RSF Fighters Sow Chaos in Sudan's Farming Heartland

When fighters from Sudan's Rapid Support Forces began seizing vehicles from people in Sharafat Alhalaween village, local elders complained to the group’s commanders.

They assured the village during a March visit that the RSF would protect civilians, according to four residents. Soon afterward, the RSF posted a video on social media - reviewed by Reuters - claiming to have dealt with unspecified "rogue actors" in the area.

But the next morning, the residents told Reuters, dozens of fighters stormed in on motorcycles and pickup trucks, firing guns in the air. The fighters, some in uniforms, went door to door grabbing money and valuables, prompting an exodus of thousands of people, they said.

The residents' accounts echo ones from across Sudan's central El Gezira state, a key farming region and strategic crossroads just south of the capital, Khartoum. Reuters interviewed 43 people from 20 communities - including residents, activists and RSF recruits - who described a spiral of looting, kidnapping and killing after the group seized most of the state in December.

The RSF has sought to convey in videos like the one posted in March that it is protecting civilians and providing food and services. But residents said the paramilitary group relies on a mix of irregular fighters, many motivated by bounty, and it often struggles to control them.

The Sudanese Armed Forces, which shared power with the RSF in a military-led government until fighting erupted between them in April 2023, has carried out airstrikes in El Gezira but has few ground forces there, according to residents and local activists. The military mobilized civilians to defend their communities, triggering deadly retribution, they said.

The violence has driven over 850,000 people from their homes, the United Nations says, disrupted farming critical to Sudan's food production and raised questions about the RSF's ability to enforce any truce after nearly 16 months of war.

"Some RSF officials admit that the group will face huge internal challenges should the war ever stop," said Alan Boswell of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. "It is bound together by conquest and the spoils of war."

The RSF denied targeting civilians or lacking command and control of its forces.

"The army, Islamist militias and criminals looted the state systematically in order to scapegoat our forces," it said in a statement to Reuters. "Our forces clashed with these rogue actors, and our commanders and soldiers died in that effort."

A military spokesman, Brigadier General Nabil Abdullah, dismissed the RSF's allegations as lies, saying the group and its mercenaries "committed every conceivable violation" against El Gezira's citizens.
Across Sudan, the RSF has repeatedly overwhelmed the military thanks in part to alliances forged with tribal militias and other armed groups. In July, it used El Gezira as a springboard to push into Sennar, White Nile and Gedaref states, triggering new waves of displacement and expanding the conflict through Sudan's agricultural heartland.

A fifth of the country's 50 million inhabitants have fled their homes, and around half are facing food insecurity, mainly in areas under RSF control, according to UN officials who describe the humanitarian crisis as the world's worst.

International efforts to mediate between the sides have made little headway, though the United States is leading efforts to convene talks in Geneva.

The RSF says it is open to negotiating a ceasefire and humanitarian access. The military says it cannot negotiate until the RSF exits civilian areas and stops abuses.

EYEING LOOT

The RSF has roots in so-called Janjaweed militias, which helped the military crush a rebellion in Sudan's western Darfur region two decades ago, gaining recognition as a state-sanctioned security force in 2017.
It allied with the military to oust president Omar al-Bashir in 2019, but the sides fell out over an internationally backed plan to move toward civilian rule.

When the power struggle turned violent, the RSF, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, quickly took over greater Khartoum. The military, headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, responded with airstrikes and heavy artillery, to little effect.

The RSF then consolidated its grip across Darfur before surging into El Gezira, a refuge for half a million people displaced from Khartoum, and capturing the state capital, Wad Madani.

In Darfur, the RSF and allied militiamen engaged in ethnically targeted violence, but in El Gezira, residents said the fighters seemed convinced they were Bashir loyalists.
Some are seeking to settle grievances against a political elite that has long controlled Sudan from its center - a problem for any future truce, said Suliman Baldo of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker, a US-based watchdog.

Most are eyeing loot, he and residents said.

Three sources with direct knowledge of RSF recruitment said fighters are often drawn by the promise of a share of the spoils. The RSF denies this and says its fighters are paid monthly salaries.

The force includes units from rival tribes and militias, which sometimes clash among themselves, residents said.

Fighters based in Hasaheisa, the district that includes Sharafat Alhalaween, are under the command of Ahmed Adam Gouja, who was part of a militia active in Darfur before joining the RSF at the start of the war.

This area has seen some of the harshest attacks in El Gezira, especially after salaries dried up, residents and two local RSF recruits told Reuters.

"When you ask the soldiers about Hemedti, they say, 'He gave me this gun, but we don't trust him; we don't trust his soldiers; we only trust our brothers,'" said one young man reached by phone, who like many locals asked for anonymity for fear of retribution.

He described seeing fighters cock their weapons at superiors when ordered to shut down a satellite terminal they were using to sell internet access. Asked about the incident, the RSF said it did not control the terminal or prevent people from using it.

Across the Nile River in East Gezira district, residents have been spared the worst of the violence as the RSF's top commander in the state, Abuagla Keikal, is from the area. He charges a protection tax, according to locals and activists who said fighters based in the district have clashed with Gouja's forces when they strayed over the river.

Reuters could not reach the two commanders, and the RSF did not answer questions about them.
FARMERS THREATENED

Civilians described fleeing from village to village on foot and in cars, boats, buses and donkey carts to escape RSF fighters.

First they steal cars, gold and money, more than two dozen witnesses said, returning later for items such as clothes, electronics and food, which are sold in so-called "Dagalo markets" - a reference to Hemedti.

When they find nothing, they start kidnapping people for ransom, threatening to kill them if families don't pay, according to a group of activists, the Wad Madani Resistance Committee, who document RSF raids across the state.

A committee representative, who requested anonymity for safety, said hundreds of villages have been targeted and at least 800 people killed as of April, though a telecommunications blackout makes it impossible to confirm exact numbers.

The Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, a rights group, has documented 75 cases of sexual assault by RSF fighters in the state, said its regional director, Hala al-Karib.

At least 17 people interviewed by Reuters said they had seen beatings, often with whips, and killings during the raids.

A mother of five who sought refuge in El Gezira after fleeing Khartoum said a nephew was killed in front of her.

"They said, 'Don't lift him, or we'll shoot you too.' We had to bury him where he was," said the woman, reached by phone in Port Sudan. She gave only one name, Hanan.

RSF fighters have cleaned out stocks of wheat, sorghum and other crops and blocked farmers from their fields, according to residents and agricultural officials.

"My fields are being eaten by cows because the farmers are scared to go out," said Mohamed Balla, a farming cooperative leader from Hasaheisa.
Diesel prices have soared; fertilizer and seeds are scarce, and tractors have been stolen.

A UN-backed food security monitoring network warned in June that parts of the state were at risk of famine.

The RSF did not answer questions about the disruptions to food production but has previously blamed a military blockade imposed on the state. The military did not comment on that.

Early in the war, the RSF set up an internal police force to tackle "negative phenomena," its term for abuses. This force has arrested more than 1,000 men in El Gezira, mostly locals, the RSF told Reuters in July.

Residents said the effect was limited. In several instances, RSF police clashed with fighters, but raids did not stop, they said.

Low on ground troops, the military has tried to encourage a so-called popular resistance. Burhan said in December that 40,000 men had joined the effort in El Gezira - many of them incensed by RSF attacks on women, according to the resistance committee.

"The RSF uses this as an excuse to attack," said the committee's representative, adding that few weapons and little training have been provided to civilian recruits.

One of the worst such incidents occurred in June, near the military's last base in El Gezira.

After men in Wad al-Noura village took up arms against the RSF, its fighters killed more than 100 people there, the committee said.

The RSF described the incident as a clash with army recruits and special forces. The military did not comment, though it pledged at the time to deliver a "harsh response.”

"My husband was a teacher," a woman widowed in the incident told Reuters. "He didn't know anything about fighting, and we had nothing to fight for, no car or store. But as a man, he felt he had to fight."

On the walls of the palatial mausoleum built to house the remains of former Syrian President Hafez Assad, vandals have sprayed variations of the phrase, “Damn your soul, Hafez.”
Nearly two weeks after the ouster of his son, Bashar Assad, people streamed in to take photos next to the burned-out hollow where the elder Assad’s grave used to be. It was torched by opposition fighters after a lightning offensive overthrew Assad's government, bringing more than a half-century rule by the Assad dynasty to an end, The Associated Press said.
The mausoleum's sprawling grounds — and the surrounding area, where the ousted president and other relatives had villas — were until recently off limits to residents of Qardaha, the former presidential dynasty's hometown in the mountains overlooking the coastal city of Latakia.
Nearby, Bashar Assad’s house was emptied by looters, who left the water taps running to flood it. At a villa belonging to three of his cousins, a father and his two young sons were removing pipes to sell the scrap metal. A gutted piano was tipped over on the floor.
While the Assads lived in luxury, most Qardaha residents — many, like Assad, members of the Alawite minority sect — survived on manual labor, low-level civil service jobs and farming to eke out a living. Many sent their sons to serve in the army, not out of loyalty to the government but because they had no other option.
“The situation was not what the rest of the Syrian society thought,” said Deeb Dayoub, an Alawite sheikh. “Everyone thought Qardaha was a city built on a marble rock and a square of aquamarine in every house," he said, referring to the trappings of wealth enjoyed by Assad's family.
In the city’s main street, a modest strip of small grocery stores and clothing shops, Ali Youssef, stood next to a coffee cart, gesturing with disdain. “This street is the best market and the best street in Qardaha and it’s full of potholes.”
Families resorted to eating bread dipped in oil and salt because they could not afford meat or vegetables, he said. Youssef said he dodged mandatory military service for two years, but eventually was forced to go.
“Our salary was 300,000 Syrian pounds,” a month, he said — just over $20. “We used to send it to our families to pay the rent or live and eat with it" while working jobs on the side to cover their own expenses.
"Very few people benefited from the former deposed regime,” Youssef said.
So far, residents said, the security forces made up of fighters from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — the main group in the coalition that unseated Assad, and which is now ruling the country — have been respectful toward them.
“The security situation is fine so far, it’s acceptable, no major issues,” said Mariam al-Ali, who was in the market with her daughter. “There were a few abuses ... but it was fixed.” She did not elaborate, but others said there had been scattered incidents of robberies and looting or threats and insults.
Al-Ali called Assad a “traitor,” but she remained circumspect about her Alawite community's position in the new Syria.
“The most important thing is that there should be no sectarianism, so there will be no more blood spilled,” she said.
Dayoub, the Alawite sheikh, described “a state of anticipation and caution among all citizens in this area, and in general among Alawites,” although he said fears have started to ease.
At the town’s municipal building, dozens of notables sat on bleachers discussing the country' s new reality and what they hoped to convey to the new leadership.
Much was centered around economic woes — retired public servants' salaries had not been paid, the price of fuel had risen, there was no public transportation in the area.
But others had larger concerns.
“We hope that in the next government or the new Syria, we will have rights and duties like any Syrian citizen — we are not asking for any more or less,” said Jaafar Ahmed, a doctoral student and community activist. “We don’t accept the curtailment of our rights because the regime was part of this component.”
Questions also loomed about the fate of the area's sons who had served in Assad's army.
Since the army's collapse in the face of the opposition advance, residents said several thousand young army recruits from Qardaha have gone missing. Some later turned up on lists of former soldiers being held at a detention center in Hama.
“These are young guys who are 22 or 23 and they never took part" in active combat, said Qais Ibrahim, whose nephews were among the missing. Over the past few years, active combat was largely frozen in the country's civil war. “We send our children to the army because we don’t have any other source of income.”
Um Jaafar, who gave only her nickname out of fear of reprisals, said the family had no information about the fate of her two sons, stationed with the army in Raqqa and Deir Ezzour, though one son's name later turned up on the list of those imprisoned in Hama.
“My children got the best grades in school, but I didn’t have the ability to send them to the university,” she said. “They went to the army just for a salary that was barely enough to cover their transportation costs.”
Syria's new authorities have set up “reconciliation centers” around the country where former soldiers can register, hand over their weapons and receive a “reconciliation ID” allowing them to move freely and safely in Syria for three months.
But Ahmed, the doctoral student, said he wants more. As the country attempts to unify and move on after nearly 14 years of civil war, he said, “We want either forgiveness for all or accountability for all.”
Ahmed acknowledged that during the war, “rural Latakia was responsible for some radical groups,” referring to pro-Assad militias accused of widespread abuses against civilians. But, he said, opposition groups also committed abuses.
“We hope that there will be either an open process of reconciliation ... or transitional justice in which all will be held accountable for their mistakes, from all parties," he said.
"We can’t talk about holding accountable one ... group but not another.”

RSF Fighters Sow Chaos in Sudan's Farming Heartland