Khartoum: Sudan’s violent power struggle between the feared paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the army looks even and could carry on for months, even years, analysts say.
That trajectory threatens to fracture the country as well as splinter the very forces fighting each other.
Over time, experts told Al Jazeera, the army is likely to gain the upper hand in the conflict – thanks to its aerial advantage and the logistical support it receives from Egypt – but not a decisive victory.
However, the RSF will have enough regional help – mostly from the United Arab Emirates – to survive and fight on.
“Egypt and the Emirates enabled these armies to become what they are: resistant to the population’s calls for democracy and to each other,” said Jonas Horner, an independent researcher specialised in Sudan.
The battle for Sudan’s capital Khartoum is expected to be long and bloody, but the army should capture the city since it has a larger military arsenal, added Sharath Srinivasan, author of When Peace Kills Politics: International Intervention and Unending Wars in the Sudans.
He said the RSF may eventually retreat to its stronghold in the western province of Darfur, as well as infiltrate and capture small pockets of land elsewhere.
“I think the army … can degrade the RSF’s fundamental capability more than the RSF can degrade the army. But the RSF’s reach and strength across the country will persist,” said Srinivasan.
The leader of the RSF, Mohamad Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, is engaged in a zero-sum game for power with top military commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.The former hails from Darfur and was a leader in the Arab “Janjaweed” militias that spearheaded state-backed mass killings in the region from 2003-2009.
In 2013, Sudan’s then-authoritarian leader Omar al-Bashir tasked Hemedti to command RSF, a force designed to thwart military coups and put down counterinsurgencies across the country.
But six years later, Hemedti cooperated with the military to sideline al-Bashir, giving him a clear path to becoming the second most powerful man in the country, behind al-Burhan. –Agencies
