Last month, a commander from Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group known as Ali Rizkallah arrived in the capital city of Khartoum, was outfitted in a military uniform, and assigned a rank within the very armed forces he had been battling for roughly three years.
The military-backed government celebrated his switch of sides — the most recent in a string of high-profile defections that have been shifting Sudan’s wartime alliances and strengthening the army’s position in one of the most devastating conflicts of this century.
However, the sight of Rizkallah and other former RSF figures walking freely and holding press conferences has provoked deep anger among many people who fear these men will never face justice for crimes allegedly committed under their command.
“These RSF soldiers, even if they seek God’s forgiveness, I can’t forgive them because of what I saw face to face,” said Halima Ismail, a woman living in western Darfur, in an interview with Reuters. She described how forces under Rizkallah’s command fired weapons into the air during a 2024 attack on a village where she had taken shelter.
Sudan’s civil war is estimated to have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, uprooted millions of people, and triggered widespread famine and disease since the RSF and the army turned against each other and began fighting in April 2023.
Some of the most severe violence has taken place in Darfur, the RSF’s stronghold where Rizkallah — commonly referred to by his nickname “al-Savannah” — served as a military commander. The RSF faced accusations of committing atrocities during its assault on the city of al-Fashir last October, which was the subject of a Reuters documentary.
Another senior commander from North Darfur, al-Nour Guba, also crossed over to the military side in April. Speaking to Reuters, Guba rejected the notion that he defected to avoid legal consequences, and stated that any former RSF commanders who carried out crimes should be brought to justice.
“If anyone from the Sudanese people has anything against us, I swear we are ready,” he said.
Rizkallah, who did not respond to requests for comment, has previously stated publicly that he would turn himself in if formally accused of wrongdoing. Neither Sudan’s military-affiliated government nor the RSF — which has denied committing atrocities in Darfur — responded to requests for comment.
Ismail, now taking refuge in the Darfur village of Tawila, said she had been forced to flee her home multiple times as RSF fighters raided communities surrounding al-Fashir. She recounted witnessing women being raped and said she herself was whipped by RSF fighters.
“You can see the scars on my arms, all the way down my legs,” she said.
In the neighboring Kordofan region, resentment runs equally deep. A merchant in the town of al-Nuhud told Reuters he intends to file a private lawsuit against Rizkallah under Sudan’s sharia law framework, alleging that one of Rizkallah’s units looted peanuts and gum arabic from his storage facilities.
“What happened is the responsibility of Savannah, the RSF, and the army that did not protect us,” said the trader, who spoke anonymously out of concern for his personal safety.
Mohamed Salaheldin, a member of the executive board of Emergency Lawyers, an activist organization, said such individual lawsuits were unlikely to move forward given the chaos of wartime. “This issue can’t be dealt with piecemeal — it needs transitional justice,” he said.
This stands in stark contrast to 243 cases tracked by Emergency Lawyers that have gone to trial against individuals accused of collaborating with the RSF, on charges that include providing intelligence and cooking meals for RSF fighters during their occupation of various areas.
Analysts say the army is deliberately encouraging these defections to exploit ethnic divisions within the RSF. Emadeddin Badi, a senior fellow at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, explained that many top RSF commanders belong to the Arab Rizeigat tribe, which has experienced growing internal tensions between its clans — particularly after an RSF raid earlier this year on the hometown of army-aligned figure Musa Hilal.
Hilal is a member of the Mahamid clan, as is Rizkallah. In his Reuters interview, Guba pointed to these internal dynamics, describing the RSF as being “based on a racist, tribal” structure that primarily served the interests of RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.
The army is hoping that these internal fractures could produce results similar to what happened in the central state of El Gezira, where the defection of militia commander Abuagla Keikal — who had been aligned with the RSF — helped turn the tide of battle in 2024, according to Badi.
“There’s a military rationale, but the social repercussions are probably underappreciated by the armed forces,” he added.
