Hundreds of Islamist leaders and activists in Sudan have been detained by the Rapid Support Forces in a wave of repression targeting the paramilitary group’s political opponents.
The arrests began before the outbreak of fighting in April between the RSF and forces loyal to Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto military leader, but have intensified since.
The Islamists have fiercely opposed the attempt to seize power launched by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo the RSF’s leader, fearing he will thwart their efforts to regain the political and economic power they enjoyed for decades in Khartoum.
Dagalo, a former militia leader from the south-western region of Darfur who is accused of complicity in multiple massacres during his career, has sought to position himself as a reformer and publicly accused Burhan of being a “radical Islamist”.
In a recent audio statement, the RSF’s leader boasted of detaining thousands of Islamists during the two-month-old conflict, including many former members of the intelligence service and Islamist militias.
“We exposed all the [Islamists’] schemes and the terrorists’ plans and extremists’ plans … they are now in our prisons, now there are more than thousands of their officers and more than thousands of non-commissioned officers inside the prisons,” Dagalo said.
There is no independent confirmation of the numbers but several high-profile figures within Sudan’s Islamist movement have been arrested in recent weeks.
They include Mohamed al-Jazouli, a veteran hardliner who is the leader of a new alliance of Islamist parties, and Anas Omar, a former senior intelligence general and state governor under the regime of Omar al-Bashir, the autocratic leader of Sudan ousted in 2019.
Jazouli had been a vocal supporter of the army since fighting broke out in April, and had called for a popular mobilisation to oppose Dagalo.
Though Islamists in Sudan have avoided any high-profile public roles or statements in recent months, the attitudes of the main actors in the conflict towards the movement is central, analysts say.
“[Dagalo] wants the world to think that Islamists are a major threat and he is the one person who can oppose them. That’s part of his political salesmanship. He also knows they are embedded in the economy and so rooting them out is in his economic interest too,” said Prof Nick Westcott, the director of the Royal African Society.
At least 2,000 people have been killed so far in the conflict in Sudan, which has spread across the country and caused suffering for millions.
Since the fighting began, Burhan has rallied those who benefited from or were part of the regime of Bashir, the former dictator who was ousted in 2019. Bashir relied on Islamists throughout his time in power, filling the bureaucracy and intelligence services with ideologically committed supporters who hoped to see a rigorous system of religious governance in Sudan despite its large Christian minority.
The Islamists have long had a significant presence among the regular military officers now fighting Dagalo’s RSF in Khartoum and elsewhere. Estimates vary, but some put the proportion at about two-thirds.
A former Islamist leader said history had taught them that the army “could kick them out of the politics” and so had worked to “plant their cells in the army” for five decades. “The cells worked secretly but their work in the army was very clear,” the former leader told the Guardian.
The campaign intensified after Bashir took power in 1989 in tandem with the National Islamic Front, an Islamist organisation founded by Hassan Abdullah al-Turabi, a hardline lawyer and Islamic scholar.
Burhan is seen as interested primarily in maintaining the power and influence of Sudan’s military and protecting its economic interests. The career general lacked a political base on taking power in 2019 and has turned to veterans of Bashir’s regime to head off challenges from pro-democracy forces and Dagalo.
Early efforts at reform, including a potential purge of Islamists, were soon abandoned and reversed since the military coup in 2021 ended any hopes of a transition to democracy. Senior Islamists who had fled, many to Turkey, were able to return.
In April last year, a new Islamist coalition was launched with a rally in central Khartoum, attended by many former regime supporters and officials. Thousands of other Islamists last year protested against the presence of the UN in the country.
There are widespread suspicions that in April Islamists were working to prevent any deal between Burhan and Dagalo that might have avoided conflict.
The RSF has accused Burhan of freeing a dozen Islamists, all former senior officials loyal to Bashir, who had been jailed in Khartoum. Sudan’s military said the men escaped from Kober prison during fighting there.
The exact location of Bashir, who has been imprisoned since being ousted by a coalition of pro-democracy activists, Sudan’s military and the RSF in 2019 after months of popular protests, is unclear. Military authorities have said he was moved from Kober prison to a military hospital soon after the conflict broke out but “before the rebellion broke out” there.
