Issue No. 2

Blood and Gold, understanding Hemedti’s Empire
 

Unlike the majority of Khartoum’s political elite pre-conflict, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as ‘Hemedti,’ hails from a Chadian Arab group that sought refuge from armed conflict in the 1980s. Only semi-literate, Hemedti dropped out of school to work in the camel trade in North Africa. From Sudan’s periphery, without formal military training, he has long sat outside the elite trappings of Sudanese politics, much like his Rapid Support Forces (RSF), largely drawn from camel-herding tribes of the Abbala Rizeigat in Darfur.

Hemedti’s rise to Deputy Chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council in Sudan, as one of the latest ‘spiders’ at the centre of Sudan’s patrimonial web, began when he served as a commander in the ‘Janjaweed,’ the militia responsible for devastating Darfur in the mid-2000s. The Janjaweed’s grim tactics have now resurfaced in Darfur, since armed conflict erupted in mid-April between the RSF and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Any serious discussion of Hemedti as somehow reformed and democratic has fallen away, despite the vast sums RSF has paid to lobbying firms. Widespread razing of villages and killings of civilians have driven hundreds of thousands of refugees into Chad over the past several months, particularly those from ethnic Masalit communities.

Hemedti began to accumulate his wealth as Sudan’s oil boom began fading. The country’s economic crisis from 2011, precipitated by its loss of oil fields to South Sudan, accelerated the splintering of Sudan’s political settlement. The regime of Omar al-Bashir depended on manipulating security forces, the middle class, and those residing in Sudan’s fertile riverine areas. When the oil financing Khartoum ran out, the reality of a fragmented political coalition became clear. Greater and greater sums were  spent to shore up al-Bashir’s fragile position, as he tried to co-opt patronage networks and ‘big men.’ By the mid-2010s, the country’s security forces ate up nearly 75% of total government expenditure. To hold his straining regime together, al-Bashir authorised the RSF to sustain itself financially, in the naive hope that they would not turn against him.

Al-Bashir apparently thought that Hemedti would serve as an effective balance between the SAF and the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), with its intelligence capabilities and Darfuri base. But his promotion of the RSF proved misguided. His ‘security reform’ merely formalised Hemedti’s paramilitary group, granting bogus titles, including ‘General,’ to Hemedti, and state uniforms to RSF fighters.

This rise of the RSF to counteract traditional security in Sudan coincided with its capture of Darfur’s Jebel Amir mines in 2017 from Musa Hilal, Hemedti’s maternal cousin. This gain resulted in vast sums transferred to the RSF, and to Hemedti, from taxes and levies on miners and mining companies, and from gold itself as the precious mineral was sold onwards. These mines also helped the RSF to tighten its grip on North Darfur as it seized control of several other profitable ventures, including human trafficking across the Sahara, and weapons trafficking into Chad and Libya. This business is a family affair, with Abdelrahim Dagalo, Hemedti’s brother, as owner of Algunade, a US-sanctioned gold extraction company. On 6 September 2023, Abdelrahim had the dubious honour of becoming the first senior figure in Sudan’s current armed conflict to be sanctioned by the US government over ongoing devastation in Darfur, as RSF’s deputy commander.

The promise of gold also drew the Russian paramilitary ‘Wagner Group’ to the Jebel Amir mines through the companies M Invest and Meroe Gold. Its now-deceased leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s relationship with Hemedti had reportedly been strong, not surprising considering the two men’s mutual propensity for brutality and exploitation.

Military actors’ involvement in Sudan’s economy has always been substantial; this only increased through the conflict-ridden 2000s. A report by the International Crisis Group in 2011 revealed that at least 164 of the country's largest companies-- ranging from telecommunications to petrochemicals--- were owned by members of security forces. Hemedti appears to be the ultimate incarnation of security capture of Sudan’s economy. His diverse economic interests range from steel companies to a limousine-for-hire outfit through the vast conglomerate ‘al-Junayd.’ This conglomerate absorbed profits from gold extraction and mercenaries to invest in construction, real estate, and even the development of Darfur’s motorways. Today, Hemedti is certainly one of the wealthiest men in Sudan.

Hemedti is not aspiring to some grand vision of the Sudanese state, but rather fighting to sustain his own patrimonial networks and military agenda. And he has powerful backers, including the United Arab Emirates, reportedly smuggling weapons to the RSF disguised as aid. The RSF relationship with the UAE dates back to Yemen's civil war, in which thousands of RSF militia were paid to fight. At that time, Hemedti claimed he was wealthy enough to deposit USD one billion into Sudan’s central bank after renting out RSF fighters.

Twenty years ago, Sudan’s paramilitaries were sent to control the borders of the state. They turned the country’s peripheries into a brutally exploitative yet very profitable venture. Today, Hemedti has brought these ethnic mercenaries of the peripheries to the capital, with devastating effect. The RSF is now laying waste to Khartoum, as well as Darfur, just as the Janjaweed did to Darfur in the mid-2000s.