\n<\/p>\n
Hemedti’s power grew massively once he began supplying troops to fight for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. <\/p>\n
Sudan’s then-military ruler, Omar al-Bashir, came to rely on Hemedti and the RSF as a counterweight to the regular armed forces, in the hope that it would be too difficult for any single armed group to depose him.<\/p>\n
In the end – after months of popular protests – the generals clubbed together to overthrow Bashir, in April 2019.<\/p>\n
Later that year, they signed an agreement with the protesters to form a civilian-led government overseen by the Sovereign Council, a joint civilian-military body, with Gen Burhan at its head, and Hemedti as his deputy. <\/p>\n
It lasted two years – until October 2021 – when the military struck, taking power for themselves, with Gen Burhan again at the head of the state and Hemedti again his deputy.<\/p>\n
Siddig Tower Kafi was a civilian member of the Sovereign Council, and so regularly met the two generals. <\/p>\n
He said he saw no sign of any disagreements until after the 2021 coup. <\/p>\n
Then “Gen Burhan started to restore the Islamists and the former regime members to their old positions”, he told the BBC. <\/p>\n
“It was becoming clear that the plan of Gen Burhan was to restore the old regime of Omar al-Bashir to power.”<\/p>\n
Mr Siddig says that this is when Hemedti began to have doubts, as he felt Bashir’s cronies had never fully trusted him.<\/p>\n
Sudanese politics has always been dominated by an elite largely drawn from the ethnic groups based around Khartoum and the River Nile. <\/p>\n
Hemedti comes from Darfur, and the Sudanese elite often talk about him and his soldiers in pejorative terms, as “country bumpkins” unfit to rule the state.<\/p>\n
Over the last two or three years, he has tried to position himself as a national figure, and even as a representative of the marginalised peripheries – trying to forge alliances with rebel groups in Darfur and South Kordofan that he had previously been tasked with destroying. <\/p>\n
He has also spoken regularly of a need for democracy despite his forces having brutally put down civilian protests in the past. <\/p>\n
Tensions between the army and the RSF grew as a deadline for forming a civilian government approached, focused on the thorny issue of how the RSF should be re-integrated into the regular armed forces.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n