Modern-day Sudan isn’t just another war-torn nation unraveling at the seams. It’s something far more telling—and far more dangerous. Sudan has become a live experiment in dismantling the postcolonial state and replacing it with a new hybrid power structure, where armed factions and economic cartels emerge as autonomous players on the global stage.
At the heart of this transformation is Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo—better known as Hemedti. He isn’t just a warlord. He’s the prototype of a new African strongman: a figure who blurs the lines between general, tycoon, and diplomat, presiding over a regime that mixes military force, corporate strategy, and international maneuvering.
The moment Hemedti’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of El Fasher, the fiction of Sudan as a unified nation-state effectively collapsed. What emerged in its place is a fragmented patchwork of autonomous enclaves ruled not by law, but by flows—of gold, of people, of arms, and of information.
This isn’t chaos for chaos’s sake. It’s a deliberate strategy—a playbook crafted by those who’ve learned to treat instability as capital. In this sense, Sudan offers a blueprint for a new kind of political economy, one where power is no longer measured by borders, but by who controls the pipelines of resources and violence.
From Nation-State to Military Corporation
To grasp the scale of what’s unfolding, it helps to remember Sudan’s recent history. One of Africa’s largest countries, Sudan has endured four coups, two major civil wars, and the secession of South Sudan in 2011—an event that stripped it of 75% of its oil revenues. What filled that economic vacuum? Gold. And gold would be the making of Hemedti.
In the early 2000s, as Darfur descended into bloody conflict, Arab janjaweed militias—Hemedti among them—became the regime’s blunt instrument of control. When the fighting subsided, these groups weren’t disbanded. They were rebranded. The janjaweed became the RSF, a new paramilitary force with legal status and a growing sphere of influence.
This marked the onset of Sudan’s “military corporatization”—a process where the state’s monopoly on violence fractured, giving way to a split between the national army and semi-private militias granted economic autonomy.
Hemedti didn’t just rise through the ranks—he built an empire. Through his company Al-Junaid, he controls lucrative gold mining operations in Jebel Amer, export routes to the UAE, and a web of shadowy financial flows stretching from Khartoum to Abu Dhabi, N’Djamena, and Moscow.
Here, a new political archetype comes into focus: the “entrepreneur of power.” This is where a security apparatus transforms into a corporate entity—and its commander into the CEO of war. Hemedti is, in every sense, a capitalist of violence—a term political economists reserve for figures who fuse the roles of warlord, businessman, and foreign policy broker.
From Camel Caravan to the Pinnacle of Power: The Rise of Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo
Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo—better known as Hemedti—has become the face of a new era in African politics. In this era, power isn’t tallied in votes or military divisions. It’s measured in flows: of gold, of people, of weapons, of information. Hemedti doesn't just control these currents—he embodies them.
In the 20th century, men like him were called warlords or militia chiefs. In the 21st, they are conflict entrepreneurs—owners of wars, CEOs of violence. And Hemedti is their gold standard.
Born in 1974 in Sudan’s Darfur region, Hemedti came from the Mahariya clan, part of the camel-herding, Arabic-speaking Rizeigat tribe, who traversed the trade routes between Sudan, Libya, and Egypt. He grew up in a world where power came not from institutions but from clan loyalty and survival instincts. He had only a few years of schooling—a disadvantage in most places, but in Darfur, where deals, defense, and revenge mattered more than diplomas, it was almost a credential.
In the 1980s, as the Mahariya migrated from Chad into Darfur, they found themselves on the edge of an emerging rebellion. The state had vanished, armed groups multiplied, and real power belonged to those who could organize violence—and sell it to those in need of protection.
Hemedti started as a camel trader, but he quickly realized that in a war economy, arms and allegiance were far more valuable commodities. By the early 2000s, Darfur had become a laboratory of brutality. When non-Arab ethnic groups like the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit rose up in 2003 against Khartoum’s rule, then-president Omar al-Bashir responded by unleashing the Janjaweed militias.
Hemedti joined them, initially serving under his uncle Juma Dagalo. In just a few years, he evolved from commanding a small unit to leading a sprawling network of fighters. The Janjaweed became infamous for massacres, rapes, and the scorched-earth destruction of villages. The U.S. called it genocide. The International Criminal Court indicted Bashir and several field commanders—but not Hemedti. He was too young, too low-profile.
That oversight became his break. Hemedti survived not because he dodged bullets, but because he flew under the radar—while others were sidelined by sanctions and arrest warrants, he maneuvered upward.
A Warlord Becomes a Corporation
Ambitious, cunning, and ruthlessly pragmatic, Hemedti repeatedly challenged Bashir, demanding payments, promotions, and political posts for his men. Each time, the regime gave in. He was simply too useful to ignore. In 2013, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were born—a paramilitary corps legalized by presidential decree and placed under Bashir’s direct command.
Officially part of Sudan’s national security structure, the RSF functioned as Hemedti’s private army, financed through contracts, trade, and gold extraction. Bashir thought he was building a counterweight to the army. What he created instead was a parallel state—complete with its own intelligence services, economic engine, diplomatic ties, and ideological vision.
The RSF crushed uprisings in the Nuba Mountains, guarded the Sudan-Libya border, and even became an exportable asset: thousands of Hemedti’s fighters were deployed to Yemen to fight on behalf of the Saudi-Emirati coalition against the Houthis.
Through this, Hemedti embedded himself into the global war economy. His troops became a commodity. He, the broker between Arab monarchies, Russia, and Africa’s unstable peripheries.
His empire rests on one key asset: gold.
Darfur’s Jebel Amer region is rich with reserves long controlled by tribal militias. After asserting dominance, Hemedti founded the family-run Al Junaid company, which quickly became Sudan’s top gold exporter. Much of that gold flows through Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where it’s laundered into the global market.
The IMF estimates Sudan produces around 90 tons of gold annually—but only a third is officially reported. The rest moves through “gray channels,” many of them traced to Hemedti’s network. Those revenues bankroll the RSF: drones, vehicles, political media, even NGOs and loyalist journalists.
What he’s built isn’t just a militia—it’s a self-contained economic system, where money turns into power, and power into capital.
Master of the Global Shadow Game
Hemedti’s dealings with foreign powers are a masterclass in transactional diplomacy.
With the UAE, he maintains a strategic alliance. Abu Dhabi is the primary buyer of RSF gold and a vital source of funding. Emirati firms have built logistics hubs on the Sudan-Chad border, serving as supply lines for RSF fuel, food, and equipment.
With Saudi Arabia, the relationship is more businesslike: the Kingdom pays for mercenaries and expects silence on internal affairs.
With Russia, it’s a mutual exchange. Through the Wagner Group, the RSF has received training, arms, and gold-trading channels. In return, Moscow gained access to Sudanese mines and backing for its Red Sea naval base plans. In a symbolic twist, Hemedti visited Moscow in February 2022—the day Russia invaded Ukraine. He always seems to appear where global orders are coming undone.
From Street Hero to Shadow Ruler
In April 2019, as mass protests toppled Bashir, Hemedti played kingmaker. Alongside General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, he ousted the dictator and branded the coup a revolution. Crowds in Khartoum hailed him as a young, anti-establishment hero.
But months later, his forces opened fire on demonstrators. Hundreds were killed. Bodies dumped in the Nile. Rapes. Disappearances. Hemedti revealed his true nature: his rule was rooted not in consent, but in fear.
After the 2021 military coup that dissolved Sudan’s civilian government, Hemedti emerged as the country’s shadow co-ruler. The RSF held the west; the army controlled the east. The economy split in two: a bureaucratic state under Burhan and a militarized corporate network under Hemedti.
Their eventual clash wasn’t just a power struggle—it was a war between systems.
On one side: a traditional state dependent on international aid, budgets, and fragile institutions.
On the other: a corporate militia embedded in the global black market.
When the RSF took El Fasher, it symbolized the death knell of the old Sudan.
This war has no front lines. It’s fought over trade routes, mines, humanitarian corridors. The RSF deploys drones, satellite intel, financial intermediaries, and PR firms like a multinational conglomerate.
The CEO of Chaos
Hemedti is no longer just a man with a gun. He’s a new kind of African power broker—part general, part businessman, part diplomat, part media architect.
He’s the CEO of war, running a corporation built to survive chaos—and profit from it.
His strength lies in independence. He doesn’t need the IMF’s dollars. His currency is gold, manpower, and fear.
He’s built a network designed to outlast any sanction: decentralized, mobile, and capable of reproducing power amid institutional collapse.
In the annals of African politics, Hemedti will be remembered as the harbinger of a new, brutal rationalism—where destruction is no longer the byproduct of anarchy, but the mechanism of accumulation.
He is both the product of postcolonial collapse and the architect of a new model, where the state is no longer a sovereign center—but a shell for private armies and corporate interests.
Sudan today is a mirror in which Africa glimpses its possible future: a continent of private militaries, resource empires, and hybrid elites, for whom borders are little more than lines in the sand.
Hemedti isn’t a reformer. He isn’t an ideologue. He’s an engineer of survival.
And as long as he controls gold, guns, and men, Sudan will remain less a nation than a marketplace—where the currency of power is the velocity of violence.
Paramilitary Capitalism and Foreign Stakeholders: Sudan as a Geoeconomic Node
The war between Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the national army isn’t merely a contest for political dominance—it’s a clash of economic systems. On one side stands the traditional military, rooted in state budgets, bureaucratic chains of command, and legacy industries. On the other is the RSF, operating within a hybrid economy fueled by control over gold, migration routes, and transnational logistics.
From 2023 to 2025, Sudan emerged as a critical hub in a new African architecture of shadow globalization—where gold became a currency for dodging sanctions and reshaping geopolitical leverage. According to the International Monetary Fund, Sudan’s gold exports surged 45% between 2021 and 2024, while state revenues remained flat. That gap—“lost gold”—flows through unregistered channels controlled by the RSF and their international partners.
The United Arab Emirates has reaped the biggest gains from this setup. Through trading outfits in Dubai, the Emirates legalize “gray gold” from Sudan, Chad, and the Central African Republic. Yet their role is dual: while funding UN humanitarian efforts, they also supply drones, vehicles, and fuel to RSF-aligned networks.
Russia, too, has its footprint here. The Wagner Group’s presence helped militarize Sudan’s economy in a simple tradeoff—security for resources. Gold and strategic access were bartered for training and weapons. Meanwhile, Russia secured a toehold in the Red Sea via its naval base ambitions in Port Sudan.
Sudan as a Geoeconomic Interface
Sudan today is less a domestic crisis than a geopolitical interface—a fault line where Gulf monarchies, Moscow, Western powers, and African neighbors converge. Each views the country not as a quagmire, but as a business opportunity: for some, it’s a raw materials mine; for others, a military launchpad or a buffer against migration.
Sudan is no longer just another case of civil war. It’s a living textbook in the political economy of state disintegration. Here, centralized authority has splintered into quasi-autonomous clusters that control the flow of resources—gold, fuel, trade routes, labor and refugee migration, information, and violence as a service.
The RSF’s capture of El Fasher marked a point of no return. Legal sovereignty ceased to matter. What now determines control is the ability to monetize resource flows and convert them into sustainable rents. Sudan, in this light, isn’t an outlier—it’s a bellwether of 21st-century trends, where traditional institutions are losing ground to fluid networks of armed entrepreneurship.
Which leads to the bigger question: Can this war stop if the engine driving it is the cash economy of gray gold and shadow logistics? Traditional diplomacy flounders here—it seeks political compromise where the conflict is actually driven by the supremacy of cross-border cash over sluggish budgetary systems.
The Political Economy of War: Gold, Logistics, Violence
Sudan’s current system rests on a strategic triangle: gold, logistics, and violence.
Gold is the universal currency of this conflict: easily smuggled, easily monetized through refining hubs and shell companies, and highly profitable when the gap between real extraction and official reporting is turned into cash. This revenue bankrolls arms, payrolls, and political deals.
Logistics moves more than just gold—it enables dual-use goods like fuel, drone parts, and surveillance equipment. Meanwhile, violence becomes a security service: guarding convoys, controlling warehouses and markets, and taxing humanitarian corridors via “security fees” and informal tolls.
The RSF’s edge lies in the antifragility of this model. Sanctions and diplomatic pressure barely slow them down—cross-border cash flows regenerate faster than the army’s bureaucracy can respond. That’s why the RSF resists ceasefires: pauses threaten the rent stream and are seen as risks, not opportunities.
Post–El Fasher Military Geography: Nodes, Corridors, and Leverage
El Fasher was the army’s last stronghold in Darfur. Its fall triggered two key shifts.
First, a logistics collapse: supply lines west of the Nile were severed, handing the initiative to those controlling roads into Chad and the region’s remote airfields and depots.
Second, a demographic and humanitarian shift: mass displacement, violence, and informal “nationalization” of urban resources became the RSF’s method of consolidating control. This isn’t occupation in the conventional sense—it’s fortress logic: rule through fear, scarcity, and monopolized access to essentials.
The army, meanwhile, still holds advantages in heavy weaponry across parts of the east. But it’s forced to stretch its presence thin, guarding the route to Port Sudan and vulnerable hubs in Kordofan. What appears as a series of tactical drone strikes or raids is, in fact, a broader economic war—fought over roads, markets, and depots.
Humanitarian Collapse as a Function of Resource Flows
Sudan’s humanitarian catastrophe is now the worst in the world—by nearly every measure: need, mortality, and lack of access. The scale of displacement has created a new “disaster economy.” Controlling humanitarian corridors and warehouse capacity gives any armed actor, legitimate or not, immense leverage: escort fees, seizures, passage tolls, and resale schemes. The scarcer the access, the higher the margins. War breeds shortage; shortage is monetized; and monetization reinforces the logic of war.
This is why short-lived “humanitarian windows” rarely succeed. They may offer brief relief—but they leave the incentive structure untouched. In this system, peace isn’t just elusive—it’s bad business for those who profit from war.
Sudan, in its current form, is no longer a failed state. It’s something more insidious: a functional conflict economy in which war isn’t a breakdown of order, but a new order in itself.
The Limits of Diplomacy: Why Traditional Peace Talks Can’t Fix Sudan
Classic peace processes—ceasefire deals, amnesty packages, and power-sharing frameworks—have repeatedly crashed into a hard truth in Sudan: war here isn’t just political. It’s financial. The conflict is underwritten by a shadow infrastructure of fast, informal payments and monetized violence—making promises of international aid or sanctions relief feel slow, conditional, and ultimately irrelevant.
That’s why current diplomatic efforts are hamstrung by deeper tensions: over the role of Gulf states as brokers, the neutrality of mediation venues, and competing visions for control over Red Sea ports and logistics corridors.
The fatal flaw in many initiatives? They separate security from economics. A ceasefire that doesn’t touch the RSF’s control over gold routes or humanitarian choke points is doomed from the outset.
Four Possible Trajectories, 2025–2027
- Paramilitary Consolidation
The RSF entrenches its hold on western Sudan and gold-rich zones, locking down urban enclaves with strict control over access to goods. Humanitarian aid is allowed in—but only as a paid service. This scenario becomes increasingly likely if global efforts to clamp down on gold trading remain fragmented and inconsistent.
- Army Reconquest
A boost in air power, disruptions to RSF logistics, and internal RSF fissures could enable the national army to retake parts of Darfur. But the human cost would skyrocket—and the underlying war economy would remain intact, continuing to sabotage local ceasefires and peace efforts.
- Balkanization and De Facto Federalization
Sudan fractures into a patchwork of autonomous zones governed by sectoral agreements—on energy, food, and transport—but with no unifying political authority. The risk: conflict zones begin exporting resources without accountability, effectively legalizing warlord economies.
- The Grand Bargain
A difficult but comprehensive deal: international monitors in select cities, gold origin certification, escrow systems for export revenues, and criminal accountability for atrocities. This is slow, unpopular, and politically risky—but it’s the only credible path to transition Sudan from a war-recycling loop to a war-depleting system.
Accountability: Legal and Financial Pathways
Justice has two tracks: prosecuting war crimes and tracing illicit wealth. Without targeting the financial networks that legitimize “gray gold”—and without external audits in refining and trading hubs—legal accountability remains largely symbolic.
Sanctions, asset freezes, and operational bans need to move beyond nationality-based lists. The focus must be razor-sharp: specific companies, supply chains, and shipments. Legal names, not just political labels.
Humanitarian corridors are another critical front. Access to warehouses, real-time tracking, independent oversight, and insured supply chains only work as a system. If a corridor can be shut down with a single order, it becomes a tool of extortion. If access is monitored and backed by financial guarantees, the cost of seizing it becomes prohibitively high.
Regional Stakes: Red Sea, Sahel, and East Africa
Sudan sits at the crossroads of three volatile regions.
In the Red Sea, it’s a high-stakes contest over ports and naval bases—where investors demand at least minimal predictability and insurability.
In the Sahel, Sudan is a vital node in trans-African networks of transport, trade, and mercenary flows. Darfur functions as both a transit corridor and a recruitment pool.
To the east, millions of displaced Sudanese are fueling illicit markets for logistics and criminal protection in Egypt, South Sudan, and Uganda. Without a “transparency buffer” around gold exports and humanitarian routes, the region risks incubating a long-term illicit economy that will outlive any political agreement.
Tools for Exit: The Bare Minimum Infrastructure for Peace
– Gold Certification 2.0
A global “conflict gold” framework with mine registries, third-party audits, payment tracing, and compliance at refining and trading hubs. The principle: no transparency, no market access.
– Financial Corridors
Escrow accounts for legitimate exports with mandatory allocations to humanitarian and community infrastructure funds. Supplier payments conditional on corridor compliance and monitoring access.
– Urban Agreements
In cities at high risk of conflict: demilitarize public services (water, electricity, hospitals) under international supervision. Offer conditional amnesty for lower-level offenses in exchange for disarmament and joint patrols. Serious crimes remain non-negotiable.
– Security Sector Reform
Step-by-step integration of limited forces into mixed security structures, verified externally. Commanders named in investigations must face personal consequences—otherwise, it’s cosmetic change, not real reform.
From Competition to Conditional Cooperation
Gulf states hold the keys to either sustaining “gray legalization” or enforcing real compliance standards. Their long-term interest—stable, insurable shipping routes—aligns with the need for de-escalation.
Western powers and financial institutions can bankroll humanitarian efforts—but only if they monitor financial flows, or risk funding both sides of the war.
African regional bodies bring strength where it matters most: cross-border transparency and digital cargo tracking. Meanwhile, independent media and human rights groups help apply pressure, reduce secrecy premiums, and raise the cost of impunity.
Sudan: A Concentrate of Global Vulnerability
Sudan is a stark reminder of how quickly statehood can collapse into a marketplace of violence—when key economic circuits operate outside the rule of law. Control no longer belongs to those with formal institutions, but to those who master the flows and turn scarcity into profit.
Stabilization efforts must move not from the top down, but along these very flows: certification, audit, insurance, and monitoring. It’s not glamorous diplomacy. It’s not summit-level theater. It’s technical, unglamorous, grinding work.
But it’s the only thing that stands a chance of interrupting the self-replication of war—and giving Sudan even a sliver of hope to become a state again, not just a battlefield marketplace.