The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are a paramilitary group and one of two main parties in Sudan's civil war, which began in 2023. The RSF is led by Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, a warlord known as Hemedti, and is descended from the mostly Arab Janjaweed militias responsible for the slaughter of black Africans in Darfur in the 2000s. America accused the RSF of committing a second genocide in Darfur in January 2025.
The RSF seized Khartoum, the capital, in 2023, but was ousted in March 2025 by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). It is alleged to receive arms, including drones, from the United Arab Emirates, which the UAE strenuously denies.
In October 2025, after an 18-month siege, the RSF overran el-Fasher, the capital of Darfur. During the siege it erected earth walls around the city to prevent residents from fleeing, killed as many as 1,500 people in a single assault on a refugee camp, and pummelled markets, hospitals and homes with drones and artillery. After taking the city the RSF embarked on a murderous rampage: the World Health Organisation said more than 460 patients and their companions were killed in a single massacre in a maternity hospital. Bodies visible from space are being moved into mass graves.
Three years into the civil war, the RSF has transformed from an unusually well-armed paramilitary unit into a transnational business-cum-military empire. The RSF and its allies hold roughly half of Sudan, including most of Darfur—its mineral-rich stronghold—and swathes of Kordofan and Blue Nile. Its military and economic footprint now extends beyond Sudan's borders.
From the early days of the war, the RSF worked to secure flows of arms and fuel through a web of airfields and logistics hubs in Sudan's neighbourhood. Supplies first moved through Amdjarass, an airbase in Chad that the UAE is said to have used to funnel weapons and medical aid into Darfur. In 2025 the centre of gravity shifted to southern Libya, where Khalifa Haftar facilitated supplies. More recently, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic have become important conduits. With the exception of Egypt and Eritrea, which are aligned with the SAF, every country bordering Sudan allows the RSF to operate in some way on its territory.
Since late 2025 the RSF has maintained a military footprint inside Ethiopia, allegedly including a camp to train thousands of fighters. In March 2026 it captured Kurmuk, a town in south-eastern Sudan on the Ethiopian border, staging the offensive from deep within Ethiopian territory for the first time. Satellite imagery analysed by Yale University's Humanitarian Research Lab shows "clear visual evidence" of the RSF launching attacks from Ethiopia. The Ugandan army may also have helped move weapons and fuel to the group through South Sudan. Bellingcat identified Kenyan-labelled crates of ammunition inside an alleged RSF weapons depot near Khartoum.
The RSF offers fighters across the Sahel around $500 per month. Since 2024, hundreds of Colombian mercenaries have helped it fight in Darfur, travelling via an air bridge spanning the UAE, Chad, Libya and Puntland in Somalia. A report by the Conflict Insights Group shows that support from UAE-backed Colombian mercenaries enabled the RSF to capture el-Fasher in October 2025. On April 17th 2026 America imposed sanctions on two Colombian companies that it says supply mercenaries to the RSF, but not on the UAE-based security firm accused of paying and training them.
Dagalo started out as a camel trader and Janjaweed commander. In 2017 he seized Darfur's largest gold mine. According to a report by the Sentry, an American investigative group, members of the Dagalo family and companies linked to the RSF own more than 20 properties in Dubai, worth $24m in total. A network of UAE-based companies enables the RSF leadership to turn smuggled gold into hard currency. In 2025 America put sanctions on seven UAE-based companies it said had provided money and weapons to the group, yet it has since expanded into new mining areas.
In 2025 the RSF announced a parallel government. The SAF's insistence that the group must withdraw unilaterally from territory it occupies has stalled efforts to secure a truce. In January 2026 General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan's army chief, called once again for the RSF to be "eliminated".
This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists, and not enough hunchbacks.