militias still resist it. Defections may have sapped morale and sown disunity. “The old RSF is disintegrating,” says Amjed Farid, an official in the interim civilian government that was ousted in a coup led by General Burhan in 2021. “Instead of being one militia it is becoming an alliance of gangs.”
It is also increasingly isolated diplomatically. In January America slapped sanctions on Mr Dagalo and seven companies owned by the RSF in the UAE. Though General Burhan was also sanctioned a week later, some Western diplomats are cautiously optimistic the UAE may be rethinking its support for such a toxic group. On February 14th it called for a ceasefire and pledged to send an additional $200m in humanitarian aid. “We need stability and we need a civilian government,” insists a senior Emirati official.
Given the RSF’s setbacks in Khartoum and an unpredictable Donald Trump in the White House, the UAE may try to wind down its support. But so far there is little to suggest the uae has yet done so. Clandestine arms shipments, including drones, are still flowing to the RSF in Darfur, says Nathaniel Raymond of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, a conflict monitor. These weapons are believed to come largely from the UAE. Though RSF fighters are abandoning their posts in Khartoum, many have redeployed to el-Fasher, Darfur’s capital. In recent days a nearby camp hosting some 1m refugees, many fleeing from el-Fasher itself, has been raided and shelled by the RSF and allied militias, raising the prospect of another bloodbath in Darfur.
There is little sign the RSF plans to sue for peace. It is set to announce the formation of a civilian government to rival General Burhan’s putative one in Khartoum. This could entrench the division of Sudan into multiple zones. Nor does Mr Dagalo appear to have ceded his ambition to rule in Khartoum. According to a Western security analyst in contact with the RSF, the group is preparing a counter-offensive. ■
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