What do the RSF want from Gezira state? The political Economy Agenda of war in Sudan

Amjad Farid Al-Tayeb

On the morning of Friday, June 21, 2024, the Rapid Support Forces RSF militia invaded the village of Aseer , a small agricultural village in the countryside of the Al-Hosh area in Gezira state. The Rapid Support Forces RSF attack resulted in the killing of 17 civilians and the injury of dozens of others, in addition to a large wave of displacement of civilians towards Al-Manaqil and other areas far from the control of the militia, while the militia soldiers turned to their usual acts of terrorizing, looting, and various attacks in every area they invaded.
Two days earlier, the militia had stormed the city of Al-Huda in western Gezira state, after targeting it for nearly half a day with intense artillery shelling.
This attack resulted in more than 20 civilian casualties, in addition to many wounded, and caused a large displacement of citizens from the area towards the village of Al-Azazi and a number of neighboring villages, seeking safety. This attack was also accompanied by widespread looting of agricultural crops and food stocks in the city.
On June 5, 2024, the Rapid Support Forces launched a violent and brutal attack on the village of Wad al-Noura, west of the Managil area in Gezira state.
The Rapid Support Forces RSF attacked the village twice throughout the day, starting with heavy shelling using heavy artillery, followed by a large-scale ground attack on the village from three directions. During these attacks, the militia committed a bloody massacre, with more than 200 people killed and hundreds injured.
The Rapid Support Forces RSF stormed the village again on the morning of June 6, 2024, took control of it and deployed their forces there.
Over the last two weeks of May 2024, the town of al-Takina in al-Kamlin locality, located in northern Gezira state, was subjected to continuous attacks by the Rapid Support Forces RSF militia, with the number of civilian casualties ranging between 10 and 18 dead per day.
The incidents began when a group of militiamen attacked the rural town on Monday, May 20, 2024, with the usual aim of looting, plundering and taking booty.
However, the locals confronted them with firearms and sticks (crutches) and forced them to retreat. The militia responded by storming the town and launching a comprehensive attack on it with firearms, machine guns and heavy artillery shelling. Ten victims fell on the first day, and the militia resumed its attack again the next day, causing a number of more victims.
A large-scale evacuation movement began, with large numbers of women, children and elderly men and women evacuated by boat to safe areas in eastern Gezira state, in anticipation of the continuation of the attack. Naturally, the people of the area organized themselves in fierce resistance to these attacks, which did not end until June 1, 2024, with an agreement between the people of the area and the commander of the Rapid Support Forces RSF militia in Gezira state (Abu Aqla Kikil) not to attack the town. On June 23, 2024, news came of the Rapid Support Forces RSF militia threatening the residents of the villages of Al-Awamra, Al-Kariba and Musaed in western Gezira state, and demanding that they immediately evacuate their areas, amidst various manifestations of terror and looting, which led to a large-scale displacement of women, children and the elderly on foot, to avoid the evil of the militias that they have become accustomed to practicing in the rest of the places they have invaded. These violations, which have recently increased in frequency, were not the only ones since the Rapid Support Forces RSF militias invaded Gezira state last December.
On December 18, 2023, the city of Wad Madani, the state capital, fell into the hands of the Rapid Support Forces RSF militias, who committed dozens of crimes of murder, looting and rape against its civilian residents, after the shameful withdrawal of the First Infantry Division of the Sudanese army SAF which was tasked with protecting the city. The crimes of the Rapid Support Forces RSF militias did not even exclude the World Food Program warehouses, which were looted by the militiamen, even after the Rapid Support Forces RSF leadership was informed of the warehouses’ coordinates and the program received assurances from them that the food warehouses and stocks would not be harmed.
This ultimately led to the suspension of humanitarian relief work carried out by the program and other United Nations organizations, according to a statement by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ( OCHA)
According to the World Food Program WFP statement on the suspension of its operations, this looted food was enough to feed nearly 1.5 million people suffering from severe food insecurity in Sudan for a whole month. The WFP statement added that the Rapid Support Forces RSF fighters in Sudan looted the rations for the care of about 20,000 malnourished children and breastfeeding mothers. The looted items included legumes, sorghum, vegetable oils and nutritional supplements, amounting to more than 2,500 tons of life-saving food.
Of course, the looting of humanitarian aid and the suspension of the work of relief organizations were a form of starvation siege and the creation of famine, which directly aims to force citizens and indigenous people to leave their areas. Since then, the violations and violence of the Rapid Support Forces RSF militia have continued to terrorize, attack and force the safe people in the villages of Gezira .
The areas and villages of Rafaa, Hantoub, Al-Halawin, Al-Hawsh, Wad Al-Munir, Al-Kamar Al-Ja’alin, Fadasi, Al-Ma’aliq, Al-Awaida, Fatis, Al-Hamdab, Abbas, Wad Al-Abyad, Al-Azzazi, Al-Babnusa, Al-Harqa, Al-Talha, Bant, and other areas in urban and rural areas of Gezira state were subjected to repeated attacks by the Rapid Support Forces RSF in which the militia committed similar atrocities.
These areas and villages are distributed throughout the regions and parts of Gezira from its north and east to its south and west. These names are not just words, but rather the homelands of people, ordinary people, with their dreams, hopes, joys and small sorrows.
These names are their small homelands, the places where they live, their markets, farms, schools, hospitals and health centers. They are the incubators of their natural livelihood and daily life, which was safe before the militia’s hand reached them. Despite all this, the civilian administration appointed by the Rapid Support Forces RSF according to its agreement with Taqddum Alliance in the Hamdok-Hemedti Agreement signed on January 2, 2024 to manage the affairs of All Gezira state has remained silent about trying to stop these violations or even condemn them.
With the escalation of militia attacks in Gezira state, it is clear that what the Rapid Support Forces RSF are doing does not fall under the name of security chaos or mere looting and plundering, and the spoils with which the Rapid Support Forces RSF entice its recruits to join its ranks.
Rather, this reveals the existence of a deliberate goal and a deliberate methodology aimed at displacing citizens from their original lands.
Gezira state is not only the second largest urban center in Sudan after the capital, Khartoum, but it is also home to Gezira Agricultural Scheme , the largest natural flow irrigation project in the world.
Gezira state, which is cut in the middle by the Blue ,River Nile and whose borders extend eastward to approach the White, River Nile in their flowing course before they meet north in Khartoum, enjoys advantages that make it particularly suitable for irrigation and natural agriculture.
The silt and fertile soil washed by the steep Blue Nile from the Ethiopian plateau increase the fertility of the land and its suitability for agriculture.
The natural slope of the land also allows water to flow through irrigation canals naturally and at a very low cost compared to other irrigation methods. Not to mention that the soil contains a high percentage of clay, which greatly reduces water losses resulting from seepage.
The establishment of Gezira Scheme began in 1911 during the colonial period with an area of ​​250 acres.
The project continued to develop and grow to its current size of 2 million and 200,000 acres of fertile land that enjoys natural irrigation in 1962.
The scheme , which was nationalized and Sudanized in 1950 – six years before Sudan’s independence – and which includes about three and a half million farmers residing in it, was characterized by a system of participatory management between farmers, the project management and the Government of Sudan.
This gave farmers a great deal of stability in the area and constituted a unique model of land ownership and active participation in the management of the project and the state as a whole.
Until the emergence and export of oil in Sudan, the Gezira Agricultural Scheme remained the largest economic resource for the annual budget of the Sudanese government. However, with the emergence of oil, and then the gold rush, the Sudanese economy was afflicted with the “Dutch disease” during the rule of the ousted Islamist regime. This led to a decline in interest in the Gezira scheme and neglect of periodic maintenance of irrigation canals, which resulted in a significant decline in the productivity of the project and thus a decrease in its economic contribution.
However, during the period of the revolution (2019-2021), and specifically during the agricultural season of 2020, the Gezira scheme proved that it is still an important economic resource, as it contributed to the production and coverage of about 40% of Sudan’s annual wheat needs in that year, in addition to other agricultural products of legumes, vegetables and cash crops that the project produced.
The violations taking place in Gezira state, which are increasing at an accelerating geometric pace, cannot be explained as mere arbitrariness.
Only the ignorant – and the ignorant by nature – are those who are ignorant or ignore the role of the political economy factor in the current war in Sudan. The conflict over self-interested economic interests was one of the factors in the increasing polarization and competition between the military components that are now fighting over the heads of the Sudanese.
With the exposure of the role of foreign countries supporting the Rapid Support Forces RSF militia, especially the United Arab Emirates UAE which considers food and water security to be one of its greatest concerns and preoccupations, and Sudan has large untapped resources, it becomes clear that seizing and controlling the Gezira Scheme , due to its fertile lands, ease of cultivation, and relatively low operating costs, is a major ambition for the Emirates in this war.
The Emirates faces major challenges in the field of food security, with high estimates of food consumption growing at an annual rate of 3.5%, according to estimates by the UAE Ministry of Economy.
About 0.5% of the Emirates’ land is suitable for agriculture, in addition to the severe shortage of water resources, and the heavy reliance on desalination, which is a highly energy-intensive process, the majority of which is allocated for human use.
The Emirates imports 90% of its food from abroad, which makes it vulnerable to price fluctuations and supply chain problems. However, despite these challenges, the UAE announced that it seeks to top the Global Food Security Index by 2051.
The UAE had previously sought to seize the Sudanese Al-Fashaqa area ,known for its fertile lands near the border with Ethiopia, in May 2021. The area was under the control of Ethiopian semi-governmental militias, but the Sudanese army SAF took advantage of the war conditions in the Tigray region to expel them from the region and liberate it. The UAE’s efforts were not successful at the time, which contributed to its support for Burhan-Hemeti’s coup against civilian rule in October of the same year.
The methods of forced displacement to seize the lands of indigenous citizens – farmers in particular – are not new to the Janjaweed, but rather are among their established tactics that they practiced early in their first war in Darfur.
This led to large waves of displacement and asylum over the years of the ongoing Darfur war.
The phenomenon of new settlers emerged, who settled in and occupied the original homes of displaced civilians, complicating the attempts of the displaced to return to their homes even during periods of calm in the conflict. In 2004, Georgette Gagnon, deputy director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, described the Janjaweed militias (the predecessor of the current Rapid Support Forces RSF as “not only killing individuals, but destroying the livelihoods of tens of thousands of families; the targets are farmers in the region.” In the same report, Sudan: Widespread Atrocities in Darfur, published on April 2, 2004, Human Rights Watch noted that government forces of the then-ruling Islamist regime and allied Janjaweed militias relied on a “strategy of forced displacement” that included “systematic destruction of villages,” “killing, raping, and pillaging by militias,” and “burning and destroying farms and land.” In addition, the report stated, “government forces and allied militias killed several thousand civilians from the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit ethnic groups, raped women and girls, abducted children, and looted tens of thousands of heads of cattle.” Livestock, and other property. In many parts of Darfur, these government forces and militias have deliberately burned hundreds of villages, destroyed water resources, and other infrastructure, making it more difficult for former residents to return. “These are the same practices that we have seen repeated today by the Rapid Support Forces militia in the villages of Gezira , Darfur, Khartoum state, and other areas that their hordes reach.
The late Sudanese poet Mohamed Al-Hassan Salem Hamid described this state of political agency in his poetry, which documented in its entirety the developments of the political historical scene in Sudan (A master is behind a master, masters change, but it is the same chain, the same bond on the hand).
This is a beautiful description that applies to the status of the Rapid Support Forces RSF militia in its various manifestations of development by placing its weapons and violations at the service of whoever pays the most and to achieve the interests of its masters at the expense of the security, stability, and peace of the lives and livelihoods of the Sudanese.