Sudan slaughter is "far beyond simple ethnic conflict"
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John Ashworth
Nov 12, 2025, 4:47:22 AM11/12/25
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Why has Sudan descended into mass slaughter? The answer goes far
beyond simple ethnic conflict
November 11, 2025
The Conversation
Justin Willis and Willow Berridge
The recent capture of the western Sudanese city of El Fasher by the
paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has been followed by
allegations of appalling war crimes: massacres, looting and rapes.
There is much reason to believe the allegations from Sudan are
credible. UN leaders and experts, most western governments and the
International Criminal Court have acknowledged reports of the
atrocities and condemned the killing of civilians as a potential war
crimes.
Formerly a government-sponsored militia, since April 2023 the RSF has
been at war with its former allies in the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF).
Throughout its existence the RSF has been notorious for violence, and
every RSF military success has been accompanied by gross violations of
human rights.
Less credible are the claims of the RSF leader, Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo
– better known in Sudan as Hemedti – who has promised to punish any of
his followers found to be responsible for any of these atrocities.
Recent reporting of these terrible abuses has presented them as part
of an ethnic conflict, with the RSF portrayed as an Arab militia
murdering non-Arabs. There is much truth in this. But there are other
drivers of the continuing violence in Sudan.
The RSF itself is the terrible creation of a history of state-driven
violence, exclusion and opportunism in Sudan. Its origins are usually
traced to the infamous Janjaweed, a militia drawn from Arab
communities that was armed by the then president of Sudan, Omar
al-Bashir, to suppress an insurgency in the region early in the 21st
century.
In raising the Janjaweed, Bahir’s regime exploited tensions between
Arabs and other communities in Darfur, a large region of western Sudan
region of which El Fasher is the historical capital.
It was therefore tempting for audiences in North America and Europe to
see the conflict – like the long-running war in what was then southern
Sudan (now the independent country of South Sudan) in simple racial
terms: Arabs against Africans. That narrative has given strength to
the international campaign to end the violence in Darfur.
But that narrative was always a simplification, and certainly does not
explain the current war. The RSF also has other origins.
It exploited a long-term sense of economic and political exclusion
felt by people in Darfur – both Arabs and non-Arabs. It fed off and
was partly funded by an international trade in livestock, gold and
mercenaries that has thrived on the margins of a state whose leaders
have ruthlessly used office to prey on their people.
And it arose in a political system that has rewarded those who seize
office by violence, partly thanks to the meddling of external powers
who seek political or economic gain by supporting rivals for power in
Sudan.
Rise of Hemedti
Hemedti was a relatively minor figure in the Janjaweed. But Bashir
created the RSF in 2013, under his leadership, as part of a
complicated balancing of multiple militias and security agencies.
These competing forces violently repressed challenges to the regime
while keeping one another in check through their rivalry.
In 2019, that system broke down in the face of popular unrest in the
regime’s political heartland, in central riverain Sudan – the area
stretching along the Nile, roughly from Atbara, north of Khartoum to
Wad Medani, about 85 miles to the southeast. This has been the
economic centre of Sudan since colonial rule began.
Sudan: power has traditionally been focused on the central region
aroiund the Nile. Peter Fitzgerald via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Bashir was toppled in a military coup and, after internal army power
struggles, Lt Gen Abdel Fattah Burhan emerged as leader and named
Hemedti as his deputy. The pair were key figures in the “transitional”
government that was supposed to take Sudan back to civilian rule.
But they represented very different constituencies, in a way that
demonstrates that Arab identity can take many forms. Affluent urban
Arabs from Khartoum have often looked down on the nomadic lifestyle of
the communities Hemedti and the RSF have mobilised and sometimes
belittle them as “Chadian” on account of their ties to the wider
Sahelian region.
Arabs from Darfur, such as Hemedti, can see themselves as long-term
victims of what they call the “1956 state”. This is the political and
economic system inherited from colonial rule, which favoured the
riverain centre.
Both Hemedti and Burhan insist that they are fighting for all Sudan,
and all Sudanese. Yet both have been entirely willing to appeal to
ethnic and religious sentiment when it suits them. That has repeatedly
added an extra, vicious dynamic to the conflict – from the recent
massacres in El Fasher to the reported violence against people from
South Sudan in Khartoum when SAF recaptured the city in March 2025.
The real reasons for the conflict
Ethnicity is not the basis of the conflict. This instead lies in an
embedded culture of political violence, complicated by a shifting
power balance between central and western Sudan and by international
meddling.
Some Arab nations – particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia – back the
army. While the UAE’s enabling of RSF violence has been widely
publicised, prominent African governments have also maintained ties
with Hemedti.
Hemedti has also made alliances of convenience with groups such as
SPLM-North Hilu, which principally draws support from the non-Arab
communities in the southern Sudanese region of South Kordofan and,
like Hemedti, aims to dismantle the “1956 state”.
For Sudanese observers, the tension between central and western Sudan
is more recognisable. Both before and after his role in the 2023
ransacking of Khartoum, Hemedti has been compared with the Khalifa –
the western Sudanese successor to Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi. It was
al-Mahdi who defeated the British and the Egyptians to found the
Mahdist state in the late 19th century.
Since the 1950s, those seeking to seize control of the Sudanese state
have repeatedly mobilised support among disaffected groups in western
Sudan – sometimes combining Arab and non-Arab communities, sometimes
turning them against one another. Hemedti’s claims to represent the
marginalised communities of the west are opportunistic and mendacious,
but far from unprecedented.
This war is not a simple Arab-African conflict. But its viciousness
reflects the willingness of both RSF and SAF to turn multiple societal
fault lines into tools for mobilisation. They have created a context
in which ethnic polarisation has been driven by wars for control of
the state – rather than vice versa.
https://theconversation.com/why-has-sudan-descended-into-mass-slaughter-the-answer-goes-far-beyond-simple-ethnic-conflict-269293
END
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
beyond simple ethnic conflict
November 11, 2025
The Conversation
Justin Willis and Willow Berridge
The recent capture of the western Sudanese city of El Fasher by the
paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has been followed by
allegations of appalling war crimes: massacres, looting and rapes.
There is much reason to believe the allegations from Sudan are
credible. UN leaders and experts, most western governments and the
International Criminal Court have acknowledged reports of the
atrocities and condemned the killing of civilians as a potential war
crimes.
Formerly a government-sponsored militia, since April 2023 the RSF has
been at war with its former allies in the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF).
Throughout its existence the RSF has been notorious for violence, and
every RSF military success has been accompanied by gross violations of
human rights.
Less credible are the claims of the RSF leader, Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo
– better known in Sudan as Hemedti – who has promised to punish any of
his followers found to be responsible for any of these atrocities.
Recent reporting of these terrible abuses has presented them as part
of an ethnic conflict, with the RSF portrayed as an Arab militia
murdering non-Arabs. There is much truth in this. But there are other
drivers of the continuing violence in Sudan.
The RSF itself is the terrible creation of a history of state-driven
violence, exclusion and opportunism in Sudan. Its origins are usually
traced to the infamous Janjaweed, a militia drawn from Arab
communities that was armed by the then president of Sudan, Omar
al-Bashir, to suppress an insurgency in the region early in the 21st
century.
In raising the Janjaweed, Bahir’s regime exploited tensions between
Arabs and other communities in Darfur, a large region of western Sudan
region of which El Fasher is the historical capital.
It was therefore tempting for audiences in North America and Europe to
see the conflict – like the long-running war in what was then southern
Sudan (now the independent country of South Sudan) in simple racial
terms: Arabs against Africans. That narrative has given strength to
the international campaign to end the violence in Darfur.
But that narrative was always a simplification, and certainly does not
explain the current war. The RSF also has other origins.
It exploited a long-term sense of economic and political exclusion
felt by people in Darfur – both Arabs and non-Arabs. It fed off and
was partly funded by an international trade in livestock, gold and
mercenaries that has thrived on the margins of a state whose leaders
have ruthlessly used office to prey on their people.
And it arose in a political system that has rewarded those who seize
office by violence, partly thanks to the meddling of external powers
who seek political or economic gain by supporting rivals for power in
Sudan.
Rise of Hemedti
Hemedti was a relatively minor figure in the Janjaweed. But Bashir
created the RSF in 2013, under his leadership, as part of a
complicated balancing of multiple militias and security agencies.
These competing forces violently repressed challenges to the regime
while keeping one another in check through their rivalry.
In 2019, that system broke down in the face of popular unrest in the
regime’s political heartland, in central riverain Sudan – the area
stretching along the Nile, roughly from Atbara, north of Khartoum to
Wad Medani, about 85 miles to the southeast. This has been the
economic centre of Sudan since colonial rule began.
Sudan: power has traditionally been focused on the central region
aroiund the Nile. Peter Fitzgerald via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Bashir was toppled in a military coup and, after internal army power
struggles, Lt Gen Abdel Fattah Burhan emerged as leader and named
Hemedti as his deputy. The pair were key figures in the “transitional”
government that was supposed to take Sudan back to civilian rule.
But they represented very different constituencies, in a way that
demonstrates that Arab identity can take many forms. Affluent urban
Arabs from Khartoum have often looked down on the nomadic lifestyle of
the communities Hemedti and the RSF have mobilised and sometimes
belittle them as “Chadian” on account of their ties to the wider
Sahelian region.
Arabs from Darfur, such as Hemedti, can see themselves as long-term
victims of what they call the “1956 state”. This is the political and
economic system inherited from colonial rule, which favoured the
riverain centre.
Both Hemedti and Burhan insist that they are fighting for all Sudan,
and all Sudanese. Yet both have been entirely willing to appeal to
ethnic and religious sentiment when it suits them. That has repeatedly
added an extra, vicious dynamic to the conflict – from the recent
massacres in El Fasher to the reported violence against people from
South Sudan in Khartoum when SAF recaptured the city in March 2025.
The real reasons for the conflict
Ethnicity is not the basis of the conflict. This instead lies in an
embedded culture of political violence, complicated by a shifting
power balance between central and western Sudan and by international
meddling.
Some Arab nations – particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia – back the
army. While the UAE’s enabling of RSF violence has been widely
publicised, prominent African governments have also maintained ties
with Hemedti.
Hemedti has also made alliances of convenience with groups such as
SPLM-North Hilu, which principally draws support from the non-Arab
communities in the southern Sudanese region of South Kordofan and,
like Hemedti, aims to dismantle the “1956 state”.
For Sudanese observers, the tension between central and western Sudan
is more recognisable. Both before and after his role in the 2023
ransacking of Khartoum, Hemedti has been compared with the Khalifa –
the western Sudanese successor to Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi. It was
al-Mahdi who defeated the British and the Egyptians to found the
Mahdist state in the late 19th century.
Since the 1950s, those seeking to seize control of the Sudanese state
have repeatedly mobilised support among disaffected groups in western
Sudan – sometimes combining Arab and non-Arab communities, sometimes
turning them against one another. Hemedti’s claims to represent the
marginalised communities of the west are opportunistic and mendacious,
but far from unprecedented.
This war is not a simple Arab-African conflict. But its viciousness
reflects the willingness of both RSF and SAF to turn multiple societal
fault lines into tools for mobilisation. They have created a context
in which ethnic polarisation has been driven by wars for control of
the state – rather than vice versa.
https://theconversation.com/why-has-sudan-descended-into-mass-slaughter-the-answer-goes-far-beyond-simple-ethnic-conflict-269293
END
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
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