General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo started as a camel trader to head the Rapid Support Forces and played a prominent role in country’s politics.
Sudan’s General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, rose from lowly beginnings to head a widely feared Arab militia that crushed a revolt in Darfur, winning him influence and eventually a role as the country’s second most powerful man, and one of its richest.
On Saturday, fighting erupted between his Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which were militias in Darfur before they became a paramilitary force, and the military.
Hemedti has played a prominent role in his country’s turbulent politics for 10 years, helping topple his one-time benefactor President Omar Al Bashir in 2019 and later quashing protests by Sudanese seeking democracy.
As deputy head of state, Hemedti, a former camel trader with little formal education, has taken on some of Sudan’s most important portfolios in the post-Bashir era, including the crumbling economy and peace negotiations with rebel groups.
Much of his power is derived from his RSF paramilitary — menacing young men armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns mounted on trucks — who mastered desert warfare in the Darfur region but lack the discipline of the regular army.
Hemedti first took up arms in the western Darfur region after men who attacked his trade convoy killed about 60 people from his family and looted camels, according to Muhammad Saad, a former assistant to Hemedti. Conflict had spread in Darfur from 2003 after mostly non-Arab rebels rose up against Khartoum.
A tall imposing figure, Hemedti went on to form a pro-government militia from nomadic Arab tribesmen, locally known as janjaweed, which he later transformed into the more diverse RSF.
