From camel trader to warlord and Sudan’s most dangerous general. The meteoric rise of Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, alias Hemedti, has made him one of the key figures in the recent history of the African country.
Head of the fearsome paramilitary group Forces de Suport RÃ pid (FSR), he is one of the undisputed protagonists of the violence that broke out on Saturday and that has brought the country to the brink of civil war.
The other, facing him to the death, a man of the establishment but also used to the smell of gunpowder: the head of the army, Abdelfatah Burhan, born in 1960 in northern Sudan and wearing a uniform full of military decorations .
Their visceral confrontation and mutual hatred, now transferred to open combat that has caused more than 200 deaths and almost 2,000 injuries, will mark the future of the African country.
Both are united by ambition and separated by their roots. Born in Darfur into a family of camel traders in Chadian and Sudanese lands, Hemedti soon left behind his humble origins – he dropped out of high school as a child – and rose through the ranks thanks to his warlike cunning and ability to build a paramilitary group of mercenaries more powerful than the Sudanese army.
He was driven by a thirst for revenge: after armed robbers attacked his camel caravan and killed more than 60 family members, Hemedti enlisted in the Arab militias that fought the insurgency by non-Arab groups in Darfur and led to the 2003 in the fearsome Janjawid militia, promoted by the dictator Al-Baixir.
More than 300,000 people were killed by Janjawid soldiers, in acts so horrific that they led the International Criminal Court to charge Al-Baixir with crimes against humanity.
Later transformed into the FSR, the militia led by Hemedti, a man of imposing stature, became a kind of special forces independent of the army that gave protection to the Sudanese satrap, who feared that his army was conspiring against him.
This loyalty in arms gave Hemedti, who is now a general, military rank and made him a millionaire thanks to his control of the gold mines in the north of the country and the income of his mercenaries, whom he sent to fight in Yemen or Chad
“Hemedti’s career is an objective lesson in political entrepreneurship by a specialist in violence. Their conduct and impunity [for now], which have defined the Sudanese periphery, has now been brought to the heart of the country’s capital”, wrote the analyst and specialist in Sudan Alex de Waal in The Conversation this week.
For Sudanese lawyer Ahmed el-Gaili, his unbridled ambition goes beyond the pocket and longs for the baton. And that makes him a total danger. “I have long believed that he [Hemedti] is an existential threat not only to Sudan’s democratic transition, but also to its viability as a state.”
In front of him is a man from the apparatus of power who also wants to rule. Educated at the military academy in Khartoum, Burhan is the epitome of a man rooted in the military leadership.
After rising through the ranks in the army and fighting successfully in Darfur, in 2019 he presented himself as a defender of the revolution when popular protests toppled Al-Baixir. His change of skin earned him to become the president of the Transitional Military Council. Another manual opportunist was placed as his second: Hemedti.
Their strange alliance went further. The two generals allied in 2021 to stage a coup d’état and thus end a democratic transition that caused them to hesitate and fear.
Both generals shared a concern: a strong civilian government would risk losing their economic privileges and being held accountable for their abuses. The move to derail the process did not go well for them. Without international support, his attempt to stop the transition ran into a galloping economic crisis and the resistance of a society determined for democratic change.
Since then, it was only a matter of time before the rivalry between Hemedti and Burhan exploded. Disagreeing over what the country’s political future should be, who should lead the armed forces and how the 100,000 FSR soldiers should be incorporated into the army, their differences speak the language of bombing since Saturday.
On paper, Burhan has all the trump cards, as he has an impressive arsenal of tanks, artillery and, above all, air force. But his army lacks one thing Hemedti has left over: troops battle-hardened to the death on the battlefield. The future of Sudan depends on this violent imbalance.
According to the Sudanese Mohammed Awad, director of the Al Yarida newspaper, all is not lost for Sudanese society. The journalist and analyst believes that between Hemedti and Burhan only one will remain, but whoever wins will not get the victory.
“The people have lost their fear and already managed to overthrow the dictator Al-Baixir, who used much higher levels of repression and violence. Hemedti and Burhan fight to continue to have influence, but the winner will later face the Sudanese people and lose. It is a dark tunnel through which Sudan must pass in order to achieve freedom.”
