After Months of Maneuvering, Sudan's Leaders Clash

Sudanese soldiers in Khartoum stand guard against Sudanese citizens protesting former President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 (Wikimedia Commons)

Heavy fighting broke out across Sudan on April 15 as a simmering rivalry between the country’s two most powerful men escalated into armed conflict. The fighting, which began in Khartoum but quickly spread across the country, pits the Sudanese Army under General Abdul Fattah al-Burhan against the Rapid Support Forces under General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. The generals secured joint control of the country through a 2019 popular revolution and consolidated their rule in a 2021 coup d’etat, but the resulting peace was uneasy. 

In the long lead-up to Saturday’s fighting, both men wrestled with civilian leaders to negotiate long-awaited political reforms. Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti, helped Burhan topple Omar al-Bashir’s dictatorship in 2019. At the time, both men agreed on a timeline for democratic transition. Two years later, and two months before an agreement would have ended military rule, the generals carried out another coup. As before, pressure from civilian leaders led Hemedti and Burhan back to the negotiating table. An agreement last December committed both men to another democratic transition, but talks stalled in early April over key issues of power-sharing.

Both men made their careers during Sudan’s brutal Darfur conflict, in which government forces waged all-out war against rebels in the country’s west. Hemedti, formerly a camel trader, became a pro-government militia commander when rebellion broke out in 2003. The group he was part of, known as the Janjaweed, became infamous for raping and murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians across the region in what some observers termed a genocide. While these forces were not officially under state control, they worked frequently with the Sudanese army, in which Burhan was a general.

Under Omar al-Bashir, Hemedti and Burhan leveraged their experience in the Darfur conflict to rise into parallel positions of power. In 2013, the dictator converted several Janjaweed groups into the new “Rapid Support Forces,” appointing Hemedti its commander. As Burhan rose through the army’s ranks, Hemedti grew the RSF into a thirty-thousand-man security force described as al-Bashir’s “praetorian guard.”

After collaborating to remove al-Bashir in 2019, the two men turned from allies into rivals. The transition agreement signed last December sought to integrate Hemedti’s RSF under the Sudanese regular army. When talks stalled in early April, this integration clause was largely responsible, with Hemedti viewing it as a direct threat to his power.

Finally, on April 12, Hemedti deployed RSF forces to key areas around the country, including the strategically valuable Merowe airport. A day later, Burhan’s army responded, condemning what it called a “clear violation of the law.” As local mediators scrambled to facilitate a meeting between the men, international parties chimed in to express concerns. “We call on Sudan’s military and civilian leaders to take active steps to reduce tensions,” the European Union wrote in a statement.

By early morning on April 15, it became clear that efforts at mediation had failed. As the RSF and the Sudanese Army fought openly in Khartoum and other areas, Hemedti and Burhan accused each other of provoking the conflict. Both leaders seek to win a quick victory by capturing or killing their rival. Otherwise, Sudan may descend into a full-fledged civil war.