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In the late 1980s, the Sudanese regime of dictator Omar al-Bashir unleashed a militia that would come to define brutality in Africa's modern wars. They called them the Janjaweed, which literally means, "devils on horseback". Armed, mounted, and emboldened by al-Bashir's backing, these men swept across Darfur's dry plains, torching villages, looting, killing and raping without any limits, restraint, or fear of consequences. Survivors said the pattern was always the same. First came the air strikes by al-Bashir's forces, then the horsemen. Men were shot or mutilated, women gang-raped and children abducted. Some rape survivors and victims were as young as one-year-old. The Janjaweed's leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, nicknamed Hemedti, rose fast. He and his fighters claimed power, land, and Sudan's rich gold mines, while Sudan swung helplessly between generals and feeble civilian leaders.
Fast-forward three decades. The Janjaweed have traded their horses for pickup trucks and drones. Their new identity is of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is still led by Hemedti, who stands accused of crimes against humanity.
The crisis in Sudan, called the worst humanitarian crisis, has seen tens of thousands killed and at least 12 million people displaced. About 25 million people are facing a famine-like food situation. However, the crisis has been on the world's blind spot.
Hemedti's forces captured El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur region, from the Sudanese army this week. Images and videos of mass executions are emerging from Sudan, sparking global outrage. One of the images, claimed to be from El-Fasher, shows a woman embracing her son seconds before being executed by RSF gunmen.
"Yale University released satellite images from el-Fasher, a Sudanese city in North Darfur. These images, taken from space, showed the land literally stained red in blood. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia's massacre of Darfur residents was so brutal and bloody that we can see it from space," wrote author-commentator Hen Mazzig on X on Wednesday.
"What recently happened in Al Fasher, Sudan amounts to one of the worst cases of genocide and ethnic cleansing carried out by the RSF militia," said Saudi political analyst Salman Al-Ansari.
WHY MASS KILLINGS AND CHAOS IN SUDAN?
Sudan's long-time dictator, Omar al-Bashir, who once armed militias, including the Janjaweed, to crush a rebellion in western Darfur region, was ousted in 2019 after months of mass protests. The army seized control, promising democracy. But the promised democracy never came.
The uneasy power-sharing between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and his deputy Hemedti imploded in April 2023. Both men wanted to rule Sudan. The RSF wanted its lakh men absorbed under the army, and autonomy and control of its gold-fed empire in the west.
Things didn't go so as planned. Shots were fired. Within hours, the capital, Khartoum, turned into a war zone. Within days, western Darfur burnt again. Today, more than two years into the latest civil war, Sudan's army chief is locked in battle with the head of a powerful paramilitary force. There's a humanitarian catastrophe. The risk of a large-scale atrocity is growing "by the day," says the United Nations.
Days later, the RSF seized the North Darfur region, forcing the army to retreat.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR reported escalating violence in El-Fasher. Ethnically motivated atrocities are taking place in El-Fasher, the Army said, accusing the RSF of executing "more than 2,000" civilians. The violence forced an estimated 26,000 people to flee while thousands remain trapped amid brutal fighting. They are now at the mercy of the RSF's armed checkpoints, extortion, detention, looting, and harassment. The UN agency adds that a dire humanitarian crisis is rapidly worsening.
And Hemedti's RSF, the present-day avatar of the Janjaweed, who on horseback rode through Darfur, plundering gold and brutalising humanity, is powered by their own gold mines. They carry on the same brutal business, denying generations of Sudanese even a chance at life.
The conflict, which split the nation after the birth of a Christian-dominated South Sudan in 2011, now threatens to tear what's left of it apart again, fear experts.
Here's a quick breakdown of what's going on in Sudan, and the how and why behind it.
BID TO ISLAMIZE SUDAN RESULTED IN DARFUR GENOCIDE
After gaining independence from the British and Egypt in 1956, Sudan was torn by two long north-south civil wars that eventually led to the secession of South Sudan in 2011.
The country endured decades of military coups, including Omar al-Bashir's 1989 takeover, whose Islamist regime ruled with repression and fuelled the Darfur genocide in the 2000s.
Bashir was ousted in 2019 after mass protests, raising hopes for democracy, but the army and the RSF soon fell out over power-sharing. That rift exploded into the current civil war in April 2023, pitting the army against the RSF, which has since captured large parts of western Sudan, including El-Fasher.
While the army has made some gains in recent months, the RSF's capture of El-Fasher in North Darfur on Sunday marks a major setback for Sudan's military. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the situation "unbearable", as reports emerged of RSF fighters brandishing guns, punishing and killing civilians in areas they now control.
Satellite images and videos verified by news agency Reuters show RSF fighters firing on fleeing residents and celebrating inside the captured base.
SUDAN'S HUMANITARIAN CRISIS WORSE THAN IN GAZA
After the start of the civil war in 2023, Sudan is currently facing the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Yes, worse than what we are seeing in Gaza. Nearly 25 million people, around the entire population of Australia, are experiencing extreme hunger, said the United Nations.
According to the UN, more than 1.5 lakh people have been killed, and 12 million have fled their homes. It is perhaps the largest displacement crisis in the world. Entire cities in Sudan lie in ruins. Khartoum is a blackened shell, hospitals bombed, planes scorched on the runway.
The UN has accused both the RSF and the army of committing war crimes, allegations that both sides have denied.
WHY IS THE UAE BACKING THE RSF IN SUDAN?
The army, led by Burhan, wants to reassert control and preserve the state. It brands the RSF as terrorists and has vowed vengeance for massacres in Darfur. The army is backed by Egypt, Turkey, and Iran. Today, the army holds most of the north and the Red Sea coast.
The RSF, led by Hemedti, claims to fight for marginalised regions and democracy. But behaves more like a militia empire, taxing traders, exploiting gold mines, and governing by fear. The RSF, with alleged support from the UAE and Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar, controls almost all of Darfur and Kordofan in western and central Sudan.
Earlier in June, RSF fighters took over Sudan's border with Libya and Egypt.
Neither side has honoured ceasefire talks in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Each still believes it can win, and the war goes on. Donald Trump, has already personally tasked Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to work on ending Sudan's civil war by throwing weight behind the army. Trump must be eager, obviously.
The US said it had determined that the RSF and allied militias committed genocide.
WHY IS THE UAE BACKING THE RSF IN SUDAN?
The war in Sudan appears to be a proxy war.
Egypt backs the official army, fearing instability on the Nile. The UAE has been accused of funding the RSF through gold smuggling and illicit logistical networks.
"I am sickened by the images of the RSF seizing El Fasher in Sudan. The UAE needs to cease their support NOW," wrote American Cogresswoman Sara Jacobs, pinning the blame on the UAE.
"British arms sold to the United Arab Emirates are being found in Sudan, where the UAE is arming the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces as they commit genocide," wrote Kenneth Roth, former Human Rights Watch (HRW) Executive Director, on X.
Russia's Wagner Group previously traded weapons and had mining deals with Sudanese groups associated with the RSF. Of late, the Kremlin is wooing the army to get a port on the Red Sea. Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where the country's 90%of the international trade is done, is under the army.
Turkey, Qatar, Eritrea and Iran are arming the army.
Chad and Libya are suffering refugee spillovers.
HOW DO JANJAWEEDS OF THE 1990s, NOW RSF, CHALLENGE THE ARMY?
The RSF are not new. They are the Janjaweed, rebranded. It is the same leadership, same militias, with some new funding streams.
Janjaweed was formalised into the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under Hemedti in 2013. The RSF gained power by controlling lucrative gold mines in Darfur and Kordofan, generating revenue independent of the state. Hemedti's family is reported to be one of the richest in Africa.
This financial and armed strength has allowed the RSF to challenge the Sudanese Army directly, seizing territory and leveraging influence over locals. It combines militia networks, economic control, and alliances. It's very well a parallel power centre, threatening the army's monopoly on force.
HOW SUDAN'S RSF MILITIA DERIVES POWER FROM GOLD?
Behind the carnage in Sudan lies a buried treasure, gold.
Sudan is Africa's third-largest producer of gold, and much of it lies in RSF-held regions. According to investigations by various news outlets, gold from mines in South Darfur and Kordofan is smuggled to the UAE, where it enters global markets.
The RSF-linked Al Gunade company monopolised the processing of gold tailings and managed gold exports from North Darfur.
For Hemedti, gold is war fuel. It's financing his fighters, buying drones, paying for foreign support.
In 2023, the RSF seized the Khartoum gold refinery containing 1.6 tonnes of gold worth $150.5 million.
Earlier, a UN panel of experts on Sudan estimated that the RSF-controlled areas would produce 10 tonnes of gold in 2024, worth around $860 million.
Sudan's army, meanwhile, accuses the UAE of arming the RSF while profiting from the gold it exports. Abu Dhabi denies the allegations.
The Sudanese government even filed a case at the Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing the UAE of complicity in genocide. The court dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction, but the charge underlined a reality few deny that foreign money is keeping this war alive in Sudan.
WHY IS THE RSF'S RETURN TO DAFUR SCARY? RAPE FOR ARAB BABIES
In western Sudan, the RSF's recent dominance has revived an old fear of a deliberate, ethnically targeted campaign to remake Darfur as an Arab-ruled zone. Communities like the non-Arab group Massalit, animists and Christians, have long borne the brunt.
A Human Rights Watch report in 2024 documented what it called "a systematic campaign of killings and rape with the intent to destroy the Massalit community."
Women described being raped while fighters shouted racial slurs, saying they would "make Arab babies", noted a BBC report.
"I think race is in the play here. That's what I feel now. We see the pattern now," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who grew up during the war in Ethiopia.
The US State Department has held that the RSF and allied militias committed genocide in Darfur. Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken said they murdered and raped on "ethnic basis".
"The RSF and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys—even infants—on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence," Blinken said.
A later UN report documented RSF fighters using racist slurs and threatening non-Arab women during sexual assaults, even declaring they would force them to bear "Arab babies".
Earlier this year, the Criminal Court convicted a former Janjaweed commander for 2000s-era crimes. But the new atrocities of mass rapes, drone bombings, starvation sieges are unpunished.
WILL KILLINGS, VIOLENCE FORCE SUDAN TO SPLIT ONCE AGAIN?
Sudan already lost its oil-rich south in 2011, when South Sudan seceded after decades of civil war. South Sudan is a Christian-majority country with a sizeable Muslim population.
Now, with Darfur and Kordofan under RSF control and Port Sudan serving as army chief al-Burhan's temporary capital, the country faces another partition. A military Sudan on the Red Sea, and a militia RSF Sudan inland.
Alan Boswell, the Crisis Group's Project Director for the Horn of Africa, told The Wall Street Journal, "without swift progress in peace talks, reunifying the country will become increasingly difficult".
Even as we publish this story, innocent civilians are being sprayed with bullets by the RSF, yet Sudan's crisis rarely makes headlines. For the people of Darfur, this isn't history repeating. It's the same story. The devils on horseback are back, but only with more power and bloodthirst.
- Ends
Published By:
Sushim Mukul
Published On:
Oct 29, 2025
