Sudan’s competing authorities are beholden to militia leaders, say analysts | Sudan war News

In June, the Sudanese Armed Forces appointed Prime Minister Kamil Idris to lead the civilian cabinet in Port Sudan, the wartime capital on the Red Sea coast.

Idris wanted an overhaul, to appoint a team of technocrats to run the new government.

But Gebreil Ibrahim and Mini Arko Minawi – leaders of two powerful armed groups from Darfur  – refused to leave their posts, and army leader Abdelfattah al-Burhan overruled Idris to keep them there.

“Burhan’s concession to Ibrahim and Minawi allows them to keep ministries that control [government] revenue,” said Suliman Baldo, the founder of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker, a think tank.

Al Jazeera sent written questions to army spokesperson Nabil Abdullah, asking him why al-Burhan overruled Idris. No response had been received by the time of publication.

On the other side of the war is a coalition of armed groups that have, de facto, divided Sudan in half after more than two years of civil war.

The Rapid Support Forces paramilitary, which is battling the army, has formed an alliance with smaller armed factions and declared its intention to form a parallel government that will ostensibly represent all of Sudan.

The RSF-backed coalition has already unveiled its leadership council, on which the leaders of armed groups feature in prominent positions.

Analysts told Al Jazeera that SAF and the RSF are trying to meet the demands of powerful militias in a bid to keep their respective battlefield alliances intact.

A future parallel government

In February, the RSF announced that it had formed an alliance with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), an armed group from the Nuba Mountains led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu.

From the beginning of the war, it had remained neutral, shocking observers when it allied with the RSF to form a new alliance and parallel government, which they named Tasis (foundation).

The SPLM-N governs large swaths of South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, and has been at war with the army – as well as the RSF, which used to be the army’s ally before they turned their guns on each other – for 40 years.

SPLM-N was born out of the SPLM, which emerged in the early 1980s to fight for southern independence and to end its marginalisation by the elites of northern and central Sudan.

The Nuba – a group of about 50 communities from what was then central Sudan – was part of the SPLM.

But when South Sudan seceded in 2011, Nuba fighters rebranded as SPLM-N and continued their rebellion against Khartoum, fighting and defeating the RSF, which was deployed to fight them by former President Omar al-Bashir in 2016.

Nearly a decade later, on July 2, Tasis announced a 31-member senior leadership council, with Hemedti as its head and SPLM-N’s al-Hilu as deputy.

While the full list of the 31-member council is not yet public, it also includes Tahir al-Hajar, the head of the Darfur-based Sudan Liberation Gathering Forces (SLGF), according to an interview he gave Al Jazeera Mubasher.

Tasis will soon roll out a government to help the RSF and its allies in their fight against the army, Kholood Khair, Sudan expert and founder of Confluence Advisory think tank, believes.

The RSF wants to exploit the guise of a formal government to better profit from aid groups, buy sophisticated weapons such as fighter jets that can only be sold to states, and boost its stance in any future negotiations with the army, she explained.

“They do not want to go into any kind of mediation as a rebel group. They want to be seen as a government [to boost their legitimacy],” Khair said.

Al Jazeera asked Tasis spokesman, Alaa Nugud, to respond to accusations that the alliance was simply formed to garner international legitimacy for armed groups on the ground.

While he did not respond before publication, Tasis portrays itself as the cornerstone of a “New Sudan” seeking to protect historically neglected and persecuted communities, even as the RSF stands accused of committing ethnic killings and genocide against sedentary communities known as “non-Arabs” in Darfur.

However, “this is just a group formed out of war dynamics despite their entire narrative of it being a coalition of the marginalised,” said Hamid Khalafallah, an expert on Sudan and PhD candidate at the University of Manchester.

‘Poster children’

On the Port Sudan government’s side, Gebreil Ibrahim and Mini Arko Minawi lead the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army – Mini Minawi (SLA-MM), respectively.

The two armed groups mainly comprised sedentary farming “non-Arab” communities from the vast western region of Darfur who came together to fight a rebellion against the central government in 2003.

Their stated aim was to end the persecution and neglect of their communities, but like most of Sudan’s armed groups, they ended up using their weapons to negotiate access to state coffers and prominent posts in government instead.

“What this whole war has shown is if you pick up a gun, then you can get power,” Khair said.

“The RSF are really the poster children for this model,” she added.

The RSF in its current form was born during the Darfur war, which started in 2003, when al-Bashir tapped Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo and his feared “Arab” Popular Defence Forces (Janjaweed) militia to crush the rebellion there.

Al-Bashir rewarded Hemedti, who took part in countless atrocities against “non-Arabs”, by repackaging the Janjaweed into the RSF in 2013, with Hemedti at its head and a place with the army.

As part of the state, Hemedti was able to consolidate control over lucrative gold mines, expand recruitment and lease out fighters to partake in regional wars for tens of millions of dollars.

When al-Bashir was deposed by a popular uprising in April 2019, a wealthy, powerful Hemedti became al-Burhan’s deputy in the Transitional Military Council.

A militia state with a war economy?

Tasis, as well as the army-backed government in Port Sudan, are beholden to armed actors, which means more local commanders could expand recruitment and acquire weapons, hoping to get strong enough to gain political power, analysts warn.

Mohamed “al-Jakomi” Seid Ahmed, an army-aligned commander from northern Sudan, made a statement a few weeks ago that hinted at his aspirations, Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker’s Baldo said.

Al-Jakomi said that he would be training a whopping 50,000 men in Eritrea to protect Sudan’s Northern State from possible incursion by the RSF. He confirmed his plan in an interview with Al Jazeera Mubasher.

In addition, Baldo referenced Abu Aqla Keikel, whose force was instrumental in helping the army recapture the agricultural heartland of Gezira state three months after defecting from the RSF to the army in October 2024.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Al Jazeera’s reporting point to atrocities committed by Keikel’s fighters, prompting the European Union to sanction him on July 18.

Still, analysts say his power is growing and he may harbour ambitions to secure some form of political power.

“These are individuals who can hold the army hostage through their autonomous militias … as a way to secure seats around the cake when it is divided,” Baldo told Al Jazeera.

To appease armed actors that they want to keep onside, the army-backed government will likely create new positions as rewards, Jawhara Kanu, an expert on Sudan’s economy, said.

“The government will just have to keep swelling … with as many ministries as possible to reward as many people as possible,” she told Al Jazeera.

However, neither Port Sudan nor Tasis will be able to hand out political posts forever, especially if the war continues and more powerful militias emerge.

The army doesn’t have enough revenue – a result of losing control of nearly half the country, which encompasses profitable gold mines and agricultural lands, according to Khair.

She added that Hemedti and his family are unlikely to cede much of their private wealth to pay recruits. Throughout the war, the RSF incentivised its fighters by allowing them to plunder the cities and villages they attacked.

But as loot runs dry, militias may resort to building their fiefdoms by setting up checkpoints to heavily tax people and goods passing through, warns Khair.

“The new predatory behaviour, supported by the state in RSF and army areas, will be checkpoints. And these checkpoints will mark one rebel leader’s area from another,” she told Al Jazeera.

“In a decade’s time, it may eventually be difficult to tell which militia is loyal to the army and which is loyal to the RSF,” Khair added.