PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have signed a charter paving the way for a parallel government with its allies, including a former foe who analysts say could offer crucial territory, fighters and border access.
Since April 2023, a brutal war between the RSF and the regular army — represented by the internationally recognised government currently based in Port Sudan — has killed tens of thousands, uprooted 12 million and visited mass human rights violations upon civilians.
Last month, the former US administration declared that the RSF had committed genocide in the western region of Darfur.
Until last week, the lesser-known third party to the war was Abdelaziz al-Hilu, whose faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North had previously fought both the army and the RSF in the country’s south.
In an unexpected turn of events, Hilu appeared in Nairobi last week, and his group was one of the key signatories to an RSF charter for a “government of peace and unity”.
If his battle-hardened fighters join forces with the RSF, analysts say it could significantly bolster the weakened paramilitaries, led by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo (widely known as Hemeti).
After weeks of losses as the army charges through the country, the new rebel alliance could also grant key border access to RSF-friendly east African states.
‘On the back foot’
The RSF has conquered nearly all of Darfur, but is unable to cement its hold on the region and appears on the verge of losing all of the capital Khartoum to the army.
“Hemeti is on his back foot,” Marc Lavergne, a professor at France’s University of Tours, told AFP.
“Hilu’s professional fighters could give him some very welcome help,” said Lavergne, a veteran Sudan expert who has personally known Hilu since he helped broker agreements in the region in the early 2000s.
According to Sudanese journalist and SPLM-N specialist Mostafa Serry, the two groups together command up to “65 percent of Sudan”.
Their common interests would be best served by merging “the large military forces and vast areas they control”, he told AFP.
Hilu controls much of South Kordofan state from his foothold in the Nuba Mountains, as well as pockets of Blue Nile state bordering Ethiopia.
Together, the two groups have border access to Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic and — thanks to Hilu — now South Sudan and Ethiopia.
“All of the countries surrounding Sudan, except Egypt, are in favour of the RSF,” Lavergne said, and could serve to bolster the paramilitary group, whose supply lines from Sudan’s western border have been compromised in recent months.
