Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, aka ‘Hemedti’, has finally shown all his cards and the truth is that they are very good. The prize for this game is also ambitious and is that the winner wins Sudan. There are actually no marked cards or surprises. This soldier and politician was already acting as the most powerful man in the African country, but apparently two weeks ago he proposed to leave behind his discreet background and seize executive power by force. Abdelfatah Al Burhan, chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, was not intimidated and has since tried to suppress his deputy’s aspirations, bolstered by his control over the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militias. The result is a battle in the heart of the capital Khartoum. It is necessary to go back in time to explain this unexpected conflict, although we don’t know exactly until when. The biographies don’t even specify the year this warlord was born, possibly 1974 or 1975, within the Rizeigat tribe, made up of Arab nomads from Chad and based in the western region of Darfur. According to some hypotheses, the future leader received only basic training before devoting himself to the camel trade. Possibly the origin of his troops can be found in that Praetorian guard he assembled to protect that animal trade. The irresistible political and military rise of ‘Hemedti’ took place at least a few decades ago. When conflict broke out between the black peasant tribes and the Arab cattle tribes of Darfur, he sided with his own and became the leader of the ‘janjaweed’, the horse-riding guerrillas who ravaged their rivals’ villages. His legend and the interest of the International Criminal Court began to take shape in those random ‘raids’ that earned him the stripes of brigadier general. They were not isolated skirmishes. Operation ‘Decisive Summer’ in 2014 was a massive campaign of civilian killings, rape and destruction of infrastructure aimed at enforcing ethnic cleansing. A sense of timing seemed inherent in these killing strategies. The warlord took over the Darfuri gold mines, the basis for the creation of the Al Gunade Group, a family business dedicated to exporting the precious mineral to the Emirates, which soon spread to trade in other metals and the transport sector. But he wanted more. The creation of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was an initiative supported by President Omar al-Bashir, a by-the-book tyrant, to subdue the hostile guerrillas and had the backing of the intelligence community. Incredibly, the state gave legal status to a paramilitary entity, but Hamdan Dagalo’s power was already a factor of enormous magnitude. On the occasion of a quarrel with his benefactor, he threatened an advance on Khartoum. Everything indicates that the government has appeased his protege, but he has not forgotten that claim. In 2018, he betrayed President Al Bashir, for whom he had led the RSF, synonymous with terror. The tyrant used the militias to suppress the opposition arbitrarily and with absolute impunity. The RSF became synonymous with terror across the country. But the crisis worsened in a country torn apart by the secession of its southern territories, the richest in oil. Again ‘Hemedti’s’ insight was on display. In 2018, protests against the abolition of certain subsidies turned into a march against the regime. The general rightly sided with the masses and effectively contributed to the fall of Al Bashir. The position of the army became even more complex. As a member of the Transitional Military Council, the body that was supposed to lead to democracy, he chaired the negotiating tables with various guerrilla groups fighting on the fringes of the country. In his capacity as head of the paramilitary forces, he suppressed the demonstrations, claiming more than 100 deaths. Political suicide On a strange path to an impossible place, ‘Hemedti’ in 2019 corresponded to a transition with the civil movements that should lead to the implementation of a constitution and the calling of elections that the architects of the change could not see. He signed his political suicide and that of the armed forces, a huge conglomerate with economic interests mainly in commercial agriculture and mineral extraction. The idea of a government alien to these interests was utopian. Two years later, he allied with Al Burhan to stage a coup. His march to Khartoum comes after the failed process of handing over power to civilians. The outcome of this crisis is highly uncertain, but the background in Somalia and Libya seems disturbing. The use of weapons might lead us to believe that their position has deteriorated. Nothing else. ‘Hemedti’ argues that the use of violence is motivated by the hitherto unknown radical Islamism of Al Burhan. His foreign policy has also been a panacea. After supporting Al Bashir’s isolationist nationalism, it turned to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates and became a strategic ally in the war in Yemen. In addition, his Twitter account shows the conversations with the Western Chanceries and the Commissioner Josep Borrell that show a spirit of dialogue and reconciliation that promotes, for example, the evacuation of foreigners. No doubt Machiavelli would smile.
Source: La Verdad
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