The Zionist Entity and the Project to Partition Sudan

By Al-Sadiq Al-Razeqi

After the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) captured the city of El Fasher, the capital of the Darfur region in western Sudan, at the end of last October, and as this vast region—roughly the size of France—slipped into a dark tunnel and an uncertain future, separatist voices within the ranks of the rebel RSF grew louder. Slogans calling for the consolidation of a new reality began to surface, especially following the announcement of what is being called a “Foundational Government,” a parallel administration that enjoys no external recognition.

Sudanese factions across diverse political and ideological backgrounds fear that new fractures may emerge within Sudan’s territory, potentially leading to the detachment of another part of the country—after the secession of South Sudan in 2011.

The RSF quickly mounted the separatist wave, obscured by the dust of an unstable political scene, as it trudged forward in what appears to be an attempt to execute a plan to carve up Sudan. Despite lacking any real political program, the RSF has come across like a lost parrot in the dense forest of politics, repeating old slogans and separatist discourse that have echoed throughout Sudan since independence on January 1, 1956.

Separatist tendencies and protest rhetoric in Darfur began resurfacing in the late 1950s, fueled by the political activism of Darfuri students and university graduates at the time. This came alongside the lingering historical memory of Darfur’s independent sultanate under Sultan Ali Dinar until 1916. His support for the Central Powers during World War I prompted the invading colonial army to topple his rule and reincorporate Darfur into Sudan’s borders, where it had previously belonged under the Khedivate and the rule of the Muhammad Ali dynasty in Egypt.

Another factor contributing to separatist tendencies was the status of the Masalit Sultanate in western Darfur, with its capital Geneina. Even after falling under colonial rule, it maintained a form of administrative autonomy for nearly a century under an 1898 agreement, remaining an independent “commissionership” until the early years of Omar al-Bashir’s rule.

Certain political elites in Darfur—often backed by Western actors—worked over various periods to adopt an emotionally charged, regionally based separatist discourse. The first notable movements after independence attempted to recruit Darfuri soldiers and veterans into two regional protest groups: Al-Laheeb al-Ahmar (The Red Flame), active between 1956 and 1958, and the Suni Movement, founded in 1962.

Although these groups adopted armed struggle, they achieved little. Their efforts, however, motivated the political elite—particularly educated Darfuris and party members—to organize a planned military coup in 1964. They later abandoned the plan due to insufficient technical and administrative cadres, a detail recalled years later by Dr. Ali Hassan Taj al-Din, a member of Sudan’s presidential council in the late 1980s.

As armed struggle faltered, Darfuri elites shifted to political activism modeled after movements in South Sudan, eastern Sudan, and the Nuba Mountains. This led to the formation of the Darfur Renaissance Front, led by figures such as Ahmed Ibrahim Diraige—later governor of Darfur—and Dr. Ali al-Haj. The movement faded after the 1969 May coup, only to be briefly revived in 1985 before disappearing again.

During these periods, the educated elites of Arab tribes in Darfur—despite their vast social networks across the Sahel—generally stayed out of separatist or armed political activism. But as tribal conflicts intensified in the late 1980s and the government of Sadiq al-Mahdi failed to respond to their demands, Arab political groups in Darfur announced the formation of the “Arab Gathering” in 1988, issuing a political manifesto aimed at securing greater representation in both Darfur’s administration and the central government.

The movement, however, failed to evolve into a coherent political actor. Its emergence coincided with fierce clashes between some Arab tribes and the Fur tribe, ending in a major reconciliation conference held in El Fasher in July 1989, shortly after Omar al-Bashir took power.

Darfur again witnessed armed conflict in 1992 when engineer Daoud Yahya Bolad, a dissident Islamist who joined the SPLA under John Garang, launched an armed insurgency alongside Abdelaziz al-Hilu. Their aim was to seize control of Darfur and declare it an independent entity. The rebellion was crushed, Bolad was captured and executed, and al-Hilu escaped.

These events were tied to growing alliances between non-Arab Darfuri groups and the SPLA under Garang’s vision of a “New Sudan.” Yet separatist rhetoric reached its peak in 2003 with the emergence of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Both later splintered into dozens of factions despite major peace agreements in Abuja (2006) and Doha (2012).

This era marked the “fertilization” and birth of a new, more defined separatist discourse in Darfur. The SPLA and South Sudanese leaders played a major role in pushing Darfuri armed movements toward anti-central government sentiments and separatist ideas.

As separatist narratives multiplied—fueled by immense Western support from American, European, and African actors—Arab tribes in Darfur aligned themselves with Bashir’s government to fight the insurgent movements. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), now the RSF commander, became Bashir’s key battlefield asset in crushing separatist rebellions, fully absorbing Khartoum’s anti-secession discourse.

But with Bashir’s fall and the dramatic political shifts that followed, Hemedti and his RSF found themselves adopting the very separatist rhetoric they once fought against—borrowing language developed by Darfuri separatist movements over seven decades.

Meanwhile, Western governments and Israeli intelligence services continued closely monitoring developments. They now appear to view Sudan’s fragmentation—and particularly the separation of Darfur—as a long-awaited objective finally within reach. For them, the RSF rebellion, with its cross-border fighters and mercenary networks, is the perfect vehicle to push forward this decades-old partition plan.

By echoing separatist slogans, the RSF and the so-called Foundational Government have become instruments in advancing this agenda. Yet this new choir of separatists, clinging to overused and outdated slogans, lacks any real political vision or capacity to shape a viable future for Darfur—whether within a united Sudan or, God forbid, as a detached state.

Most troubling is that they lack the intellectual and political depth to address even the basic questions of governance, society, economics, or the complex geopolitical transformations reshaping the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa—not to mention the broader global strategies seeking to redraw the region’s political map.

Source: Aljazeera net