From Kabila (AFDL) to Hemedti (RSF) From Armed Power to the Struggle for the State Part 1 — The Ri

03:49 AM October, 17 2026

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Dr.El-Tahir El-Faki-UK
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From Kabila (AFDL) to Hemedti (RSF)
From Armed Power to the Struggle for the State

Part 1 — The Rise of Armed Power

Dr. El-Tahir El-Faki

Africa’s political history contains a recurring pattern: armed leaders who emerge from the margins of the state eventually transform military power into a claim for national political authority. The comparison between Sudan’s Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Laurent-Désiré Kabila illustrates both the opportunities and dangers of that transformation.

The two men emerged from very different circumstances. Kabila was a veteran revolutionary who spent decades opposing successive Congolese governments before becoming the political face of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL). Hemedti, by contrast, rose through Sudan’s system of peripheral armed forces and became commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful paramilitary organisation that was formally incorporated into the state while retaining substantial autonomy.

Yet their political trajectories share an important characteristic: armed power became the foundation for a wider political project.

Kabila’s decisive moment came in 1997. The AFDL advanced rapidly across Zaire as Mobutu Sese Seko’s government and armed forces weakened. With crucial support from Rwanda and Uganda, the rebellion reached Kinshasa. Mobutu fled, Kabila took power and the country was renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kabila had achieved what many rebel leaders never accomplish: he did not merely control territory; he captured the capital and inherited the formal machinery of the state.

Hemedti’s trajectory has been different. The RSF developed from Sudan’s earlier system of state-backed paramilitary forces, but gradually acquired considerable military and economic autonomy. Following the fall of Omar al-Bashir in 2019, Hemedti moved from the periphery of Sudanese politics into its centre. He became deputy head of the transitional authorities and eventually emerged as the principal military rival to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Sudanese Armed Forces.

The crucial difference is therefore that Kabila captured the state, while Hemedti has been competing for the state.
That distinction is fundamental.
Kabila’s military victory allowed him to inherit ministries, diplomatic representation, the capital and the legal identity of the Congolese state. Hemedti, by contrast, has had to build political and administrative structures while simultaneously fighting another institution—the Sudanese Armed Forces—that claims to represent the national military and the sovereignty of the country.

Nevertheless, both cases raise the same fundamental question: when an armed movement becomes a political force, can military authority be transformed into legitimate national authorityØŸ

Military success can create bargaining power. It can produce territory, resources and political influence. But none of these automatically produces legitimacy.

Kabila’s experience is instructive. His victory over Mobutu did not end Congo’s armed conflicts. Relations with former allies deteriorated, political opposition intensified and the country soon became engulfed in another major war. The coalition that helped bring Kabila to power eventually became one of the forces challenging him.

This is an important warning for Sudan.
External alliances can be essential to an armed movement’s rise, but they can also create dependencies. Regional powers may provide military, political or economic support, yet those relationships can become sources of tension once the armed movement seeks to establish an independent national authority.

The same applies to territorial control. Governing territory under wartime conditions is not the same as governing a country. A military organisation can impose order, collect revenue and administer areas under its control. National government, however, requires functioning institutions, public services, political inclusion and a degree of legitimacy extending beyond the organisation’s military constituency.

This is where the comparison between Kabila and Hemedti becomes particularly revealing.

Kabila demonstrated that a rebel movement could move from the battlefield to the presidential palace. But his subsequent difficulties demonstrated that capturing the state is not the same as consolidating it.

Hemedti’s challenge is even more complicated. Before he can consolidate state power, he must first overcome the fundamental question of whether an autonomous armed organisation can become the foundation of a unified Sudanese state.

The Sudanese conflict is therefore not simply a contest between two commanders. It is a struggle over the nature of the state itself: who controls the armed forces, who possesses legitimate political authority, how the centre relates to the periphery, and whether military organisations can be transformed into political institutions.

Kabila provides a historical example of what may happen when an armed movement succeeds in defeating the established order. Hemedti represents a different stage of the same broader political dilemma.

The question is no longer simply whether an armed movement can win.

The real question is what it becomes after victory.

Part 2 to follow :

Part 2 will examine what happened after Kabila’s victory—and what his experience may tell us about Hemedti’s struggle to convert armed power