From Janjaweed to RSF: How Sudan’s Counter-Insurgency Became Its Executioner
- Utku Taşkin
- Dec 10, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Mar 23
The Republic of Sudan emerged as an independent nation in 1956 following the breakup of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan's joint rule. The nation established democratic governance, but it did not maintain this system for an extended period of time. The military government of Sudan came into power through a coup led by General Ibrahim Abboud in 1958. It was the first coup in Sudan, but it wouldn’t be the last. Public protests against the government led to General Abboud's removal from power in 1964, which brought back civilian governance for five years, until a military takeover took place in 1969. Sudan experienced political instability during the 1970s and 1980s, which included failed coup attempts, domestic conflicts, economic decline, and the Second Sudanese Civil War, which lasted from 1983 until 2005.
This chaotic situation allowed Omar al-Bashir to establish himself as the most influential Sudanese leader in contemporary history. The military coup of 1989 brought him to power as the new ruler of Sudan. His thirty-year leadership period established the path that led to the present-day problems facing this nation. After he gained control, al-Bashir initiated military purges, which resulted in executions of army officers, and he shut down political parties and associations, detaining prominent journalists together with political leaders.
Hassan al-Turabi, a radical Islamist and leader of the National Islamic Front, was al-Bashir’s biggest ally at the time. For most, al-Turabi was the main perpetrator of the coup and, until 2001, was considered the power behind the throne. He spearheaded the establishment of an NIF police state and legalised Sharia in northern Sudan starting in March 1991. Such a move raised tensions between the Muslim north and the predominantly animist and Christian south even further.
Al-Turabi gained international notoriety for turning Sudan into a haven for political Islamist militants. He established the Popular Arab and Islamic Congress and invited figures such as Osama bin Laden to base their operations in Sudan from 1990 until 1996. By the mid-1990s, however, a feud developed between al-Bashir and al-Turabi, largely due to al-Turabi’s links with fundamentalist groups. Eventually, the two fell out, but Turabi’s legacy remained; his imposition of Sharia law was one of the leading causes of the long-running civil war with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.
While the north–south war defined the 1990s, the conflict that most directly relates to the causes of the current war began in Darfur in 2003. The conflict arose out of long-standing tensions centered on resource competition—land and water—the historical neglect of the region by the central government, and ethnic friction between Arab and non-Arab groups. It began in February 2003 when two non-Arab rebel groups (the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement) took up arms against the central government, accusing it of oppression.
The government responded by arming and supporting proxy militias—mainly the Janjaweed—as its primary counter-insurgency force. The Janjaweed (which translates roughly to “devils on horseback”) were primarily composed of Arab militias from the nomadic Abbala camel-herding tribes of the Sahel. While their earlier conflicts were linked to local disputes with settled farmers, they became agents of state terror.
Government forces and the Janjaweed committed mass atrocities in a campaign of targeted killing against non-Arab ethnic groups, including the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa. The violence is estimated to have killed approximately 300,000 civilians and displaced around 2.7 million people between 2003 and 2008. In 2004, the U.S. government termed the campaign a genocide, and eventually genocide charges were brought against Omar al-Bashir at the ICC.
Over the next decade, Janjaweed fighters were integrated into the state’s security organs. In 2013, al-Bashir officially transformed one of the largest Janjaweed factions into the Rapid Support Forces, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as “Hemedti”. The RSF was initially placed under the National Intelligence and Security Services but soon began developing into a full-scale paramilitary.
By late 2018, the al-Bashir era was collapsing. Decades of dictatorship crumbled as money dried up and luck ran out. Al-Bashir’s favourite trick—splitting his security forces and pitting the army against the RSF so that no one could threaten his power—finally turned on him. After South Sudan seceded in 2011, oil money vanished. The regime could no longer pay off armed elites, nor could it keep the public quiet. The whole system had unravelled.
As the Sudanese Professionals Association turned riots over bread prices in Atbara into a nationwide cry for freedom, the security apparatus made a calculated decision. To save their extensive economic empires and survive the uprising themselves, they sacrificed the man at the top. Al-Bashir was removed, decapitating the dictatorship but leaving the “deep state” dangerously intact.
A new struggle for power began immediately after his ousting. Sudan’s civilian opposition reached a power-sharing agreement with the military junta in August 2019, but it was a fragile compromise from the start. In the words of the International Crisis Group, the deal “amounted to a reluctant partnership” in which “the generals kept the upper hand.” Although it established a roadmap for democracy, it fatally lacked a solid external guarantee to ensure compliance from an unwilling security apparatus.
This structural imbalance was most evident in the economy. The civilian government was left to manage a bankrupt formal state, while the military maintained control over the lucrative “informal” economy and shadow budget. Because the transition failed to channel international aid through the Central Bank to “defund” the deep state, the generals were able to preserve their wealth and power—and ultimately doom the democratic experiment.
According to the Chr. Michelsen Institute, the new civil war that broke out on 15 April 2023 was not a sudden accident but the violent outcome of “durable disorders” and zero-sum power struggles between General Burhan and Hemedti. It began with disputes over when and how to integrate the RSF into the army and quickly deteriorated into a devastating war of attrition. It is demolishing the state, laying waste to Khartoum’s infrastructure, and rekindling historic ethnic fissures in Darfur. Analysts criticise the international response, describing a “cacophony” of uncoordinated diplomatic initiatives—from Jeddah to IGAD—that allow the warring parties to “forum shop” instead of facing meaningful pressure, while Sudan drifts toward full state collapse, in the manner of Libya or Somalia.
By late 2025, the situation has become catastrophic. An investigation by The New Humanitarian in November 2025 exposed the systematic weaponisation of sexual violence by the RSF in the besieged city of El Fasher, North Darfur. Reports document widespread gang rape, abduction, and sexual slavery, mirroring the genocidal tactics of the Janjaweed era two decades earlier, through interviews with women and girls fleeing the conflict zone. This is a deliberate campaign, echoing the horrors of the past. The battle for El Fasher is not only about territory or military victory—it is a war waged on bodies, where sexual violence becomes a weapon meant to dominate and destroy, in a context where any sense of protection or justice has vanished.
These events have resulted in the world’s largest displacement crisis, with over 10.7 million people fleeing their homes, the collapse of 70% of healthcare facilities in conflict zones, and a looming hunger crisis affecting nearly 18 million people. The international community has begun imposing sanctions on major financial institutions that fuel the war machine, such as the RSF’s Alkhaleej Bank and the SAF’s Zadna International, in an attempt to force a return to negotiations. Whether it will help remains to be seen.
Bibliography
Hassan & Kodouda, 2019, Mai Hassan & Ahmed Kodouda, “Sudan’s Uprising: The Fall of a Dictator,” Journal of Democracy, 30(4): 89–103. URL: https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/sudans-uprising-the-fall-of-a-dictator/
The New Humanitarian, 2025, “Women and girls flee El Fasher as RSF sexual and gender-based violence spreads,” The New Humanitarian, 21 November 2025. URL: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2025/11/21/women-girls-flee-el-fasher-rsf-sexual-gender-based-violence
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