The warlord’s victory lap
Accusations of war crimes swirl around him but Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, whose forces have the upper hand in Sudan’s civil war, is being greeted like an old friend in African capitals.
Kiri Rupiah
Evidence is mounting of atrocities committed by forces loyal to Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. Investigators appointed by the United Nations Security Council are the latest group to accuse his Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, of committing possible war crimes in Sudan.
A report by the five-member panel says that between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed as the RSF advanced on El Geneina in Western Darfur last year. Many were members of the Masalit ethnic group. They identified at least 13 mass graves.
The RSF have been implicated in multiple other atrocities, both in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan, since the outbreak of the civil war in April 2023.
The country is officially led by General Abdul Fatah al-Burhan, who controls the Sudanese army, but the RSF controls most of Darfur and key parts of Khartoum. It recently took control of Wad Madani, a major city south-east of the capital.
Hemedti was previously implicated in the genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s, where he was a commander in the notorious “Janjaweed” militia – a precursor to the RSF.
When news of the damning UN report first emerged this week, Hemedti was in Kampala, continuing his charm offensive with regional and continental leaders.
It appears to be working.
The wooing began on 27 December, when Hemedti met President Yoweri Museveni at the latter’s country home in Uganda’s Kiruhura district. He then travelled to Ethiopia to shake hands with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, before a sit-down in Nairobi with Kenya’s President William Ruto.
Next up was Djibouti’s President Ismail Guelleh, who is also chair of the Horn of Africa’s regional bloc, Igad, and then a flight to Pretoria to engage with South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa.
So enamoured was Ramaphosa that his office described the RSF leader as the president of Sudan, in a tweet that was subsequently deleted.
Ramaphosa has been heavily criticised for taking the meeting with Hemedti: it is not a good look for one to trade smiles with a potential genocidaire at the same time one is accusing Israel in an international court of committing the same crime against Palestinians.
Ramaphosa has been heavily criticised for taking the meeting with Hemedti
Hemedti returned to East Africa to meet with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who – apparently without irony – gave him a tour of the Genocide Museum in Kigali; and finally back to Kampala to attend an Igad meeting and the Non-Aligned Movement summit.
For now, the charm offensive is over. But the war crimes appear to be continuing unhindered by regional approbrium.