The Big Losing Deal (2-7) The rise of General Hemeti – did the Quartet play a role in it?

Al-Tijani Abdel Qader Hamid
July 22, 2024

It is no secret that the deposed Sudanese President, General Al-Bashir, and his intelligence chiefs were looking for a “circumstantial” figure to accomplish some tasks for them, so they picked Mohamed Hamdan Daglo (Hemeti) from the “far” to be the commander of what was known as the Rapid Support Forces RSF.
President Al-Bashir wanted – on the one hand – to fight the rebel militia in Darfur with a similar militia, and not with the regular armed forces SAF (which were exhausted by previous wars in the south and east of the country). He also wanted – on the other hand – to create a barrier between himself and his own regular forces to protect himself in case things went wrong.
When the Rapid Support Forces RSF committed atrocities in Darfur (2003), they were not resolved – as they should have been – but were assigned to guard the borders, and then sent to fight in Yemen as part of the coalition forces led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates (mistakes one on top of the other).
In all these (seriously wrong) missions, Lt.Gen.Hemeti was the “circumstantial” character par excellence. In all these missions, the Rapid Support Forces RSF were subordinate – in terms of legal form – to the armed forces, but in terms of field reality they became “Hemeti’s forces.”
It was natural for Hemeti to feel that the power he had, which transformed him from a militia leader (disheveled and dusty) to a brigadier general, a major general, and then a lieutenant general, could qualify him for something greater.
Since then, he began to exaggerate in assuming the role assigned to him, and began to proudly reveal his military and political capabilities, addressing his soldiers (in the colloquial Sudanese dialect that he mastered): “This country is ours (meaning the key to the power pipeline network), we are the masters of connection and solution… and whoever does not kill has no opinion… and the day the government creates an army for itself after that, it will talk to us. Throw them forward.” That is, he wanted to say (to Al-Bashir’s government and the opposition elites) that the path to supreme political power passes through the Rapid Support Forces RSF, and that those who do not have an army or the ability to fight should not be sought for an opinion.
He would not have made such a statement had he not been certain that everyone (including the President of the Republic and his regular forces) needed him. However, he did not expect that any of the major regional powers would need him as well. However, he became certain of this after President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s authority in Yemen was weakened, the Houthis seized power, and Saudi Arabia and the Emirates began searching for soldiers to fight for them on the Yemeni front. It was not hidden from observers of the Sudanese political scene that since the Arab coalition forces rushed to support legitimacy in Yemen (led by Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, on March 25, 2015), Sudan would be asked to join those forces. It was not unlikely for President Al-Bashir – whose government had reached its weakest point – to join the coalition countries, and to send elements of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces RSF (led by Hemeti and coordinated by Burhan) to participate in the war in Yemen – in the hope of economic and political support.
The war in Yemen went the way it did, but instead of opening the allies’ coffers for President Al-Bashir – as he had dreamed – it whetted their appetite to overthrow him. The war in Yemen made the allies’ eyes stare at the Sudanese soldier, and at the military stockpile that Sudan enjoys that is not available to others (not to mention the material resources it possesses such as gold, water, livestock and beaches). When Al-Bashir’s government began to falter – under the weight of the economic distress and political crisis – the major countries (the United States US and Britain) and their regional allies (Saudi Arabia and the Emirates) began to eagerly share the Sudanese file, and draw a map for the post-Al-Bashir era.
The two generals – Burhan and Hemeti – came to the top of the proposed list to lead Sudan, with Hemeti tipping the scales in the final analysis.
The tipping of the scales in favor of General Hemeti is due to three characteristics that distinguish him from Burhan:

the first is that he leads a militia that is semi-independent of the regular military forces, and he can control it and move it in a smooth manner that is not available to General Burhan; ​​the second characteristic is that General Hemeti represents the undisputed type of “situational” personality, as he is an adventurous person who can carry out the most dangerous missions without hesitation, unlike Burhan’s cautious and hesitant personality; and the third characteristic is that General Hemeti has a previous record of human rights violations (Darfur, for example), so he can be caught and blackmailed through that file. According to this vision, representatives of this group worked regularly to shape the political scene in Sudan, and they had meetings and understandings with some Sudanese political forces and a group of businessmen in Addis Ababa (note the role of the Ethiopian president) and in Khartoum. Within the framework of these understandings, arrangements were made for a transitional period that would be a partnership between A military leadership (led by Burhan and Hemedti), and a civilian leadership led by Dr. Abdullah Hamdok. This plan has become known in the literature of the Sudanese Communist Party as the “soft landing” theory, meaning that the United States US and its regional allies feared the consequences of the popular revolution in Sudan, which made them content themselves with excluding the Islamists from the military and security joints of power, and forming a fragile military-civilian alliance operating under their auspices, only making superficial changes that do not affect the economic structure linked to their institutions, and does not deviate from the regional alliances loyal to them.
When the security committee of the Salvation regime rushed (under enormous popular pressure) to remove President Bashir from power and install his Minister of Defense, Lt. Gen. Awad Ibn Auf, as head of a transitional military council, the political street (inflamed with revolution) refused to recognize that council on the grounds that the “security committee” was nothing more than an extension of Bashir’s government.
Lt. Gen.Hemeti also refused to participate in the council, and the United States refused to recognize it. It was not surprising, given this situation, that Lt.Gen. Ibn Auf (another circumstantial figure) announced his abdication of leadership one day after taking the oath.
However, what was surprising was that he abdicated to the Inspector General of the SAF , Lt.Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (and not to the Commander-in-Chief of the SAF , for example).
On the other hand, it was not surprising that Lt. Gen. Burhan chose Lt. Gen. Hemeti (his partner in the Yemen war) to be his deputy, even though Lt. Gen. Hemeti was a member of the “security committee” of Bashir’s government, just like Lt. Gen.Ibn Auf.
This means that Lt. Gen. Burhan was proceeding according to previous “understandings.” This was affirmed when he suddenly appeared among the protesters in the army’s General Command Square, speaking to the head of the Sudanese Congress Party, Ibrahim al-Sheikh; and it was affirmed when we learned that the United States US welcomed the transfer of power to its candidates, Burhan and Hemedti, and that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had initially promised to deposit $500 million in the Central Bank of Sudan for the benefit of their candidates.
This was finally affirmed when Dr. Hamdok stated that the return of Sudanese soldiers from Yemen was up to the elected government, in a gesture to reassure regional partners that things would go according to plan. But the political street, inflamed by the revolution, was not ready to accept this deal, and the revolutionaries continued to sit in front of the General Command, calling for the exclusion of the military component from participating in the transitional government. At this point, it became clear to the Group of Four that the prolonged sit-in around the General Command (April-June 2019) was an obstacle that made it impossible to complete the deal.
The parties of the group consulted and pressured in the direction of “dispersing the sit-in.” The crime occurred on June 3, 2019, when military forces attacked the protestors’ sit-in square in front of the General Command of the Armed Forces SAF in Khartoum, and dozens of innocent citizens were killed in that incident. Despite the ugliness of the crime, this did not change anything in the drawn-up plan, as a constitutional document was hastily drafted and signed by the military and civilian components (August 2019), according to which Lt. Gen. Burhan became President of the Sovereignty Council TSC , and Dr. Hamdok became Prime Minister.
Although Lt. Gen. Hemeti became Vice President of the Sovereignty Council TSC the fingers of accusation for the crime of dispersing the sit-in continued to point at him, and it was then added to the record of crimes directed at him and his forces.
As the controversy grew over the identity of the military forces that carried out the attack, and the party that issued the orders, Lt. Gen. Shams El Din Kabbashi, a member of the Military Council, was forced to reveal the official narrative in a press interview, which is that the ruling Military Council had agreed with the Forces of Freedom and Change FFC to clean up the Colombia area without touching the sit-in square, and a plan was drawn up for that, but some mistakes occurred in implementation, and what happened happened. Other accounts from eyewitnesses and some survivors differ from this official narrative, and most of them point the finger of blame at Lt. Gen. Hemeti and the Rapid Support Forces RSF.
The most explicit of these accounts (and the closest to being believed by Western governments) was the Human Rights Watch report, which explicitly indicated that the Rapid Support Forces RSF opened fire (at dawn on June 3, 2019) on unarmed demonstrators, killing many of them immediately, raping, stabbing, and beating the demonstrators, humiliating many, and cutting their hair, etc.).
To resolve this issue, the Prime Minister (Dr. Abdullah Hamdok) formed a committee headed by lawyer Nabil Adeeb to investigate the crime. The committee is said to have heard from more than 3,000 witnesses and received more than 150 video recordings. It revealed – in an interim report received by the Prime Minister – that its work is progressing at an advanced pace.
However, the committee head has continued to state from time to time that his committee faces many obstacles, and even explicitly accuses “government agencies of not cooperating and refusing to hand over the requested video clips from surveillance cameras around the sit-in site.” When the accusations against the Rapid Support Forces RSF multiplied, Lt. Gen. Hemeti himself was forced to admit that elements of his forces had participated in dispersing the sit-in, and revealed – while addressing Nidaa Muqrin al-Nilein Initiative for Sudanese Women at the Friendship Hall in Khartoum – that the investigation committee into the events of the sit-in dispersal had reached the main perpetrator and coordinator, pledging to bring him to trial, noting that 14 soldiers had been detained, five of whom had recorded a judicial confession, saying: Our people are not angels, and our courts are working in the field. In any case, the arena was cleared of revolutionaries, and the parties were able to sign the constitutional document (August 2019) and form the ruling coalition.
Despite what happened, Lt. Gen. Hemeti became Vice President of the Sovereignty Council TSC . However, the crime file – addition to his previous files – remained hanging around his neck – just as planned.
The Quartet Committee and its allies from the civilian forces (FFC) kept this file and waved it in Lt. Gen. Hemeti’s face whenever they felt that he might deviate from the text. Lt. Gen. Hemeti realized, for his part, that if this file was not closed, he would be overthrown and his page would be turned – sooner or later. Based on this, it can be understood why relations between him and the Forces of Freedom and Change FFC became poisoned, and it can also be understood why he worked with all his might to obstruct the work of the investigation committee into the dispersal of the sit-in, and why he became involved in planning the coup of October 25, 2021.