Musa Hilal’s “Awakening”: Khartoum’s worst nightmare?
By the Sudan Democracy First
Musa Hilal, once one of the principal commanders of the Janjaweed militias which supported the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) in the 2003/04 ethnic cleansing campaign in Darfur, has increasingly become a thorn in the Government of Sudan’s (GoS) side. The already tense relations between Hilal and the GoS recently took a turn for the worse for the government when a spokesman for Hilal’s Sudanese Awakening Revolutionary Council (SARC) on 24 February 2015 gave the government until 10 March to respond to SARC’s political demands or risk facing unspecified consequences. Such ultimatums have come and gone in the past without consequences, mostly because the GoS has consistently compromised to avert a confrontation with Hilal’s forces. However, this time the SARC instructed its followers to boycott and obstruct the April 2015 elections in Darfur even before the ultimatum’s deadline. Given the strategic importance of the elections for the Government’s hopes of gaining some legitimacy, the Government and SARC appeared on a collision course that neither could avoid without a public loss of face.
Come the 10 March, the GoS blinked yet again. The presidency sent word to SARC it was dispatching a mediation team to meet with Hilal. Media reports indicated the government’s readiness to accept the SARC’s demands and act on them on the condition that the SARC does not interfere with the elections. A SARC spokesman said it would allow the elections to proceed while awaiting the implementation of the Government’s promises. Hilal later endorsed President Bashir’s candidacy and invited his followers to vote for the ruling National Congress Party. Media reports alleged that during the 13-16 April polling, elements loyal to Hilal were seen forcing voters who were boycotting to vote for the ruling party candidates and Al-Bashir.
The dramatic reversal has raised doubts about Hilal’s sincerity and real intentions and concerns about how far the Government might go to contain his growing political ambitions without relinquishing ultimate control on its manipulative policies in Darfur. The relations between the two are best captured by the legendary “Hair of Muawia”, whereby one party would relax its hold on the hair when the other pulls on it lest it irreparably breaks. So far, Hilal has proven more expert at this game than the GoS, doing most of the pulling and getting higher leverage on the government at each incident.
The media speculated that the Government’s best option would be to concede to Hilal and his followers key positions in the state and federal governments, including one vice-presidency position and the position of North Darfur governor that Hilal has made no secret of coveting. Sources tell SDFG that Hilal would in fact be pressing to a first vice-president from Darfur and to nominate three of Darfur’s five governorships and two deputy governors. In a recent interview with the reporter Ms. Shamail El-Nour of al-Tayar newspaper, Hilal pondered “why would the successor to Bashir either be Nafei Ali Nafei or Ali-Osman? Why not Hilal or Tigani El Seissi?” He added that he has recently started dreaming of ruling Sudan for the first time. Proximity to power circles in the center has taught him that “the government doesn’t pay attention to any political demands that are not backed up by military force,” hence Hilal’s current postures of keeping his option open without precipitating military confrontation with the government prematurely.
In return for conceding to Hilal, the GoS would want him to dissolve his militia, estimated at 3, 000 fighters. It would make sense for the Government to want to absorb Hilal’s militia into the Rapid Support Forces, already based on former Janjaweed. This is a scenario feared by human rights and peace activists in Sudan because of its implications for the dynamics of the protracted and overlapping conflicts in Darfur. Further, the GoS has already used Hilal as a counterweight for Darfur’s armed rebel groups, seen as dominated by the non-Arab groups and would further be inclined to concede to Hilal to prevent him from switching over to the other side.
These developments are occurring at a time when Sudan is engaged in delicate negotiations with both the African Union and the United Nations, demanding the drawdown of their hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur. GoS’ argument for pressing ahead with this demand is that it had brought the security situation in Darfur under control, an allegation that makes a mockery of the realities of the security situation on the ground as evidenced by UNAMID’s own reporting and that of the UN’s Panel of Experts on Sudan. The UN and the AU would be wise to consider the multiple layers of complexity among the factors that continue to threaten the security of civilians in Darfur, including the emergence over the last few years of a multitude of autonomous violent armed actors, in the forms of tribal militias, all initially recruited and armed by the GoS, but over whom it ended up loosing control. Infighting among these groups, and their occasional attacks on government troops or threats of such as in the case of Musa Hilal’s SARC, currently represent the most single threat to civilian security in the five federal states of Darfur.
The African Union’s High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP), mandated to mediate between the Government and the Darfur’s armed groups of the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF), would need to factor in the implications for their mediation efforts of the growing tensions between the GoS and these autonomous armed actors, as represented by Musa Hilal’s new forces.
The Unravelling of a Criminal Enterprise
If Hilal re-joins the SAF’s campaign against the Darfur armed movements, this will be seen as a triumph of the proponents of Arab supremacy in Darfur and at the national level, as argued for by the Arab Gathering. In October 1987, twenty-seven prominent Darfurian Arab politicians, intellectuals, and tribal leaders launched the Arab Gathering in a public letter to the then Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi. The signatories demanded more prominent political roles for Darfuri Arabs, without which, “should the negligence of the Arab race continue and should the Arabs not be allowed their fair share in government, we are afraid that things may get out of the hands of wise people and revert to the ignorant people and mob. Then a catastrophe with dire consequence, may take place.”
Many among these self-proclaimed “wise men”, founders of the Arab Gathering, have shaped events in Darfur and Kordofan. When the Darfur rebellion broke out in 2003, led by youth activists of African tribal origins, several Arab Gathering leaders recruited members of their tribes to fight the rebellion, including using Hilal to recruit and lead the Janjaweed. The strategy they successfully lobbied the Government to adopt consisted of collectively punishing and uprooting the social base of the rebellion, namely the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa tribes, and the destruction of the wealth of these tribes by expelling them from their homelands and looting their assets, namely fertile lands and livestock.
This strategy has resulted today in 2.5 million Darfuris condemned to living in camps for internally displaced for over 12 years. Hundreds of thousands more are in refugee camps in neighboring countries. The GoS continues to apply this strategy today, as documented in the latest report of the UN’s Sudan Expert Panel.
However, to date SARC’s acts of defiance have been squarely aimed at the GoS, and its fighters have frequently clashed with militias under SAF’s chain of command. There is no evidence at this writing of collusion between Hilal and the masterminds of the Arab Gathering. It is evident, however, that Hilal is largely inspired by the same level of deep frustrations that inspired the Arab Gathering. Khartoum has become adept at exploiting these negative feelings in its divide to rule policies in Darfur, and ultimately the Arab tribes themselves have come to pay a heavy toll for allowing their youth to be used as cannon fodder in the GoS’ military strategy applied in Darfur and other conflict areas of the country.
Alternating the Hot and the Cold
Relationships between Hilal and the GoS did not unravel overnight, but have steadily worsened, reaching a low in early 2015. Hilal, tribal chief, militia leader, UN sanctioned war criminal, parliamentarian, and Senior Advisor to the Minister of Federal Affairs, could still step up his military challenge to the Government if his demand continued to be ignored.
Following the integration of his Janjaweed fighters into the Border Guards in 2005, the Government welcomed Hilal to Khartoum and repaid him with a political position to secure his support in rallying Darfur Arab tribes behind the ethnically driven counterinsurgency strategy against the Darfur rebel movements. Hilal won a parliamentary seat in the 2010 and later was appointed as Advisor to the Federal Government Chamber.
After several public statements critical of the GoS’s policies in Darfur and unheeded demands for change, Hilal quietly left Khartoum in mid-2013 and settled in his home area of Mustareeha in north-western North Darfur state. There he built a considerable fighting force by reclaiming command of a majority of Border Guards and ambushing reluctant units to capture their vehicles and weapons. Hilal suggested in the interview with al-Tayar newspaper cited above that many of the Border Guards who remain on the payroll of the government and under the SAF’s chain of command remain in fact loyal to him and would respond to his call to rally his command if the need arose.
To counter Hila’s growing military influence, the Government in late 2013 appointed the second most prominent Border Guard commander, Mohamad Hamdan Dogolo a.k.a. Hemeity, commander of the newly created Rapid Support Forces. The move succeeded in averting an estimated 4,000-5,000 militiamen loyal to Hemeity from joining Hilal. Most importantly, from the perspective of GoS’ ruthless divide to rule policies, the move succeeded in building a strong rival militia commander to Hilal as it exploited the historic rivalries between the Mahariya clan of the same Rezeigat tribe of Hilal’s Mahameed.
Hilal publicly launched the Sudanese Awakening Revolutionary Council in January 2014. Around the same time, he asserted de facto control over large swaths of North Darfur, declaring them off limit for the government. The area covers the four localities of Kebkabiya, Kutum, al-Waha and the Saraf Omra. Under his command, the SARC developed a participatory system for the locals to choose their own commissioners. The SARC also runs a traditional court system, and levies taxes on commercial traffic in the area.
Hilal also oversaw a series of tribal reconciliation conferences, most prominently that between his own Abbala tribesmen (camel herders of North Darfur) and the Beni Hussein. A conflict between the two groups in 2013 over control of newly discovered gold mines in Jebel Amer, falling under the control of the Beni Hussein, led to 1,500 fighters and civilians being killed, mostly among the semi-sedimentary Beni Hussein, and displaced tens of thousands of artisanal gold miners. In addition to tribal conferences, the SARC have organized joint patrols among concerned tribes to retrieve stolen livestock, one of the main triggers of deadly tribal disputes all over Greater Darfur.
Portrait of a Repentant Warlord: A Genuine Change of Heart or Political Opportunism?
Since his 2013 defection from the ruling party, Musa Hilal has been posing as a unifier of Darfuri people across their tribal divides against the hegemonic center. He would do this bridge building, he told a researcher, as “the leader of all Arab tribes in Darfur,” adding “we have the majority in the field. We have the majority of livestock. There can be no solution without us.”
While willingly taking responsibility for his role as the lead mobiliser for the Janjaweed militias responsible for the massive atrocity crimes that took place in Darfur in 2003-04, Hilal remains in denial of his own responsibility and of forces under his direct command for any of the mass killings and rapes that occurred then. For the mobilization of Arab tribes, he claims to have acted as a tribal leader at the request of the GoS, and that tactical command of operations of militias he helped recruit was in the hands of SAF officers deployed to oversee the militiamen. When asked by al-Tayar newspaper why the attacks targeted only tribes of African origin, he responded that the then unified Darfur rebel movement was established on ethnic basis and attacked Arab groups. “We defended the area and our people. Our role was thus in the interest of the government and complementary to it. This is the basis of the alliance between us and the Center.”
However, neither Hilal nor the government had explained to date why their response to the rebellion had gone beyond fighting the rebels to the indiscriminate targeting of millions of unarmed civilians belonging to Darfur’s three largest tribes of African origin.
Having belatedly realized the cost of the government’s strategy to his own people, Hilal has tabled a coherent set of political demands of far reaching reforms, and backed these by the threat of use of force. The Government would obviously be opposed to concede to any of the SARC’s core demands. These are in essence similar to those of the rebel alliance between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) and the Darfur armed movements, the Sudanese Revolutionary Front, which the Government has rejected. In mid-March, in a public address to a large audience in the town of Mellit, North Darfur, Hilal gave a prosaic presentation of his demands from the government.
These rotate around four axes or “dossiers” in SARC’s parlance:
1. The political demands require genuine devolution of powers from the “center” to the “peripheries” and better and fairer representation of Darfurians in the highest echelon of powers, specifically in sovereignty ministries. Appointing a Darfuri to a First Vice-President position would be the minimum as well. Further, Hilal is also insistent to preserve SARC as an independent political entity or party and not to dismantle it as appears to be required by the government and ruling NCP in exchange for satisfying his other demands.
2. The security demands relate to the future of his fighters and those of other government militias. They should benefit from proper integration in the national army in units that would no longer be ethnically constituted as in the present. Further, based on the observation that none of the graduates of the Arab tribes recruited by the government as “gunners” is ever admitted to the national military or police academies, Hilal demands better access of “our kids” and other Darfurians to all military and civilian higher education schools so that they could find future employment in senior civil and military positions.
3. A developmental axes consists of demanding equal and fair development of all Sudan’s historic five regions in accordance of their respective areas and sizes of populations. Hilal also demands positive discrimination for the historically marginalized regions.
4. A social axes consists of what Hilal calls “mending the social fabric in Darfur”. He sees himself as contributing to this endeavour through the tribal reconciliation he presides over in areas under the control of the SARC.
SARC went to great lengths to increase the military and political pressures on the GoS so that it deals more seriously with its four core demands. In early July 2014, the SARC signed a memorandum of understanding with the SPLM-N. The two sides denounced the Government for inciting ethnic hatred among the Sudanese and vowed to work together to topple the regime and bring peace, ethnic reconciliation and democratic transformation to the country. The following December, a spokesman for Hilal announced the support of the SARC to the Sudan Call, the alliance between the political opposition, the SRF and civil society groups signed on 3 December 2014 in Addis Ababa.
While posing as a revolutionary spokesman for all of Darfur’s tribes, Hilal has yet to apologize and account for the atrocity crimes forces under his command committed against fellow Darfurians. Many therefore see in Hilal’s political manoeuvring a form of political opportunism to ensure a place for himself, and the groups for which he stands, in any new negotiated political dispensations that might come from national processes, such as the elusive “National Dialogue” meant to resolve Sudan’s chronic political crisis and protracted negotiations between the GoS and the SRF mediated by the AUHIP.
Beyond these political motivations, Hilal consistently blames the Government for having turned Darfur tribes against each other. Over the last few years Darfur Arab tribes have often engaged in violent conflict over local disputes. The Government dismisses these as traditional inter-tribal disputes despite the fact that the conflicts are also driven by Government security policies and divide and rule tactics to weaken its own Arab allies so that they never gain sufficient strength to challenge the interests and hegemony of the ruling elites from Sudan’s Northern and River Nile states that constitute the core of the regime.
Further, statements by SARC spokesmen implicitly convey a sense of deep disappointment at having been exploited and later abandoned by the Government without getting much in return for their own people, the nomadic tribes of Arab origin of northern Darfur, a majority of whom remain as destitute as Darfurians of African origins. One spokesman for the SARC lamented that, “We became mere gunners for the government and it failed in delivering “basic” services to our people… After fighting for the government until we became known as Janjaweed, we found ourselves outside the arena of the dialogue while the armed movements joined the government…..Our cause today is following the steps of Darfur’s cause and the demands of the armed movements.”
Hilal’s changed discourse and position is creating confusion among his many victims and the Darfur rebel movements. Some commentators have argued against the growing rapprochement with the SARC, saying that it was immoral to build alliances with a perpetrator of mass atrocities. Clearly, the pragmatic arguments of others to the contrary prevailed. Surprisingly, one of the steadfast opponents for any dealings with the Government on account of its genocidal conduct, Abdel Wahid Mohamed Nur, leader of Sudan Liberation Army-AW, issued a statement supporting the January 2014 agreement between the SARC and the SPLM-N. Nur always showed pride in the local agreements he has managed to broker over the years between SLA-AW and local commanders under Hilal.
Possible Future Scenarios
The government and SARC have succeeded in averting a frontal clash last March, as they had done in February when Hilal had threatened to resign from his official posts and turn against the government. While delaying tactics, such as containing Hilal’s outbursts of impatience with visits from high-level delegations and renewed promises, could ward off the worst for the government, the delaying tactics could not be expected to work indefinitely. The current no-war, no-peace situation could not last. In anticipation of a confrontation that might prove inevitable given the government’s unwillingness to address the roots of rural unrest, Hilal will continue expanding his territorial and political alliances in Darfur, adeptly using tribal reconciliation traditions to this effect. The SARC will maintain its ongoing dialogue and tactical cooperation with the rebel SRF in order to keep its options open. While the 2.5 million victims of the Darfur conflict who are still in the IDP camps will see no harm if Hilal went into open rebellion against the GoS, that would not resolve their core problem of continued occupation of their lands by Arab settlers or marauding militias that prevent them from returning to their home areas. In short, the Darfur conflict is poised to enter a new phase of complication on more or less short term, with continued grave humanitarian consequences.
A Warning for the AUHIP and the International Community
The instability of the political and military alliance between the Government and one of its most influential Arab tribal allies in Darfur offers a sobering reminder to the AUHIP and the international community that only comprehensive solutions to all of Sudan’s problems will bring about lasting peace. The Government insists that the 2011 Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD) should remain the only reference for negotiations with the Darfur armed groups under the new track of negotiations mediated by the AUHIP, a position that the armed movements rejected during the Addis Ababa talks in November/December 2014, demanding solutions for Darfur’s crisis in a national framework, much as the SARC demands.
As a framework for resolving the conflict in Darfur, the DDPD privileges bilateral approaches, between the Government and the Liberation and Justice Movement, for power and wealth sharing, and especially in its security arrangements measures. This bilateral approach ignores the fact that there is a growing number of autonomous armed actors in Darfur, primarily tribal militias which the Government helped create and then lost control of. These militias would most likely become spoilers if they are left out of security arrangements aimed at ending the conflict between the Government and the Darfur rebel movements. Musa Hilal’s SARC is the most obvious of these autonomous militias, and is the only one to have tabled a political program.
Perhaps the AUHIP will not need to go far to find approaches that could at once address the conflict in Darfur and its root causes at the national level. The 2009 AU High Level Panel for Darfur, also chaired by President Thabo Mbeki, convincingly argued that a comprehensive and lasting solution for Darfur would require extensive institutional and legal reforms at the national level as the only possible approach for permanently ending both Darfur and Sudan’s problems. Short of a return to that path, Darfur as we knew it will for ever be lost.
This is the first of a series of briefing papers on the security situation and the shifting of dynamics in Darfur. To read the original version please go to www.democracyfirstgroup.org. The group will soon release new briefing papers focusing on Darfur’s Tribal Wars and the Rapid Support Forces.