Sudan's Ruin: The Two Generals Waging a War of Personal Ambition

14 hours ago7 min read3 comments

The devastating civil war consuming Sudan is not a fight for ideology or nation, but a raw contest of personal ambition between two powerful men: General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary commander Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Their bitter rivalry has plunged the nation into chaos, a fact starkly illustrated by the RSF's recent capture of El Fasher, a strategic victory that effectively splits the country in two.While the international community engages in high-level diplomacy—including a recent U. S.intervention announced by former President Donald Trump—these maneuvers offer little solace to Sudanese civilians enduring the conflict's visceral horrors. The siege and subsequent fall of El Fasher was a masterclass in systematic terror.For 18 months, residents endured relentless drone strikes and shelling that deliberately targeted hospitals. The ground assault that followed saw RSF fighters, often filming their actions, conduct house-to-house raids, executing people in the streets and perpetrating mass rape against women and girls in a grotesque display of brutality shared across social media.These are not collateral damages; they are the documented, deliberate tactics of a war fueled by the ambitions of two men shaped by Sudan's violent history. General al-Burhan positions himself as the head of the legitimate state.A career military officer, his past is intertwined with the Darfur conflict and leading troops in Yemen. His power base is a fragile coalition, propped up by funding and fighters from hardline Islamist factions opposed to peace.His vision is a return to a military-dominated state, an authoritarian model that previously sparked a popular revolution. His forces have also committed grave abuses, including blocking life-saving humanitarian aid.In direct opposition is Hemedti, a commander who has evolved from a leader of the notorious Janjaweed militias in Darfur into a billionaire businessman with a vast empire built on gold mines. His political project is not to restore the state but to replace it with a personal fiefdom run by his private army.His claims to represent the marginalized are brutally contradicted by his forces' conduct, which experts describe as a genocidal campaign of looting, rape, and pillage from Khartoum to Darfur. This conflict is the tragic culmination of a 40-year cycle of violence and despair.The international community's belated attention must now confront an uncomfortable truth: the two men driving this war are products of a system long ignored by the outside world. Extinguishing this fire will require more than a temporary truce; it demands a fundamental reckoning with the deep-seated economic and social grievances that created them.

#Sudan

#civil war

#Abdel Fattah al-Burhan

#Hemedti

#RSF

#human rights

#genocide

#featured

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