Major General Mohamed Hamdan, the leader of a notorious paramilitary force fighting for supremacy in Sudan’s civil war, is not his country’s president. However, on a recent whirlwind tour of six African nations, he was treated like one.
Some of the continent’s most powerful leaders rolled out the red carpet for General Hamdan after he arrived in a luxury jet for meetings in late December and early January, having replaced his military fatigues with business suits. In Kenya, traditional dancers were waiting on the steps of the plane. In South Africa, he sank into an armchair next to a smiling President Cyril Ramaphosa.
And in Rwanda, General Hamdan posed solemnly at a memorial for the victims of the 1994 genocide – even as his own troops have faced accusations of genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.
The surprise tour was a remarkable comeback for a commander often rumored to be dead or injured since Sudan descended into war in April. General Hamdan’s Rapid Support Force is rolling across Sudan, beating the country’s regular army into retreat — thanks in large part to military support from the United Arab Emirates, a Gulf petrostate emerging as king in the Horn of Africa , according to a new report by United Nations researchers.
The as-yet-unpublished report, obtained by The New York Times, offers new details about how the Emirates have been transporting powerful weapons to General Hamdan’s forces, known as the RSF, through Chad since last summer — armed drones, shells and anti-aircraft missiles. shipped via secret cargo flights and desert smuggling routes. The supplies bolstered his forces in a series of victories that over the last few months changed the course of the war.
“This new RSF firepower has had a huge impact on the balance of power, both in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan,” the report said.
The war has brought utter devastation to Sudan, killing at least 12,000 people since April and displacing another 7.4 million from their homes, the United Nations estimates. The fighting has destroyed large parts of the capital, Khartoum, and 25 million of Sudan’s 45 million people need help to survive.
Experts say the Emirates are using their vast wealth and sophisticated weaponry to steer the course of a troubled region of Africa wracked by conflict but blessed with vast natural wealth and a long Red Sea coastline.
His motives are ambiguous. Experts point to the Emirates’ desire for port deals and farmland in a part of Africa it increasingly sees as its strategic backyard, and its long-standing hostility to Islamist forces.
But the latest UN report, written by experts monitoring a 2005 arms embargo on Darfur, highlights the cost of those ambitions. It documents widespread violence against civilians that accompanied the advance of General Hamdan’s forces — massacres, shelling and reports of hundreds of rapes that echo the genocide in Darfur two decades ago.
This pattern of atrocities prompted US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to formally charge the RSF on December 6 with war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. (Mr Blinken said the other side of the war – the Sudanese army – had also committed war crimes through indiscriminate bombing.)
Weeks later General Hamdan, also known as Hemeti, boarded a Boeing provided by Royal Jet, a company run by an adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
In a statement, Emirates said it “did not supply arms and ammunition to any of the warring parties” and denied violating the arms embargo. It said its priority was to protect civilians and, through diplomacy with American, Arab and African partners, to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict.
Those denials are being met with growing skepticism by US officials, however, who fear Sudan could be sliding into famine, genocide or a new round of brutal, authoritarian rule if the Rapid Support Force wins the war.
RSF did not respond to questions for this article.
In early December, the Biden administration announced that Vice President Kamala Harris had raised the war in Sudan directly with Sheikh Mohammed on the sidelines of a UN climate summit. Over Christmas, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, put it most starkly during a call to his Emirati counterpart, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, according to a senior US official with knowledge of the call who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
But many US lawmakers – and privately, even some senior Biden administration officials – say the effort is still too timid, blaming the State Department for failing to come up with a plan to end the war despite months of diplomatic effort, along with Saudi Arabia.
The CIA recently released to President Biden and other senior officials its assessment of an outright RSF victory in Sudan, saying it would spread abuses and hinder the spread of democracy in the region, US officials said. The United States is also concerned about General Hamdan’s ties to Russia’s Wagner mercenaries, who supplied him with anti-aircraft missiles in the early months of the war.
These growing concerns from abroad call for more urgent American intervention in Sudan, including a stronger stance against Emirati meddling that critics call disastrous.
“In pursuit of influence and security, the UAE may end up driving the entire region into chaos,” Michelle Gavin, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote recently.
General Hamdan, once a camel trader, rose to prominence in the late 2000s as the commander of the violent militia known as janjaweed in Darfur. He amassed a war chest by building a business empire — first by controlling the gold mines, then as an ally of the Emirates.
From around 2016, General Hamdan sent fighters to Yemen, on the Emirati payroll, and later invested those profits in a network of about 50 companies, based in Dubai, in the Emirati, that continue to finance his war machine, the UN researchers.
Last July, Emirates doubled General Hamdan. A new Emirati-built hospital has appeared in Amdjarass, a remote town in eastern Chad, offering medical treatment to Sudanese refugees. But Western intelligence soon realized that cargo planes landing on a nearby airstrip were actually carrying weapons destined for the RSF
In its statement, Emirates called the field hospital “a critical lifeline for civilians in need of medical attention” and said it had invited UN inspectors to visit.
Within weeks, General Hamdan’s troops began sweeping through Darfur, eventually capturing four of the five regional capitals. But it was the capture of Wad Madani, a town in the basket of central Sudan, on December 15 that caused the war’s biggest upset.
The sudden clash dealt Sudan’s military a humiliating blow to its political heartland, prompting calls for its leader, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, to step down. It also fueled fears that General Hamdan could take over the entire country.
In recent weeks, ethnic militias have formed across eastern Sudan to repel possible RSF advances, Sudanese media reported. And hard-line Islamists, largely absent from public view in recent years, have re-emerged to become a powerful voice in Sudanese politics.
The Emirati operation to support General Hamdan has been a source of alarm at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, a global network that prides itself on neutrality. Red Cross officials are concerned about Emirati news bulletins with the Red Crescent logo, about aid operations in Amdjarass said to be run by the Emirates Red Crescent.
In response to questions, the International Federation, which oversees 191 national companies, said it had sent a “fact-finding mission” to Chad in October and would send another next month. “If any allegation is substantiated, the IFRC will launch an investigation,” the spokesman, Tommaso Della Longa, said in an email.
Several US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the Biden administration tapped Tom Periellos, a former diplomat and Democratic congressman, as a special envoy for Sudan. But the appointment has been delayed by a dispute over who Mr. Perriello would report to and how much authority he would have — especially when it comes to Emirates, one of the officials said.
General Hamdan continued his diplomatic offensive on Thursday, meeting in Uganda with Ramtane Lamamra, the new UN envoy to Sudan. For Sudanese critics, smart suits and smooth talk are just a tactic as General Hamdan prepares for the next round of battle, pointing to his New Year’s speech as proof of his bad faith.
In a videotaped speech, General Hamdan wished Christians in Sudan a merry Christmas, days before his troops burned down a church. He then spoke out against “tribal killings” despite the massacres in Darfur.
But the commander struck a note that many Sudanese could relate to. “One question is pressing in the minds of the Sudanese people,” General Hamdan said. “Where are we going;”
Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting from Washington.
