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Amid reports of new atrocities by their troops in Sudan, leaders of the Rapid Support Forces were cheered at an elaborate political event in Kenya.
By Declan Walsh
Reporting from Nairobi, Kenya
The Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group battling for power in Sudan’s ruinous civil war, took a step toward forming its own breakaway government on Tuesday when it hosted a lavish political event in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
The group’s deputy leader, Abdul Rahim Dagalo, who is under American sanctions, was greeted by hundreds of cheering people as he arrived at the elaborate event, held at a state-owned convention center in downtown Nairobi.
Mr. Dagalo did not speak at the event, and a promised charter meant to pave the way for a parallel government in R.S.F.-controlled areas was not signed. Officials said they needed another three days to negotiate the terms of the charter with Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, the leader of another Sudanese rebel faction, who sat beside Mr. Dagalo.
The meeting was a moment of striking symbolism for the R.S.F., which only last month was formally accused of genocide by the United States, and comes against the backdrop of shifting battlefields in Sudan as well as a torrent of American foreign policy changes and evolving alliances in the region.
Sudan’s army has scored a series of battlefield victories in recent months, pushing the R.S.F. out of key areas in Khartoum, the capital, and in central Sudan. The R.S.F. hopes to ends that losing streak, and bolster its claim to rule, by forging a government for the considerable swath of the country it holds.
In an amphitheater bedecked with Sudanese flags, where cheering men in white turbans filled entire rows, speakers railed against the army and spoke of their desire to forge a “new Sudan.”
“We need a new constitution and to draw up a new social contract that will resolve the perennial question of how Sudan is governed,” said Mr. al-Hilu, who leads a faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North and has fought successive Sudanese governments for decades from his base in the Nuba Mountains, in southern Sudan.
Other speakers lauded the R.S.F. as a pro-democracy movement and flashed images of Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, the group’s leader, on a giant screen to loud cheers. Reports from Sudan, though, spoke of fresh atrocities by the group.
Activists and Sudanese officials accused R.S.F. fighters of killing over 200 people, including infants, during a brutal three-day assault on two villages in White Nile state, in the south of the country. Some were shot dead as they attempted to flee across the Nile River, according to Emergency Lawyers, a group that monitors the conflict.
In a statement, Sudan’s foreign ministry put the death toll at 433.
Last week in the Darfur region of western Sudan, R.S.F. fighters stormed a famine-stricken camp in the besieged city of El Fasher in an assault that killed dozens of civilians, aid groups said. The top United Nations official in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, said she was “shocked” by the violence.
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By The New York Times
Emergency Lawyers also accused Sudan’s army of “barbaric” assaults on civilians, including killings and forced disappearances, as allied fighters hunt for R.S.F. collaborators in Khartoum.
War broke out in April 2023 when Sudan’s army and the R.S.F., whose leaders had seized power in a coup, began fighting in Khartoum. The war has torn asunder one of Africa’s largest countries and led to suffering on a sweeping scale. Fighting has caused tens of thousands of deaths, forced over 12 million people from their homes and set off a rapidly spreading famine that is likely the world’s worst in decades.
President Trump’s foreign aid freeze has deepened the pain. Hundreds of volunteer-run soup kitchens that were feeding over 800,000 people in Khartoum have closed in recent weeks as American funding dried up.
On Monday, the U.N. appealed for $6 billion to respond to the crisis.
Whether the R.S.F. plan to create its own government can succeed is uncertain, as even speakers at Tuesday’s event acknowledged. Sudan has a long history of fragile peace deals that quickly “collapsed, then returned to war,” Mr. al-Hilu told the crowd.
Still, the R.S.F. retains staunch financial and military support from its principal foreign backer, the United Arab Emirates, which appears determined to ensure that its Sudanese proxy does not lose the war, said several foreign officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive assessments.
On Feb. 8 the army chief of the Sudanese military, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, told political leaders in Port Sudan that he also intended to create a new government. It would be composed of “independent people” and led by a new civilian prime minister, he said.
If the R.S.F. charter does come to pass, however, it could mark a turning point in the war, hardening divisions and splitting the country into rival regions, much as Libya was divided after the ouster of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011.
A portrait of President William Ruto of Kenya hung over the R.S.F. deputy leader, Mr. Dagalo, at the convention center on Tuesday.
That the R.S.F. was able to launch its political project at a state-owned convention center in Nairobi, reinforced suspicions among Sudanese officials that Kenya had effectively picked a side in the conflict.
Declan Walsh is the chief Africa correspondent for The Times based in Nairobi, Kenya. He previously reported from Cairo, covering the Middle East, and Islamabad, Pakistan. More about Declan Walsh
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