Hemedti

Hemedti
Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (born ), generally referred to mononymously as Hemedti, Hemetti, Hemeti, or Hemitte ("little Mohamed"), is a Janjaweed leader from the Rizeigat tribe in Darfur, who was the Deputy head of the Transitional Military Council (TMC) following the 2019 Sudanese coup d'état. Since 2013, Hemetti has commanded the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). He was considered by The Economist to be the most powerful person in Sudan as of early July 2019.
On 21 August 2019, the TMC transferred power to the civilian–military Transitional Sovereignty Council, of which Hemetti is a member. Under Article 19 of the August 2019 Draft Constitutional Declaration, Hemetti and the other Sovereignty Council members were to be ineligible to run in the 2022 Sudanese general election. As of 2019, Hemeti was considered one of the richest people in Sudan via his company, al-Junaid, which had a wide array of business interests including investment, mining, transport, car rental, iron and steel. On behalf of the Transitional Military Council, Hemetti signed a Political Agreement on 17 July 2019 and a Draft Constitutional Declaration on 4 August 2019, together with Ahmed Rabee on behalf of the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC), as major steps in the 2019 Sudanese transition to democracy. In September 2019, Hemetti helped negotiate a peace deal between groups in armed conflict in Port Sudan.
Hemetti took part in the 2021 Sudan coup d'état, but has since distanced himself from it; in February 2023 he called it a "mistake". The comments were part of a growing rift between him and army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. In April 2023, Dagalo mobilized the RSF against al-Burhan's government, claiming to capture key government sites, though al-Burhan has disputed this.
According to Human Rights Watch and professor Eric Reeves, the RSF was responsible for crimes against humanity, including systematic killings of civilians and rapes, in Darfur in 2014 and 2015. Hemetti was also involved in the 23 November 2004 attack on the village of Adwa which resulted in a massacre and rape, and said that the attacks had been planned for months. According to Al Jazeera and The Daily Beast, the Sudanese Transitional Military Council, headed by the RSF, holds major responsibility for the 3 June 2019 Khartoum massacre.
Childhood and youth
Sources differ on Hemetti's date of birth, with various publications placing it at differing points between 1973 and 1975. The nephew of Juma Dagalo, chief of the Rizeigat tribe of the nomadic Baggara Arabs, Hemetti attended primary school up to third grade and received no other formal education. He moved to North Darfur and then settled in South Darfur in 1987. He is a member of the Awlad Mansour sub-section of the Mahariya tribe, which is part of the camel-herding (Abbala) Northern Rizeigat tribal confederation. Hemetti may have traded camels prior to the War in Darfur. This claim was called into question with at least one source instead calling him "a highwayman." However this claim was later debunked by Jerome Tubiana, a researcher, journalist and the International Crisis Group’s former senior Sudan analyst.
Paramilitary career and criminal allegations
Hemetti became a leader of the Janjaweed during the War in Darfur that started in 2003 and an "amir" in the Border Guards in the same year. He was appointed brigadier–general in the newly created Rapid Support Forces (RSF) by the 1989–2019 government of Omar al-Bashir, who is a fugitive indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The RSF was created in 2013 under the leadership of Hemetti, out of former Janjaweed groups of fighters, several of whose leaders and supporters (Ahmed Haroun, Ali Kushayb, Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein, in addition to al-Bashir) have been indicted for war crimes by the ICC.
Sudanese political cartoonist Khalid Albaih claimed that the soldiers commanded by Hemetti "committed countless war crimes" during the war. A European diplomat interviewed by The National claimed that Hemetti aims to "distance himself" from the war crimes that occurred during the war. Niemat Ahmadi, the founder of the Darfur Women Action Group, stated that Hemetti became well known during the War in Darfur "because of the people he killed, the number of villages he destroyed, the many women who were raped".
Sudan researcher Eric Reeves estimated that it is "likely" that Hemetti has "accumulated more Sudanese blood on his hands in conflict in Darfur and [in the conflict in] South Kordofan—as well as in Khartoum and elsewhere—than any other man in the country" and that Hemetti's management of the war was "by means of serial atrocity crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity".
23 November 2004 Adwa massacre
Hemetti was the leader of one of the Rizeigat militias who killed 126 villagers in Adwa in South Darfur in a methodical, systematic attack starting on 23 November 2004 at 6am. The militias burned all the houses, and burned some bodies and threw others in wells to hide evidence of the massacre. The militias shot male villagers immediately, raped young girls and detained women for two days. Hemetti stated to African Union officials that the massacre had been planned in coordination with government soldiers over several months.
2014–2015 crimes against humanity in Darfur
In 2014, the RSF, led by Hemetti, carried out the "Operation Decisive Summer" in South Darfur and North Darfur from late February to early May 2014, during which they carried out "killings, mass rape and torture of civilians; the forced displacement of entire communities; the destruction of the physical infrastructure necessary for sustaining life in the harsh desert environment including wells, food stores, shelter, and farming implements." RSF members under Hemetti's command repeatedly attacked and burned 10 towns in South Darfur, mostly during the two days starting 27 February 2014. Witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported killings of civilians and rapes by RSF personnel.
Sudan Liberation Movement/Army rebels of Minni Minawi's faction (SLA/MM) had been present in some of the towns but had left them at the time of the crimes against humanity carried out under Hemetti's command. Witnesses reported men shot in the head by the RSF after having been forced to lie on the ground, and women selected for rape in the bush. Khalil, a witness from Hiraiga, stated that he saw Hemetti enter Hiraiga with other RSF members on the day that seven women, whom Khalil named, were raped either in Hiraiga or in Afouna nearby. In the village of Um Bargarain, Hemetti's RSF separated the men from the children and assassinated the men.
In March 2014, Hemetti's RSF moved to North Darfur and continued to destroy villages in which the SLA/MM was absent and shoot and rape civilians. In "Operation Decisive Summer" phase II, the RSF, together with other government soldiers, carried out a campaign of killings of civilians and rapes in Jebel Marra and East Jebel Marra from December 2014 to May 2015.
Ibrahim, a defector from RSF interviewed by HRW, stated that Hemetti and other RSF officers gave orders to "abuse women". Ibrahim saw 11 women raped during an RSF attack on Hijer Tunyo and admitted to killing one woman whom he tried to rape.
Crimes against humanity in Yemen
Hemetti recruited fighters from Sudan to fight as mercenaries in the Saudi–Emirati intervention in the Yemeni civil war. Hemetti's RSF and other Sudanese security forces killed civilians, destroyed infrastructure and committed other war crimes.
Business interests
Hemetti used the RSF to take over gold mines and arrest rival Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal in November 2017, with the result that Hemetti became the biggest gold trader in Sudan via his company al-Junaid. This gave him considerable financial power in Sudan since gold trade constituted forty percent of Sudanese exports in 2017. Al-Junaid (or Al Gunade) is run by Hemetti's brother Abdul Rahim Hamdan Dagalo, the deputy head of the RSF, and two of Abdul Rahim's sons.
Hemetti was on the Al Junaid Board of Directors in 2009. By around 2019, al-Junaid had expanded to deal in "investment, mining, transport, car rental, iron and steel". In April 2019 Hemetti was described by Alex de Waal as "one of the richest men in Sudan ... at the centre of a web of patronage, secret security deals, and political payoffs." The gold mined in Sudan was sent to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where Hemetti kept much of his money, which he used to fund his paramilitaries. In 2019, Global Witness reported that the UAE was a key supplier of military equipment to the RSF. Both Hemetti and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had ties to the Putin regime in Russia. According to Business Insider, "The two generals helped Russian President Vladimir Putin exploit Sudan's gold resources to help buttress Russian finances against Western sanctions and fund his war in Ukraine."
The UAE had helped Hemetti to strengthen his military through many business deal that channeled through Dubai. UAE had also paid huge sum of money to Hemetti to send thousands troops to Yemen to fight their proxy war. The Yemen war had hugely benefited General Hamdan.
Hemetti also visited Russia during Ukraine's invasion to sign a partnership deal with the Wagner Group in exchange of giving them the license to mine gold in Sudan. General Hamdan built an advanced and better equipped paramilitary forces than the Sudanese military with the wealth, that is distributed within livestock, real estate and private security firms, with much of the money held in Dubai.
2019 Sudanese coup d'état
Hemetti became Deputy head of the Transitional Military Council (TMC) after using the RSF to detain former president al-Bashir during the 2019 Sudanese coup d'état.
In May 2019, Hemetti's first international trip was to Saudi Arabia to meet Mohammad bin Salman, during which he stated: "Sudan is standing with the kingdom against all threats and attacks from Iran and Houthi militias." Al Jazeera English suggested that Hemetti was seen as the real head of the Transitional Military Council rather than the official head Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. The National described Hemetti as "widely seen to be ambitious and a seasoned political player".
The 3 June 2019 Khartoum massacre in which 100 protestors were killed, hundreds wounded, and other civilians raped and homes pillaged, were carried out in large part by the RSF under Hemetti's leadership according to The Daily Beast and Sudanese political cartoonist Khalid Albaih. Albaih described Hemetti as "Sudan's version of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, ..., young and power-hungry ... and just like MBS[,] ruthless."
2019 transition procedures
On behalf of the TMC, as the 2018–19 Sudanese protests continued, Hemetti signed a Political Agreement on 17 July 2019, together with Ahmed Rabee on behalf of the FFC. On 4 August 2019 Hemetti and Rabee signed, on behalf of the TMC and FFC, a Constitutional Declaration to define details of transitional arrangements absent from the Political Agreement. The transition procedures plan for a 39-month duration including a Sovereign Council of five civilians, five military officials, and a civilian leader chosen by consensus between the TMC and the FFC.
Sovereignty Council member
On 21 August 2019, Hemetti became one of the 11 members of the transitional, collective, combined military–civilian head of state, called the Sovereignty Council. Under Article 19 of the August 2019 Draft Constitutional Declaration, Hemetti, along with the other Sovereignty Council members, is forbidden from running in the 2022 Sudanese general election scheduled to end the transitional period.
In September 2019, Hemetti helped groups in Port Sudan from the Beni-Amer people and the Nuba peoples who had been in armed conflict to reach a conciliation deal. Before the signing ceremony, he had said that he would deport both tribes, if they did not reach a deal, and after the deal was signed, he apologised for his "earlier tough language".
Dagalo was funded by the United Arab Emirates and met with the leader of the UAE, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in February 2022. According to Sudanese diplomats, his closest ally in the Emirates is the country's vice president, Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
On 13 March 2023, he arrived in Eritrea and met with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki.
Matters of Peace
Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo has led the governmental negotiations team with the rebel movements in Juba, the capital of South Sudan. And following many rounds with the leaders of these movements, who have been rebelling against the state since 2003, in the regions of Darfur, Blue Nile, and South Kordofan, they managed to reach a peace agreement in October 2020.
2023 Sudan war
On 15 April 2023, Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces launched various attacks against Sudanese Army bases across the country, including in the capital Khartoum. Later, fighting broke out between the Rapid Support Forces and the Army, as clashes were reported at the Presidential Palace and at the residence of General al-Burhan; both Dagalo and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the Sudanese armed forces claimed control over the two sites. On 15 April, Dagalo claimed that SAF commanders were attempting to return recently deposed leader Omar al-Bashir back to power. On 16 April, Abdalla Hamdok, the Former Prime Minister of Sudan appealed to both Dagalo and al-Burhan to agree on a permanent cease fire and stop the fighting. Dagalo claimed his forces were defending against “radical Islamists” in Sudan via his Twitter. As of 1 May, the clashes have continued, although with occasional ceasefires. On 19 May 2023, Dagalo was formally dismissed from his Transitional Sovereignty Council position by decree, allegedly appointing Malik Agar in his place.
Dagalo’s RSF had received help from foreign countries. Russia’s Wagner Group, Libya’s LNA commander Khalifa Haftar, and the United Arab Emirates had helped the RSF with military supplies, helicopters, and weapons.
The WHO confirmed that in six days of war, 413 people had been killed, 3,551 had been injured, and 11 health facilities had come under attack.
Death hoax
In April 2023, a Twitter account impersonating the Rapid Support Forces announced that Hemedti had died following injuries sustained in combat. The tweet received 1.7 million views before being taken down. Hemedti denied the reports of his death in audio recordings published since then.
References
1975 births
Living people
Members of the Transitional Sovereignty Council
Sudanese Muslims
Sudanese generals
Sudanese people of Chadian descent
People of the war in Sudan (2023)