Hemedti
Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo Musa, commonly known by the mononym Hemedti, is the military head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which is involved in the Sudanese civil war against the Sudanese Armed Forces led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. He is also serving as the chairman of the presidential council of the de facto Government of Peace and Unity since 2025.
A Janjaweed chief from the Rizeigat tribe in Darfur, Hemedti was one of the warlords leading the Janjaweed in the war in Darfur and is accused by several organizations to be one of the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide. Hemedti later joined the RSF and has served as its military head since 2013. He took part in the revolution against President Omar al-Bashir, and, following the 2019 Sudanese coup d'état, became the deputy head of the Transitional Military Council. On 21 August 2019, the TMC transferred power to the civilian–military Transitional Sovereignty Council, of which Hemedti is a member. As of 2019, Hemedti 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 TMC, Hemedti signed a political agreement on 17 July 2019 and the Draft Constitutional Declaration on 4 August 2019, together with Ahmed Rabee on behalf of the Forces of Freedom and Change, as major steps in the 2019 Sudanese transition to democracy. Under Article 19 of the Draft Constitutional Declaration, Hemedti and the other Sovereignty Council members would be ineligible to run in the next Sudanese general election. In September 2019, Hemedti helped negotiate a peace deal between groups in armed conflict in Port Sudan.
In October 2021, Hemedti took part in army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan's 2021 Sudan coup d'état, but a growing rift between him and al-Burhan caused him to call that coup a "mistake" in February 2023, and in April 2023 he mobilised the RSF against al-Burhan's government and captured key government sites, and thereby started the current Sudanese civil war.
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. Hemedti 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, earning him the sobriquet "Butcher of Darfur". 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
Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo Musa asserts his birthplace as Sudan, yet according to the BBC, The Guardian and Al Jazeera his family, who are part of a Rizeigat tribe known for camel herding and trading, migrated to the Darfur region in western Sudan in the 1980s, escaping from war and drought in Chad. Sources differ on Hemedti's date of birth, with various publications placing it at differing points between 1973 and 1975.In a 2009 interview with Foreign Policy, Hemedti reiterated the same story to Journalist Jérôme Tubiana. Tubiana continued in his article on Hemedti that "His uncle Juma Dagalo, chief of the Rizeigat tribe of the nomadic Baggara Arabs, failed to be recognized as a tribal leader in North Darfur state, but South Darfur authorities welcomed the newcomers and allowed them to settle on land belonging to the Fur tribe, Darfur’s main indigenous non-Arab group."
Hemedti 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 tribe, which is part of the camel-herding Northern Rizeigat tribal confederation.
Hemedti 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
He was one of the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide. Hemedti 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 by the 1989–2019 government of Omar al-Bashir, who, as of 2019, is a fugitive indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by the International Criminal Court. The RSF was created in 2013 under the leadership of Hemedti, out of former Janjaweed groups of fighters, several of whose leaders and supporters have been indicted for war crimes by the ICC.Sudanese political cartoonist Khalid Albaih claimed that the soldiers commanded by Hemedti "committed countless war crimes" during the war. A European diplomat interviewed by The National claimed that Hemedti 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 Hemedti 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 Hemedti has "accumulated more Sudanese blood on his hands in conflict in Darfur and Sudanese conflict in South Kordofan and Blue Nile| South Kordofan—as well as in Khartoum and elsewhere—than any other man in the country" and that Hemedti's management of the war was "by means of serial atrocity crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity".
23 November 2004 Adwa massacre
Hemedti was the leader of one of the Rizeigat militias who killed 126 villagers, including 36 children, 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. Under Hemedti's direct orders, the militias shot male villagers immediately, raped young girls and detained women for two days. Hemedti 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 Hemedti, 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 Hemedti'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 reported killings of civilians and rapes by RSF personnel.Sudan Liberation Movement/Army rebels of Minni Minawi's faction had been present in some of the towns but had left them at the time of the crimes against humanity carried out under Hemedti'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 Hemedti 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, Hemedti's RSF separated the men from the children and assassinated the men.
In March 2014, Hemedti's RSF moved to North Darfur and continued to destroy villages in which the SLA/MM was absent and shot and raped 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 Hemedti 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
Hemedti recruited fighters from Sudan to fight as mercenaries in the Saudi–Emirati intervention in the Yemeni civil war. Hemedti's RSF and other Sudanese security forces killed civilians, destroyed infrastructure and committed other war crimes.Business interests
Hemedti used the RSF to take over gold mines and arrest rival Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal in November 2017, with the result that Hemedti 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 is run by Hemedti's brother Abdul Rahim Hamdan Dagalo, the deputy head of the RSF, and two of Abdul Rahim's sons.Hemedti 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 Hemedti 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 Hemedti 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 Hemedti 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 Hemedti to strengthen his military through many business deals that were channeled through Dubai. UAE had also paid huge sums of money to Hemedti to send thousands of troops to Yemen to fight their proxy war. The Yemen war had hugely benefited General Hamdan.
Hemedti also visited Russia during the Russian invasion of Ukraine to sign a partnership deal with the Wagner Group in exchange for giving them the license to mine gold in Sudan.
According to Western officials, General Hamdan’s wealth includes livestock, real estate and private security firms, with much of the money held in Dubai. It helped Hemedti build his paramilitary forces which as of 2023 were better equipped than the regular Sudanese military.