Is The Fragmentation of the RSF the Safest Solution? (2–2)

Obeid Ahmed Murawih
In the first part of this article, we discussed the background to the establishment of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in 2013. We argued that President Omar al-Bashir’s decision to create these forces was not made in a single moment. Rather, it emerged in the context of confronting the rebellion that had erupted in Darfur a decade earlier and, in November 2011, formed a military alliance known as the Revolutionary Front. This alliance brought together the three armed movements in Darfur, as well as the two factions of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North in South Kordofan and Blue Nile. It declared that its objective was to overthrow the regime through armed struggle.
It is well known that this alliance expanded its military operations, capturing Abu Karshola in eastern Kordofan and threatening the towns of Al-Rahad and Umm Rawaba. It was in this context that the decision was taken to establish the Rapid Support Forces.
We also argued that the issue of the RSF is far more complex than merely reducing it to a political decision to create an auxiliary military force to assist the Sudanese Armed Forces against a particular rebellion, or to a debate over whether that decision was right or wrong. The matter is much larger than that and deserves comprehensive historical and sociological study. We hope that this two-part article may at least plant the seed of such inquiry in the minds of those concerned.
When examining the RSF phenomenon, several factors must be considered to arrive at an objective assessment. These factors are closely linked to geography, history, and sociology.
From a geographical perspective, we must consider the entire map of the Sahel-Sahara region, particularly the belt stretching from Sudan’s borders with Chad and the Central African Republic westwards through Niger, Mali, southern Libya and Algeria, all the way to northern Nigeria and Mauritania.
From a sociological perspective, we need to study the tribal groups that roam this vast desert space and analyse the cultural environment surrounding tribes such as the Tebu, Kanuri, Teda, Tuareg and Azawad peoples, as well as the wider extensions of Sudan’s Baggara tribes, including the Rizeigat, Misseriya and Salamat.
We must also examine the economic and social activities that characterise these tribal communities. It is worth remembering that nearly fifteen tribes are shared between Sudan on the one hand and Chad, the Central African Republic and Niger on the other. Some are classified as Arab, and others as African. Certain of these tribes extend throughout much of the wider Sahel region. The significance of this fact will become clearer later.
From a historical perspective, the story is lengthy, but two issues are particularly relevant.
The first is the political investment undertaken by the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi during the 1980s among several of these tribal groups. He established the Islamic Legion under the leadership of Sheikh Ibn Omar to fight the government of Hissène Habré in Chad and attempt to overthrow it.
Gaddafi recruited large numbers of young men from these tribes—especially from Chad, Niger and Mali—into the “Cadre School” of the Revolutionary Committees and exposed them to the ideology of the Green Book. Through this process, revolutionary ideas took root: ideas that rejected both established political systems and geographical borders.
The second factor is the extensive involvement of international intelligence services—including Israel—in the region and among these communities, particularly after extremist movements such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram spread into the area, alongside networks involved in human trafficking, drug smuggling, arms trafficking and irregular migration.
This complex and fragmented environment produced a culture based on a war economy, one that glorifies looting, pillaging and the seizure of whatever is available, while attaching little value to moral or social restraints. Kidnapping, killing and enslavement are often viewed as acts of bravery worthy of admiration.
We witnessed aspects of this culture first-hand in the behaviour of RSF elements, many of whom openly boasted of the war crimes and crimes against humanity they committed.
However, before turning this assessment into an absolute judgement, it is important to qualify it in relation to the Sudanese case. Many of the ethnic groups that settled in Sudan centuries ago, and which trace their origins to branches of these tribes, have undergone significant social transformation. Most have abandoned such practices and moved away from these violent traditions.
In this regard, it is also worth highlighting the valuable series of articles by Dr Al-Dardiri Mohamed Ahmed, published in June 2023 under the title “The Diaspora Arabs and the Project of Their Resettlement in Sudan.” Those articles opened the eyes of many observers to important dimensions of these tribal groups and to the plans of international powers seeking to rid themselves of the instability these groups generate across the African Sahel and the southern Mediterranean region.
We may therefore conclude that the war which erupted in Sudan in mid-April 2023 was not merely an attempt to seize power, nor simply an armed uprising of the periphery against the centre.
Rather, it was a hybrid war involving multiple overlapping agendas, some domestic and others external.
At least in its initial phase, it appears to have been intended to create a state of chaos that would facilitate the re-engineering of Sudan’s political order after other methods of political engineering—including attempts to introduce an international mission for that purpose—had failed.
Each party involved in the conflict sought to reap the benefits of that chaos.
Within this broader context, the RSF should be viewed not merely as a cross-border instrument utilised by multiple actors, but as an instrument that exploits the ambitions of leaders who emerged from and were shaped by the environments and cultures previously described. It should also be viewed as a threat to stability across the entire Sahel region.
What has occurred in Sudan could easily be repeated in any country across the Sahel-Sahara belt.
Against this backdrop, the efforts undertaken by state institutions—particularly Military Intelligence and the General Intelligence Service—to persuade civilian leaders and field commanders to return to the state’s fold are of considerable importance.
These institutions understand that the RSF is, at its core, a coalition of groups bound together by tribal ties and united by shared ambitions, material interests and leadership aspirations.
The more these individuals come to realise that the path they are following leads only to destruction, and that their interests lie in abandoning rebellion, the greater the chances of neutralising weapons directed against both the state and innocent civilians.
Yet it is equally important for these institutions to recognise that this represents only a temporary remedy and a localised painkiller.
The problem has reached a stage where a far more comprehensive and profound solution is required—one that extends beyond Sudan itself, takes geography and history into account, diagnoses the cultural environment in which RSF leaders and fighters emerged, and develops a holistic strategy rather than piecemeal, fragmented responses.
And fragmentation, in an irregular and disorganised manner, is precisely the meaning conveyed by the Sudanese colloquial term “Shartama” used in the title of this article.
The word is a vernacular adaptation of the classical Arabic term “Shardhama” (fragmentation or scattering), and is commonly used to denote disintegration, disorder and dispersal.
Anyone wishing to see a practical illustration of the concept of “Shartama” need only look at the map of Sudan and its southern borders after South Sudan’s secession.

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