Rapid Support Forces
Based on Wikipedia: Rapid Support Forces
In the span of a decade, a group of militiamen who once terrorized villages on horseback and in pickup trucks transformed themselves into one of the most powerful military forces in Africa. They now control vast swaths of Sudan, run gold mines worth billions, and have forced millions from their homes. This is the story of the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF—a paramilitary organization that went from being the Sudanese government's brutal enforcers to waging war against that very government for control of an entire nation.
From Horseback Raiders to Paramilitary Power
The RSF didn't emerge from nowhere. Its roots stretch back to the Janjaweed, a name that roughly translates to "devils on horseback" in Arabic. During the early 2000s, when ethnic African rebel groups in Sudan's western Darfur region rose up against the Arab-dominated central government, the regime in Khartoum made a fateful decision. Rather than rely solely on its conventional army, it armed and unleashed Arab militias to crush the rebellion.
What followed was one of the twenty-first century's worst atrocities. The Janjaweed swept through non-Arab villages, killing men, raping women, burning homes, and driving survivors into displacement camps where disease and starvation claimed countless more lives. By some estimates, hundreds of thousands died. The International Criminal Court eventually charged Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, with genocide.
But the militias didn't fade away after the worst of the Darfur violence subsided. In August 2013, the Sudanese government restructured them into something more formal: the Rapid Support Forces. A young militia commander named Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo—better known by his nickname Hemedti—was placed in charge. He was in his late thirties at the time, a former camel trader with no formal military education, but he had proven himself ruthlessly effective at doing the government's dirty work.
The Rise of Hemedti
Understanding the RSF requires understanding its leader. Hemedti comes from the Rizeigat, an Arab tribe of pastoralists who have roamed the borderlands between Sudan and Chad for generations. In this unforgiving region of scrubland and desert, herders compete fiercely for water and grazing land, and ethnic tensions between Arab and non-Arab communities run deep.
Hemedti started as a low-level Janjaweed commander, but he possessed a combination of cunning, charisma, and brutality that propelled him upward. By the time the RSF was formally created, he had assembled a formidable network of tribal fighters loyal to him personally—not to the Sudanese state.
The government found him useful. Too useful, perhaps, to ever fully control.
In November 2017, Hemedti made a move that revealed his true ambitions. He used the RSF to seize control of gold mines in Darfur. Sudan possesses some of Africa's richest gold deposits, and whoever controls those mines controls an enormous stream of wealth. Within two years, Hemedti had become one of the richest men in Sudan. His brother Abdul Rahim runs a company called Al Junaid that handles the gold trading, and investigations by Global Witness have alleged that this company is deeply intertwined with RSF operations—essentially a financial arm of the paramilitary force.
The RSF also developed two front companies: GSK, a Sudanese technology firm, and Tradive General Trading, registered in the United Arab Emirates. Both are controlled by another brother, Algoney Hamdan Dagalo. The family enterprise had grown far beyond a mere militia.
Mercenaries for Hire
Gold wasn't the only source of RSF revenue. Hemedti discovered that his fighters could be rented out to the highest bidder.
When Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015, it needed ground troops but didn't want to risk Saudi lives in large numbers. The RSF provided a solution. At the peak of their involvement, some 40,000 RSF fighters were deployed in Yemen, serving as mercenaries in a foreign war that had nothing to do with Sudan's interests. They fought, died, and were paid—and the money flowed back to Hemedti.
The RSF also sent approximately 1,000 fighters to Libya during its second civil war, supporting the Libyan National Army led by the warlord Khalifa Haftar. United Nations reports have documented RSF supply lines running through Libya, suggesting that the relationship went both ways: weapons flowed in, fighters flowed out.
Additionally, the RSF took on work that European governments preferred not to do themselves. Under something called the Khartoum Process—an agreement between European and African nations to reduce migration to Europe—the RSF patrolled Sudan's borders with Libya and rounded up Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees trying to make their way north. European money, indirectly, helped fund a paramilitary force that would later be accused of genocide.
Revolution, Coup, and Civil War
In April 2019, mass protests finally toppled Omar al-Bashir, the dictator who had ruled Sudan for thirty years. For a brief, hopeful moment, it seemed Sudan might transition to civilian rule. But the military had other ideas, and Hemedti saw an opportunity.
During the revolution, RSF forces were responsible for what became known as the Khartoum massacre. They killed, raped, and detained hundreds of protesters and activists. Bodies were thrown into the Nile. Despite this, Hemedti managed to position himself as a key power broker in the post-Bashir transition. He became deputy head of Sudan's transitional government, second only to the army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
For two years, these two men uneasily shared power. Then, in October 2021, they jointly staged a coup, dissolving the civilian elements of the transitional government and taking full control. But a military regime with two heads is inherently unstable. Both men knew that eventually, one would have to eliminate the other.
The war came in April 2023. Fighting erupted in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, between the regular Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF. Within days, the conflict had spread across the country. As of 2025, it shows no signs of ending.
The Ideology of the RSF
What does the RSF believe in? This question matters because it shapes what kind of country Sudan might become if Hemedti wins.
Observers have characterized the RSF as Arab supremacist or, in starker terms, ethno-fascist. The journalist Nicholas Niarchos has written that "Arab supremacy is one of the RSF's animating ideas." This ideology has deep roots in Sudanese history. Since independence, Sudan's governments have been dominated by Arab elites who looked down on the country's African populations—even though many of these "Arab" groups are themselves African in every sense except cultural self-identification.
The violence in Darfur, and now the current civil war, follows ethnic fault lines. RSF fighters have massacred non-Arab civilians on a vast scale. Interestingly, they have also targeted certain Arab groups—specifically the Ja'alin and Shaigiya of the Nile Valley—whom they perceive as aligned with the regular army. This suggests that while ethnicity matters enormously to the RSF, its definition of who counts as an ally can be tactically flexible.
Not everyone sees Arab supremacism as the RSF's primary motivation, however. Yasir Zaidan, a political researcher at the University of Washington, has argued for what he calls an "ethno-mercenarist" interpretation. In this view, the RSF recruits through Arab ethnic and tribal networks, but the real glue holding the organization together is money. Fighters join for salaries, loot, and the chance at a share of gold wealth. Arab identity provides the social networks for recruitment, but economic incentives keep the machine running.
There's also the question of Islamism. Omar al-Bashir's regime was explicitly Islamist, and many observers expected the RSF to maintain that orientation. Surprisingly, the opposite occurred. Hemedti has positioned himself as anti-Islamist, claiming to have "exposed all the Islamists' schemes." In February 2025, the RSF announced it would form a secular, democratic government with a bill of rights in the territories it controls.
Should anyone believe this? Sudanese human rights advocate Amgad Fareid Eltayeb argues no. He sees the anti-Islamist stance as strategic positioning—a way to win Western support while concealing the RSF's true nature. The organization, after all, was created by the Islamist al-Bashir regime. Its crimes in Darfur were sometimes explicitly religious; according to witness testimony, Janjaweed fighters raped women "in the name of jihad."
The RSF's new parallel government, called the Government of Peace and Unity, has been greeted with deep skepticism by international observers. Alan Boswell of the International Crisis Group described it as a move to "increase legitimacy and leverage" that would likely make the war even harder to end. United Nations officials have expressed similar concerns, warning that it could fragment Sudan further. In August 2025, the UN Security Council issued a statement urging both sides to pursue peace rather than solidifying rival governments.
Foreign Backers
The RSF could not have become what it is without foreign support. The most significant backer appears to be the United Arab Emirates.
The UAE is not officially at war in Sudan. It hasn't declared support for either side. But investigations by journalists, UN panels, and intelligence services have consistently pointed to Emirati involvement. Weapons flow to the RSF through circuitous routes. Financial support allegedly props up RSF operations. The UAE has its own reasons: it views Sudan as strategically important for Red Sea access and has clashed with Qatar and Turkey, both of which have historically had influence in Khartoum.
Chad, Sudan's western neighbor, plays a complicated role. Many RSF fighters are ethnic Arabs from Chad—members of tribes that straddle the border. Young Chadians, facing poverty and limited opportunities, have joined the RSF for pay. The Sudanese government has accused Chad of actively supplying the RSF with weapons and mercenaries. Chad has denied this and severed formal relations with Sudan to defuse the accusations. But the RSF maintains facilities in the Chadian town of Amdjarass, including an airfield and hospital used for logistics and medical treatment. Reports suggest the UAE uses Chad as a conduit for arms shipments.
Ethiopia has shown signs of tilting toward the RSF as well, though for entirely different reasons. Ethiopia is locked in a bitter dispute with Egypt over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a massive hydroelectric project on the Blue Nile. Egypt fears the dam will reduce its water supply. Since the Sudanese army has historically been closer to Egypt, Ethiopia has cultivated ties with the RSF as a counterweight. In January 2024, Sudanese authorities arrested six Ethiopian women who had allegedly been serving as RSF snipers for over a year.
Israel's position is murky. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad reportedly has longstanding ties to Sudan, dating back to the 1980s when it helped smuggle Ethiopian Jews to Israel through Sudanese territory. At the outset of the civil war, Israeli officials were reportedly split, with the foreign ministry favoring the regular army and Mossad favoring the RSF. Israel has apparently attempted to mediate between the two sides.
Just before the civil war began, something curious happened. The RSF removed the word "Quds"—which means Jerusalem in Arabic—from its official logo. The acronym had originally stood for "Quwwat ad-Daʿm as-Sarīʿ" but also carried Islamic resonance through its reference to the holy city. Around the same time, the RSF began describing Hamas as a terrorist movement. These gestures seemed designed to appeal to Israeli and Western sensibilities.
Crimes Against Humanity
The scale of RSF atrocities defies easy comprehension.
During the current civil war, RSF forces have killed hundreds of thousands of non-Arab civilians. This is not accidental collateral damage. It is systematic, targeted violence against specific ethnic groups. Entire villages have been burned. Hospitals and places of worship have been destroyed. In some cases, the RSF has imposed deliberate starvation on civilian populations, blocking food supplies to areas it wants to subjugate.
Sexual violence has been deployed as a weapon of war on a massive scale. Women have been gang-raped. Some have been forced into marriages with RSF fighters. The UN, Human Rights Watch, and multiple other organizations have documented these atrocities in exhaustive, horrifying detail.
The RSF has recruited child soldiers. It has forced adult civilians to join its ranks under pain of death. It has pillaged homes and businesses, stripping regions of their wealth as it moves through.
The International Criminal Court has accused the RSF of genocide—the deliberate destruction of an ethnic or national group. Genocide Watch, an organization founded by Gregory Stanton (who previously helped document the Rwandan genocide), has reached the same conclusion. In the closing days of the Biden administration, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken formally accused the RSF of genocide as well.
Millions of Sudanese have fled their homes. Some have crossed into Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. Others are internally displaced, living in camps within Sudan's borders. The humanitarian crisis is among the worst in the world, yet it receives a fraction of the global attention devoted to conflicts in Ukraine or Gaza.
The Propaganda War
The RSF has proven surprisingly sophisticated at public relations—at least by paramilitary standards.
In April 2023, Al Jazeera reported that the RSF had sought out Western public relations firms to improve its international image. One method allegedly involved editing Wikipedia pages. The very encyclopedia article that serves as the basis for this essay has been a battleground.
Hemedti presents himself on social media and in interviews as a modernizer, a secularist, a democrat. His spokespeople emphasize the RSF's opposition to Islamism and its supposed commitment to human rights. These claims are transparently contradicted by the organization's actions, but they serve a purpose: they give international actors who want to engage with the RSF a cover story.
Former Sudanese government staffer Ahmed Ibrahim has offered a blunter assessment of RSF goals. The organization, he says, aims "to strip Sudan of its national resources" using its control of gold mines and its long coastline on the Red Sea. It is, in this view, less a political movement than a vast criminal enterprise wearing military uniforms.
The War's Future
As of late 2025, the Sudanese civil war grinds on with no clear end in sight.
The RSF controls large portions of western and central Sudan, including much of Darfur and significant areas around Khartoum. It has established a parallel government with its allies. The regular army, the SAF, controls the east and parts of the capital. Neither side appears capable of delivering a knockout blow.
International peace efforts have repeatedly failed. The formation of two competing governments makes any settlement even more difficult to imagine. Every ceasefire agreement has collapsed. Humanitarian access remains severely restricted, meaning millions of civilians are beyond the reach of aid organizations.
What does victory look like for the RSF? Presumably, it means control of Sudan or at least a permanent partition that leaves Hemedti ruling a substantial territory with its gold mines and Red Sea access. Whether the organization could actually govern in any conventional sense is another question. So far, its expertise lies in fighting, looting, and terrorizing—not building institutions.
The regular army has its own deep flaws. It, too, has committed atrocities. It, too, has links to the old Islamist regime. Neither side in this war offers Sudan an attractive future. The civilians caught between them have no good options.
A Different Kind of Power
The Rapid Support Forces represent something relatively new in the modern world: a paramilitary organization that has accumulated enough wealth, weapons, and foreign connections to challenge a national government on equal terms. The RSF is not a rebel group hoping to negotiate a seat at the table. It is not a terrorist organization seeking to destabilize a state through spectacular attacks. It is, in effect, a private army that has grown powerful enough to make a credible bid for state power.
This model has antecedents. The East India Company once wielded similar power, maintaining its own army and governing vast territories. More recently, private military companies like Russia's Wagner Group have operated in similar spaces, though none has quite attempted what the RSF is attempting—seizing control of an entire country.
If the RSF succeeds, other paramilitary groups around the world will take note. The lesson will be that with enough gold, enough foreign patrons, and enough willingness to commit atrocities, a militia can transform itself into a government. That lesson, once learned, will be hard to unlearn.
For now, Sudan burns. Its people flee or starve or die. And the men who once terrorized Darfur villages on horseback now fly in military aircraft, command over 100,000 fighters, and plot the future of a nation they seem intent on destroying in order to rule.