After the Rapid Support Forces seized the city of El Fasher, the capital of the Darfur region in western Sudan, at the end of last October, a vast territory the size of France slipped into a dark tunnel and an uncertain future. Since then, separatist voices have grown louder within the ranks of the RSF rebels, raising slogans calling for entrenching a new reality, especially after the announcement of what they call a “Foundational Government”, a parallel entity with no international recognition.
Sudanese actors across ideological and political spectrums fear that their country may face another rupture, with a second partition looming after the secession of South Sudan in 2011.
The RSF quickly mounted the separatist tide, obscured by the dust of chaos and lacking any political vision. It appeared like a lost parrot in the jungle of politics, repeating slogans inherited from old separatist calls and protest rhetoric that has filled Sudan’s political space since independence on 1 January 1956.
Separatist ideas and protest discourse first emerged in Darfur in the late 1950s, shaped by the political activism of students and graduates from the region — particularly in the early 1960s — alongside the historical legacy of Darfur’s independent Sultanate, which continued until 1916 under Sultan Ali Dinar before the British invaded, killed him, and annexed Darfur into Sudan.
Another factor strengthening separatist tendencies was the legacy of the Masalit Sultanate in West Darfur, centred in El Geneina, which remained for almost a century as a semi autonomous entity under a special administrative arrangement signed in 1898, only abolished during the early years of Omar al Bashir’s rule.
Over the decades, certain Darfurian elites — backed at times by Western circles — worked to cultivate an emotional regional separatist narrative. The earliest attempts after independence involved recruiting former soldiers from Darfur into two protest movements: the Red Flame (1956–1958) and the Suni Movement (1962). Neither achieved significant impact despite armed rebellion, but they inspired university graduates and political activists from Darfur who, in 1964, planned a military coup. They later cancelled it, as recalled by Dr Ali Hassan Taj al Din, due to the lack of administrative and technical cadres needed to run the state.
These elites then shifted from armed struggle to political mobilisation, drawing inspiration from movements in South Sudan, Eastern Sudan, and the Nuba Mountains. This led to the creation of the Darfur Renaissance Front, which briefly flourished under leaders such as Ahmed Ibrahim Diraig and Dr Ali al Haj before fading due to the May 1969 coup.
Throughout these decades, educated Arab tribal elites in Darfur played a minimal role in separatist activism. These tribes — linked socially to Sahelian communities — largely stood on the margins until the late 1980s, when growing tribal conflicts and the failure of Sadiq al Mahdi’s government to address their demands prompted these elites to form the Arab Gathering (1988). A political declaration was issued to pressure the central government for greater representation, but it failed to develop into an independent movement and coincided with bloody clashes between Arab tribes and the Fur.
Darfur again plunged into war in 1992 when Islamist defector Daoud Yahya Bolad, backed by Abdelaziz al Hilu, led an armed rebellion from South Sudan aiming to seize Darfur and declare an independent entity. The rebellion was crushed, Bolad was executed, and al Hilu fled. The revolt was not isolated but part of a broader alignment between non Arab Darfurian groups and John Garang’s SPLM under the “New Sudan” vision.
However, separatist rhetoric reached its peak in 2003 with the emergence of the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement. Internal splits later fragmented these groups into dozens of factions. This period marked the true maturation of a separatist discourse in Darfur, heavily influenced by the SPLM and southern leaders.
At the same time, Arab tribes — backed by the Bashir government — mobilised to crush the rebellions. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) became the regime’s main enforcer, using Bashir’s rhetoric to suppress separatist tendencies. But political shifts following Bashir’s fall and Hemedti’s subsequent rebellion pushed the RSF into adopting the same separatist discourse it once fought.
Western powers and the Zionist entity have been monitoring Sudan’s fragmentation for decades. They now see that the moment has arrived to implement their long standing project to partition Sudan and separate Darfur. They have found their ideal instrument in the RSF rebellion, its cross border militias, and roaming mercenaries.
For the architects of partition, encouraging the RSF to adopt separatist slogans is a deliberate strategy — one now evident in the rhetoric of the so called Foundational Government.
Yet this new separatist chorus, echoing outdated slogans, has no genuine political project or realistic vision for Darfur’s future — whether as part of a united Sudan or, God forbid, as a severed region.
Worse yet, these groups lack the intellectual capacity to generate new ideas addressing political, social, or economic questions — let alone understanding the deeper geopolitical transformations underway across the Sahel and Sub Saharan Africa. They remain unaware of the global schemes crafted to redraw the political map of the region.
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