RSF: Janjaweed Rebranded

The Sudanese Civil War that erupted in 2023 can be traced back to the Government of Sudan's (GoS) longstanding policies toward Darfur, the country's westernmost province. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—which are now at war with the GoS—was born and nurtured in Darfur, a region that, in the early 2000s, was the site of a genocide carried out by the GoS and its allied Janjaweed militia.

Viewed from Khartoum, Darfur has long been considered an “exotic side appendage” of Sudan, and this perception has fueled its economic, social, and political marginalization. Situated on the geographic periphery of the country, Darfur has often been overlooked in favor of more central regions. As a result, the province has seen little attention or investment from the capital. The scarcity of urban centers in Darfur and the widespread lack of basic amenities and infrastructure—outside of the regional capitals—reflects Khartoum’s disregard for the rest of the province.

Until the late 1970s, Darfur's population—a mix of Arab nomadic herders (such as the Baggara), non-Arab agriculturalists (including the Fur and Masalit), and semi-nomadic camel herders like the Zaghawa—lived in relative harmony. Most of these communities held a parochial worldview, defined in local terms and by local concerns, an outlook that dovetailed with Khartoum's “benevolent neglect” of the region. However, throughout the 1970s, Darfur and its people were increasingly drawn into an ethnicized nationalistic discourse, setting the stage for future violence.

The end of Sudan’s colonial period was overshadowed by the First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972), a secessionist war fought between the GoS and the Anyanya guerilla movement. A defining feature of the war was the racialization and ethnicization which motivated the violence: the war pitted the “Arabized” Islamic North against the “non-Arab” and black Christian South, a population with a long history of exploitation at the hands of Northerners. The war formally ended in 1972 with the Addis Ababa Agreement, which granted the South semi-autonomy within the framework of a unified Sudan. Although the settlement depressurized the political space in Sudan, it roiled regional geopolitics.

The peace agreement disappointed Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi who, the year before, proposed to Sudan’s president Gaafar Nimeiry the merger of their two countries and the creation of an “Arab Union.” Embittered but determined, Gaddafi sought other means to realize his plan, namely the creation of a revolutionary Islamic movement, the Failaka al-Islamiya (Islamic Legion). The goal of the legion was to “Arabize” the region by fostering pan-Arab movements in neighbouring states, including Chad and Sudan. To this end, Gaddafi supported the creation of the militantly racist Tajammu al-Arabi (“Arab Gathering”) pan-Arabist movement in Darfur. The advent of Tajammu al-Arabi marked the beginning of the ethnopoliticization of the province, as the tribes of Darfur were increasingly called upon to declare themselves as either “Arab” or Zurga (“blacks”) (Prunier, 2005; Herr, 2024).

The introduction of an exclusivist arch nationalist movement and its ideological progeny in the borderlands between Libya, Chad, and Sudan caused regional tensions to rise and led Khartoum and Tripoli to engage in a series of proxy conflicts. Nimeiry allowed Hissèn Habré’s anti-Libyan Forces Armée du Nord (FAN) to settle in Darfur and harass the Libyan border; Gaddafi supported Sadiq al-Mahdi’s Sudanese dissidents in their attempts to overthrow the regime in Khartoum. This escalated in 1976 with the invasion of a Libyan-backed militia, which briefly captured the Sudanese capital before being driven out. The GoS retaliated with brutal reprisals, a campaign which included imprisoning and executing hundreds of suspected sympathizers in Darfur (Prunier, 2005). Exploited and brutalized by the Libyan, Chadian, and Sudanese governments, life had become intolerable for many living in Darfur, especially in the western borderlands, where the violence and devastation forced thousands to seek safety in camps for the internally displaced.

The impact of violence and displacement was exacerbated by a devastating environmental crisis. Throughout the 1970s, diminished rainfall led to escalating desertification across North Africa. In Darfur, the encroaching Sahelian aridity caused much of the northern pastureland to disappear. The loss of grazing lands sparked intense competition between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers, leading to frequent violent clashes over even minor disputes. For example, the traditional Fur practice of burning invasive grasses was met with violent resistance from Baggara herders, many of whom relied on the foraging opportunities provided by these weeds for the survival of their livestock (Thomas, 2009).

By the mid-1980s, Darfur was gripped by a humanitarian catastrophe. The region was ravaged by a severe famine known as maja’a al-gatala (“famine that kills”), displacing tens of thousands and causing the deaths of an estimated 95,000 people. The worst effects of the famine could have been mitigated, had the GoS not prioritized funding Hissèn Habré’s anti-Libyan operations over the welfare of its own people. In this context, Muammar Gaddafi saw an opportunity to exploit Khartoum’s neglect. He dispatched food aid convoys to Darfur, guarded by hundreds of Libyan soldiers. Though officially tasked with protecting the convoys, the soldiers were in fact ordered to settle in Darfur and arm local Baggara tribesmen who were allied with Gaddafi’s interests (Prunier, 2005).

The onset of famine in Darfur and its geopolitical fallout overlapped with the breakdown of North-South relations. In part fuelled by the ideology of “Arab Supremacy” which permeated regional political discourse, Nimeiry abrogated the Addis Ababa Agreement and promulgated the “September Laws,” which called for the nationwide imposition of shari’a law (Møller, 2006). This triggered a rebellion in the South and marked the beginning of the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005). The rebellion coalesced around the SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army), led by John Garang. Initially, the aim of the rebellion was not secession, but rather the creation of a unified, secular Sudanese state. When that failed, the SPLA became the spearhead of South Sudan’s militant independence movement.

The Second Sudanese Civil War further traumatised Darfur, which became a hinge for multiple wars and conflicts. The GoS, which enjoyed a brief rapprochement with Libya in the late-1980s, ransomed the province to Gaddafi in exchange for Libyan weapons, money, and troops which were funnelled into its war against the South. In return, Gaddafi was given effectively free rein in Darfur and used the province as both a training ground for Libyan soldiers and launching pad in the ongoing Chadian-Libyan War. The result locally was an escalation of inter-tribal violence: Fur militia fought Baggara tribes allied with the Libyan regime, pro-Chadian Zaghawa and Salamat militiamen burned Fur villages, IDP camps were destroyed, and the Chadian Army engaged in cross-border attacks against pro-Libyan militia camps (Prunier, 2005).

The proliferation of militias was a common feature of the war. The GoS relied on several “irregulars” and paramilitary organizations, including the Popular Defence Forces (PDF) and, most notoriously, the Janjaweed (“devil on a horse”). The ideological origins of the Janjaweed can be traced to Gaddafi’s Failaka al-Islamiya, which inspired the Tajammu al-Arabi Arab supremacist movement in Darfur. The idea of pan-Sahelian Arab supremacy and an Arab “master race,” coupled with shared grievances among Arabs in Darfur which blamed “non-Arabs” for their life conditions, proved sufficient to galvanize the movement. The Janjaweed possessed a racialized and ethnicized worldview which othered the black African Fur and Masalit as “slaves” and “insects” “unworthy” of Sudanese identity (Brosché and Rothbart, 2013).

The rise of the Janjaweed coincided with two pivotal developments: the conclusion of the Chadian-Libyan War and a soft coup that overthrew Nimeiry’s government. In its place, an Islamist regime emerged under the leadership of Omar al-Bashir and Hasan al-Turabi, head of Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood. With the National Islamic Front (NIF) now in control of the Sudanese government, Khartoum declared a jihad against Southern insurgents and mobilized the Baggara murahaleen militias under the umbrella of the Popular Defence Forces (PDF) (Møller, 2006).

At the same time, Darfur faced another environmental crisis. Diminished rainfall and ongoing desertification brought about severe droughts and famines throughout the 1990s. As in previous decades, these harsh conditions led to intense competition for scarce resources, particularly between nomadic, semi-nomadic, and pastoralist communities (Herr, 2024). This rivalry fuelled ethnic conflicts, including the Fur-Arab Wars (1987-1989) and the Masalit-Arab War (1997-1999), which resulted in hundreds of deaths and the displacement of thousands of Darfurians.

After decades of government policies which vacillated between “benevolent neglect” and active incitement of racial hatred and violence in the province, the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups formed the Darfur Liberation Front (DLF) and demanded support from Khartoum. To force the government’s hand, the rebels—renamed the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A)—in league with the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), attacked government installations. Khartoum chose to read these attacks as an insurgency and, in response, launched a counterinsurgency campaign that involved recruiting, organizing, and providing weapons to the Janjaweed.

The GoS recruitment campaign in Darfur targeted young unemployed Arabs, nomadic groups with long-standing grievances against their black African neighbors, demobilized soldiers, and even convicts—released on the condition that they join the militia. To enhance the effectiveness of the Janjaweed, Khartoum established militia bases in El Fasher, where these disparate recruits were organized into units, trained, indoctrinated, and incentivized with promises of material reward. In 2003, Khartoum unleashed the Janjaweed, marking the beginning of a devastating campaign of violence across Darfur (Brosché and Rothbart, 2013).

In collaboration with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the Baggara-dominated Janjaweed orchestrated a brutal, years-long genocidal campaign against the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa peoples, as well as smaller tribes like the Tunjur, Misseriya Hebel, and Birgo. Between 2003 and 2005, approximately 58% of the attacks on Darfur’s villages were the result of a coordinated effort between the regular Sudanese military and the Janjaweed. The militia's primary objective was to “[c]hange the demographics of Darfur and empty it of African tribes” (Herr, 2024; Brosché and Rothbart, 2013; Reeves, 2005).

These SAF-Janjaweed attacks followed a predictable pattern. A typical assault would begin with aerial bombardments from SAF Antonov cargo planes, after which hundreds of Janjaweed fighters—often wearing official military uniforms and mounted on horseback or camels—would descend on the village. Supported by Sudanese government vehicles, including armed technicals and logistical vehicles, they would strike terror into the community. As they attacked, the Janjaweed shouted, “Kill all the Nuba!” and “Kill! Kill! Kill!” What followed was a relentless wave of violence: rape, abductions, torture, murder, and widespread pillaging (Brosché and Rothbart, 2013; Totten, 2011).

By the end of the War in Darfur in 2005, an estimated 1,595 villages had been destroyed. Over the course of the war, an estimated 2 million people were killed, and 4 million were displaced, marking one of the most devastating humanitarian crises of the twenty-first century.

In the aftermath of the War in Darfur and the Second Sudanese Civil War, the GoS restructured the Janjaweed into a parastatal force known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The continuity between the Janjaweed and the RSF is unmistakable. When the RSF was officially formed in 2013, it was placed under the command of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo—better known as Hemeti—the former Janjaweed leader. While the precise motivations behind the GoS’s decision remain unclear, it is likely that the move to “legitimize” the Janjaweed by rebranding it as a formal security entity reflected President Omar al-Bashir’s intent to centralize control over the violence in Darfur. The fact that the RSF appeared to report directly to the president supports this interpretation. Since its formation, the RSF has expanded its operations beyond Sudan’s borders, including deployments in Libya and Yemen. Domestically, its brutal reputation has persisted; in 2013, the RSF was reportedly involved in the killing of several hundred protesters in Khartoum.

Relations between the RSF and the SAF deteriorated sharply in 2023, culminating in the RSF’s designation as a rebel group. The irony is stark: a force organized, trained, and legitimized by Khartoum to execute its genocidal campaign in Darfur has now turned its weapons against the state that created it. Since then, the RSF has been engaged in open conflict with the SAF and the GoS, escalating violence across Darfur, the capital, and other regions.

The continuing operations of the RSF—both within Sudan and beyond its borders—underscore a deeper crisis. Sudan has reached a critical inflection point. It exemplifies the characteristics of a “weak state”: one that lacks the institutional capacity to enforce law and order or assert legitimate authority without resorting to violence. Often, this weakness is masked by reliance on non-state actors, such as militias, vigilante groups, and privatized security forces. The very tools used to project power have now become sources of instability, dragging the country further into fragmentation and prolonged conflict.

Joseph M. Snyder is Associate Professor of History at Southeast Missouri State University, where he teaches courses on ancient history, African history, and British history. He has published on social development in British Sudan, the influence of the Fabian Society on British colonial development in Africa, and contemporary literary criticism of the British Empire. His current book projects examine the place of British Sudan in Anglo-Egyptian treaty negotiations after World War II and Fabianised colonial development projects in Kenya, Uganda, and Sudan.

Select Bibliography

Brosché, Johan, and Daniel Rothbart. Violent Conflict and Peacebuilding: The Continuing Crisis in Darfur. London: Routledge, 2013.

Hastrup, Anders. The War in Darfur: Reclaiming Sudanese History. London: Routledge, 2013.

Herr, Alexis, ed. Darfur Genocide: The Essential Reference Guide. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024.

Prunier, Gerard. Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.

Totten, Samuel. An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2011.

Totten, Samuel, and Eric Markusen, eds. Genocide in Darfur: Investigating the Atrocities in the Sudan. New York: Routledge, 2006.