United Civilian Forces (UCF): The RSF's new political partner
Introduction
At the start of August, we reported on Yousif Izzat’s sacking as an advisor to Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia commander Himedti, and the political rift that was brewing within the militia. Izzat’s sacking was triggered by his tensions with the militia’s second-in-command, Himedti’s older brother Abdelrahim Hamdan Dagalo.
A key factor was disagreements over who the militia’s political partners should be. Whereas Izzat was insistent that it should be the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) coalition / Taqadum, Abdelrahim distrusted the FFC due to worries that it may abandon them in the future.
On 22 August, it was reported that new political body called the United Civilian Force (UCF) was formed. RSF propaganda accounts promoted a press conference at Radisson Blu Hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia scheduled for the 24th entitled ‘Together to Stop the War and Alleviate the Suffering of the Sudanese People’, although it was subsequently cancelled.
Unlike the FFC, the UCF is suspected of being connected to the influential Islamist faction of the RSF. Moreover, the UCF’s leadership has strong tribal and regional links to the RSF and its tribal base of nomadic Arabs of the Darfur region of western Sudan. As a result, the UCF is predicted to form the basis of a government in RSF-held territory in Darfur – where the militia controls four out of the five state capitals. Such a government would likely feature many of the former Islamist government officials that the RSF retain as advisors, thereby offering them a path back to power.
UCF leadership: Haroun Medeikhir
The UCF is led by Haroun Medeikhir. His selection as the group’s leader reflects how the militia is co-opting former rivals from its tribal base. Like the Dagalo brothers, Medeikhir comes from the Rizeigat tribe, although they hail from the Mahariya clan whereas Medeikhir is a Mahamid Rizeigi. Medeikhir is one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Awakening Council (RAC) formed by Musa Hilal, the head of the Mahamid clan, to whom Medeikhir was closely associated.
The RAC is now split into Medeikhir’s faction loyal to the RSF, and a faction opposed to the RSF under Hilal’s leadership. Hilal gained notoriety playing a well-documented role leading the Janjaweed militia as serious crimes were committed in Darfur in response to the 2003 insurgency, with human rights groups accusing Hilal of atrocities that left an estimated 300,000 dead and 2.5 million displaced.
Nonetheless, while Hilal and RSF leader Himedti are both Rizeigi leaders of Arab militias known as Janjaweed, they were in a state of rivalry that intensified after gold was discovered in North Darfur’s Jabal Amir in 2012. In addition, Himedti’s Janjaweed militias were formalised into a state paramilitary force in the RSF in 2013 whereas Hilal’s were not. In 2017, Himedti won the battle for influence and gold concessions by getting Hilal arrested.
At the same time, Medeikhir – a close associate of Hilal and the official spokesperson of his RAC - was arrested by the RSF, having opposed the government’s arms collection campaign in Darfur and integration into Himedti’s militia. Both Hilal and Medeikhir were subsequently freed in March 2021, almost two years after ex-president Omar al-Bashir was ousted. In April 2024, a year into the RSF’s rebellion, Hilal declared his support for the army. However, other Mahamid Rizeigat rejected Hilal’s stance and claimed it does not represent them. Hilal’s RAC is split, with a faction loyal to the RSF fighting alongside it in both Sudan and neighbouring Libya.
In contrast to his former boss, Medeikhir was introduced on Lebanese news station Al-Mayadeen ten days into the war as an advisor to Himedti. In June 2024, Africa Intelligence reported that he commands an RSF battalion in Khartoum. Less than two weeks before it was announced that Medeikhir would lead the UCF, he appeared in an RSF social media video announcing the militia’s “Protection of Civilians Force” in Khartoum.
Reactions to the UCF’s formation
While Radio Dabanga report that the UCF “is made up of 68 member groups that reject war,” we have established its president Medeikhir’s connection to the RSF. The reactions to Radio Dabanga’s tweet on the article announcing the UCF’s creation reveal how prominent Sudanese political commentators view the UCF as the RSF’s new political partner.
Writer Reem Abbas predicts that Medeikhir will be the prime minister of an RSF government soon to be formed.
Activist Ahmed Shomokh asked: “where did the FFC let you down? Did they fail to be a political wing for the UAE project to break-up [the Sudanese] state, destroy its sovereignty, re-engineer its security forces and displace people from their land?”.
A role for FFC leaders?
Nonetheless, should the RSF declare statehood in territories it controls, there are assumptions that the FFC / Taqadum would play a role. Such a prospect was raised by Amjad Faried, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Faried, also the executive director of Fikra think-tank, suggested that two Taqadum officials met with Kenyan president William Ruto to “promote scenarios of Sudan's division and discuss Kenya's recognition of the RSF state, and to demand the transfer of gold deposits that the militia had placed in Kenyan banks to the RSF government”.
The two officials – who Faried described as “openly [pro-RSF]” - were Taqadum’s deputy secretary-general Taha Osman Ishaq and Sudan’s former justice minister Nasreddine Abdelbari. The latter was recently spotted in London with the youngest Dagalo brother Algoney, alongside former transitional sovereign council member Mohamed Hassan El-Ta’aishi. This came a month after Izzat’s sacking, which would suggest that the militia maintains ties with the FFC / Taqadum. At around the same time a year earlier, it was Izzat with the two aforementioned FFC politicians at a meeting in Togo.
Ishaq, Abdelbari and El-Ta’aishi were all Faried’s government colleagues during the transitional period, given that he was the assistant chief of staff for current Taqadum president: ex-prime minister Abdallah Hamdok.
It is worth noting that Ishaq, Abdelbari and El-Ta’aishi are all originally from the RSF’s stronghold in Darfur, although only El-Ta’ishi comes from the militia’s tribal base of nomadic Arabs. In this regard, if communal relations dictate a potential RSF government in Darfur, there is a possibility that they may play a role.
A path to power for Islamists from the RSF’s tribal base?
There is also speculation that the Islamist faction within the RSF were behind the launch of the UFC as a civilian front for the militia, which hints at the UCF offering a path back to power for former regime Islamists. While Sudan In The News cannot confirm this, it is worth pointing out a face that is regularly found on Medeikhir’s official social media channels.
On his Twitter account, a picture was posted without any comment of Medeikhir and Huzayfa Abunouba, who also appears on the header of Medeikhir’s Facebook account. In Sudan In The News’ Janjakezan report, a profile of Islamists in the RSF, Abounuba was listed as an RSF electronic monitoring officer formerly in the Islamic Movement’s youth sector. It is therefore likely that Abounuba manages Medeikhir’s pages.
The likelihood that the influential Islamist faction in the RSF was behind the creation of the UCF is increased if we consider the amount of advisors to the militia who were officials of the Islamist National Congress Party (NCP) that governed Sudan for over two-thirds of ex-president Omar Al-Bashir’s 30-year regime. Lt. Gen. Yasser al-Atta, the assistant commander-in-chief of Sudan’s army, alleges that 95% of RSF advisors were in leadership positions in their states under the NCP banner.
While Sudan In The News cannot verify the validity of al-Atta’s comments, our Janjakezan report profiled some of them. Of the 30 RSF Islamists we profiled, 10 were senior NCP leaders, mostly in Darfur, holding positions ranging from local government commissioner to acting state governor. They also mostly come from the RSF’s tribal base of western Sudanese nomadic Arabs.
This raises the prospect of ex-NCP senior government officials employed by the RSF forming the basis of a UCF-administered government in RSF-held territory in western Sudan. If that is the case, the UCF would offer a path back to power for ex-NCP officials from the RSF’s tribal base who lost their positions after ex-president Omar al-Bashir was ousted in April 2019.
The most senior of those officials is Hassabo Abdelrahman, the NCP regime’s former vice-president who hails from the same Mahariya Rizeigi clan of the RSF’s leadership. The Janjakezan report noted that he was earmarked to be appointed the governor of Darfur should the region fall to the militia as per Africa Intelligence. While the RSF deny that he is their advisor, the Sudanese Islamic Movement expelled him in April 2024 for joining the militia. Hassabo is thought to be leader of the RSF’s Islamists and the key figure driving the formation of the UCF.
Nonetheless, the history of tension between Hassabo and Medeikhir reflects the RSF’s reliance on ethnic and tribal loyalties on both a political and military level.
Tribal loyalties
In August 2017, then-vice president Hassabo launched an arms collection campaign in Darfur. Days later, Medeikhir publicly resisted handing over arms as the spokesperson of Musa Hilal’s RAC, leading to his eventual arrest in November 2017.
However, Hassabo, Medeikhir, RSF leader Himedti and many of his ex-NCP advisors all hail from Darfur’s nomadic Arab tribes - particularly the Rizeigat. This lends credence to the view that the RSF is an Arab nomadic supremacist militia waging war for ethnic dominance and control rather than fighting Islamists as claimed.
In a leaked recording started circulated Sudanese social media in January 2024, days before the RSF launched a siege on the 22nd army Infantry Division in Babanusa, West Kordofan. In what appeared to be a call to RSF leaders, Hassabo allegedly made racist remarks including:
“The majority of ours sons [RSF fighters] went…all that’s left is the 22nd Division falls…the most importance thing is Al-Obeid (North Kordofan). If Al-Obeid falls, you have sieged the whole country. After al-Obeid falls, where will the northerners go? It’s full of Shawayga [northern tribe] and dirt and filth. Just like Kassala [east Sudan]. If you hurt them economically, their screams will mean nothing”.
Sudan In The News cannot verify whether the recording is fabricated. Yet we can confirm the genocidal and racist rhetoric of Medeikhir’s son – As’ad Haroun Medeikhir.
The radicalisation of Medeikhir’s son
Haroun Medeikhir’s son As’ad is an outspoken RSF supporter as reflected by his Twitter account. Created in April 2019, it is an indicator of how As’ad political stances developed in accordance to his father’s situation.
In 2019, As’ad’s account mainly posted selfies, where his resemblance to his father is apparent. A year later, he was part of the 30 June nationwide protests on the 31st anniversary of the coup that brought ex-president Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist regime to power.
In September 2020, he would upload a picture of his father for the first time. He did so again in January 2021, this time with a hashtag translating to ‘May God free you, dad’. In March 2021, he announced his father’s freeing from prison.
In August and September 2021, As’ad published two tweets calling for the release of Ali Rizkallah, also known as Al-Safana. A prominent member of the RAC, he was captured in November 2017 at the same time as Musa Hilal and Haroun Mideikhr. Al-Safana was subsequently freed days before 2022. By May 2024, he was an RSF commander for the militia’s siege of Al-Fashir, with a video broadcast of him turning off one of the city’s main water pumping stations, and a critical water resource for an estimated 270,000 people.
Another indication of how As’ad’s political positions developed in alignment with his father’s stances is a tweet from 3 October 2021 accused the FFC of hypocrisy in the name of Sudan who do not know the colour of the Sudanese flag. The RAC, which was united at the time, was part of the FFC when it started in 2019. It withdrew from the coalition on 13 October 2021, just two weeks before the military coup.
As’ad would then post on Twitter less frequently until the war on April 2023, where his radicalisation would become more apparent as he would regularly spout RSF propaganda, engage in arguments and post provocative tweets justifying genocide and ethnic targeting. These include:
22 April 2024: In response to his father’s former RAC boss Musa Hilal siding with the army, As’ad wrote: “we, as the sons of Mahamid, do not care about this and we do not recognize Musa. If he announced standing with the Jalaba [northerner’s] army, he will be soaked [in blood] from us as Mahamid before the RSF. We will not abandon this issue. F*ck Musa and f*ck the army”.
15 July 2024: As’ad justified the RSF’s collective punishment of civilians in Al-Fashir by writing: “the people staying in Al-Fashir are all volunteer fighters. The civilians left early, [the RSF] provided them with safe passages. Those who remain should just handle [the violence]”.
15 July 2024: As’ad justified the RSF genocide targeting the non-Arab Masalit community in Darfur, with a tweet that read: “the war was between Arabs and Masalit. For your information, [Arabs] didn’t kill only 15,000 of them, the real number is above 28,000…15,000 [were only killed] in [West Darfur] state. Now, we say to the sons of the armed movements, if your war is against Arabs buckle up and the smart one wins”.
9 August 2024: Asa’d responded to a video showing severe floods in Al-Matamah, River Nile state with a tweet saying: “more floods, oh God”. When asked “what is the fault of these citizens,” he responded: “two days ago they were happy with the floods in Darfur… now we can only be happy and more floods for them [northerners].
The end of the FFC-RSF partnership?
Despite indications that the formation of the UCF could spell the start of an alternative political partnership for the RSF, suspicions remain that the FFC / Taqadum is the militia’s political partner.
An indication of this was the recent controversy where by Algoney Hamdan Dagalo, the younger brother of RSF leader Himedti, was spotted in London with two FFC leaders: former justice minister Nasreddine Abdelbari and former sovereign council member Mohamed Hasan El-Ta’aishi. This came a month after Izzat’s sacking. It is worth noting that, at around the same time a year earlier, it was Izzat with the two aforementioned FFC politicians at a meeting in Togo.
In addition, accusations were renewed that the FFC / Taqadum are the militia’s political partners, following pro-RSF statements made by Taqadum spokesperson Alaaeldin Nugud that will be explored in the next article.
