Hemedti (RSF) and Savimbi (UNITA): From Rebel Army to Rival State Dr. El-Tahir El-Faki

02:09 AM September, 18 2026

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Hemedti (RSF) and Savimbi (UNITA): From Rebel Army to Rival State

Dr. El-Tahir El-Faki

Africa’s history of armed movements contains a recurring political dilemma: how does a military organisation that succeeds in controlling territory transform that power into a functioning political order and, ultimately, a state؟ Few contemporary comparisons illuminate this dilemma more clearly than the trajectory of Jonas Savimbi and UNITA in Angola and the emergence of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo—Hemedti—and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as a rival centre of power in Sudan.

The comparison does not mean that Savimbi and Hemedti, or UNITA and the RSF, are identical. Their origins, political programmes, relationships with the state and historical circumstances were fundamentally different. Yet both cases illustrate a similar strategic challenge: the transition from armed insurgency and territorial control to the exercise of political authority over territory and population.

Jonas Savimbi led UNITA through almost three decades of conflict in Angola. Over time, UNITA developed into a formidable military organisation controlling significant territory and drawing resources from areas under its influence, while also benefiting at different periods from external support. Savimbi ultimately sought national political power, but military strength did not translate into control of the Angolan state.

Savimbi was killed by government forces in February 2002. His death accelerated UNITA’s military collapse and was followed by a ceasefire. UNITA subsequently transformed itself from an armed movement into a political party and entered Angola’s post-war political system.

The Savimbi experience demonstrates an important distinction: a rebel movement can become a powerful military actor without becoming a viable alternative state. Territorial control, military organisation and political endurance are not equivalent to the capacity to build institutions capable of governing a population.

Hemedti’s trajectory is different, but the structural dilemma is comparable. The RSF did not originate entirely outside the Sudanese state. It emerged from the militia environment associated with the Darfur conflict and was later incorporated into Sudan’s formal security architecture. Over time, however, it developed increasingly autonomous military, economic and political structures. Following the fall of Omar al-Bashir in 2019, the RSF became one of Sudan’s two principal centres of armed power.

The relationship between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces eventually deteriorated into open confrontation. In April 2023, fighting between the two forces developed into a nationwide war. The RSF established substantial control across large parts of western Sudan, particularly in Darfur, while the army consolidated control over much of the north, east and central parts of the country. The conflict consequently evolved beyond a struggle between two military organisations into a contest over the future structure and authority of the Sudanese state.

The critical development was therefore not simply the acquisition of territory. It was the attempt to translate territorial control into political authority.

In February 2025, the RSF and allied political and armed groups signed a charter proposing a parallel government. The document presented a political framework based on principles including decentralisation and civilian governance and was framed by its sponsors as an alternative national political arrangement rather than simply a declaration of territorial partition.

This development marked an important conceptual shift. The RSF was no longer presenting itself solely as a military organisation controlling territory. It was attempting to construct political and administrative structures through which territorial power could acquire an institutional expression.

This is where the Savimbi comparison becomes particularly relevant.

Military control is only the beginning of state formation. A functioning state requires administration, taxation, public services, security institutions, political representation, mechanisms for resolving disputes and durable sources of legitimacy. Most importantly, it requires institutions capable of constraining the exercise of power. The fundamental question is whether authority ultimately resides in institutions or remains dependent upon an armed leader and the organisation that commands the territory.

Savimbi never fully resolved this problem. UNITA remained closely tied to its military structure and to Savimbi’s personal leadership. When the armed struggle ended, the organisation faced the necessity of transforming itself fundamentally into a political institution.

Hemedti confronts a different version of the same structural challenge. The RSF has demonstrated the capacity to control territory and participate in the construction of parallel political structures. Yet territorial control alone does not establish a state. The more difficult question is whether such structures can develop sufficient administrative capacity, political legitimacy and institutional autonomy to function independently of military command.

There is also a fundamental difference between the two cases. Savimbi’s UNITA sought national political power through prolonged insurgency against an established state. Hemedti’s project has emerged during an ongoing civil war in which Sudan already possesses competing national institutions and rival centres of military authority. The RSF therefore faces not simply the challenge of defeating an existing government, but the more complex task of constructing an alternative political order while another armed authority continues to claim the legitimacy of the Sudanese state.

This creates a problem of competitive state formation.

The danger in such circumstances is that territorial administration becomes permanently subordinated to military power. If political institutions exist primarily to sustain an armed movement rather than to regulate and constrain it, parallel governance may reproduce the very problem it seeks to replace.

The historical lesson from Savimbi to Hemedti is therefore not simply a story of military victory or defeat. It is about the considerable distance between an armed movement, territorial power and a functioning state.

Savimbi demonstrated that a powerful rebel army could survive for decades without capturing the national state. Hemedti’s experiment goes further: it seeks to translate military and territorial power into a competing political structure while Sudan’s national conflict remains unresolved.

The central question is therefore not whether the RSF can hold territory. It is whether it can transform territorial control into institutions that possess political authority beyond the battlefield—and whether those institutions can function independently of the military organisation that created them.

That is the fundamental test of the Hemedti project.

And it is precisely at that point that the history of Savimbi becomes relevant: the road from rebel army to rival state is not completed by controlling territory. It is completed only when power becomes institutions.


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