Some Sudanese Youth Groups Take Up Arms to Fight Alongside SAF

ADF STAFF

In response to brutal attacks against civilians by militia members, some of Sudan’s pro-democracy groups who once protested the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have rallied to support it.

In the six months since fighting erupted between the SAF and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the militia controlled by a general known as Hemedti has been accused of a host of atrocities including rape, summary executions and burning entire communities to the ground.

Now some groups are taking sides and making clear who they blame for the atrocities.

“We believe that this war was caused by a conflict of interests between the generals on both sides, but we have witnessed and experienced widespread humiliations inflicted by RSF soldiers,” one unnamed activist and long-time pro-democracy protester told Middle East Eye (MEE). “I saw the RSF make ordinary citizens carry their own possessions out to RSF trucks, so they could carry the loot away. I will never forget that.”

Those joining the fight against the RSF include the Popular Resistance Factions, Kings of Clashes and Angry Without Borders. Another militia, El Bara Bin Malik Brigade, has connections to the SAF’s Reserve Department. The groups are a minority of Sudan’s pro-democracy youth organizations, most of whom have refused to take sides while calling for peace and providing humanitarian aid.

Angry Without Borders representatives told the Alaraby TV network they support “any political solution that leads to the dissolution of the Rapid Support Militia.”

The groups are also clear that they are supporting the SAF’s rank-and-file soldiers, not its leadership. The fight against the RSF has united both pro-democracy groups and their opponents, who support the Islamist-dominated government represented by SAF Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and former dictator Omar al-Bashir.

In late June, al-Burhan called up Sudanese citizens to join the fight against the RSF, which he declared a rebel militia. Hemedti, on the other hand, has recruited fighters from his home region of Darfur and across the northern Sahel to boost his ranks against the heavily armed SAF.

“The more desperate the deadlock between the generals becomes, the more they recruit,” Sudanese analyst Samah Salman told ADF by phone.

SAF supporters have labeled the RSF “foreign militias” because Hemedti has recruited fighters from Chad and Niger and insist they have an obligation to fight against them.

“We are still against the top generals of the army and still against the old regime, but we believe that the army is supposed to be for the entire Sudanese population and it’s the duty of the national army to protect the people,” a collection of Khartoum pro-democracy groups said in a statement.

The pro-democracy group members told MEE they organized and trained themselves without help from the SAF to guard against attacks on their communities in Khartoum and neighboring Omdurman.

“So, the story is simply about defending ourselves, our families and properties from RSF attacks, and our priority now is to expel the RSF from Khartoum,” one activist told MEE.

Other pro-democracy civilians reported being trained at SAF-operated camps around the capital region.

As each side of the conflict draws new fighters into its ranks, the struggle between al-Burhan and Hemedti threatens to become all-encompassing.

“Neither side is able to fully dominate the other,” Salman told ADF. “We really are on the cusp of a civil war.”