Hemedti and the Tamil Tigers: A Historical Analogy in the Limits of Territorial Power Dr El-Tahir

07:28 PM September, 15 2026

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Hemedti and the Tamil Tigers: A Historical Analogy in the Limits of Territorial Power

Dr El-Tahir El-Faki

The fate of Velupillai Prabhakaran and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) offers a useful, though necessarily imperfect, historical lens through which to consider the political trajectory of Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan.

At its height, the LTTE controlled substantial territory, maintained a disciplined military structure, developed parallel administrative institutions and mobilised significant financial resources. It also enjoyed genuine support among sections of Sri Lanka’s Tamil population, many of whom regarded Prabhakaran as a defender of their community. For a period, the LTTE increasingly resembled a proto-state.

Yet its experience demonstrated a fundamental distinction: territorial control is not the same as political legitimacy.

An armed movement may control territory, administer populations and prevent rivals from exercising authority without being accepted as legitimate. The LTTE ultimately failed to bridge this gap. Its coercive practices, elimination of rival Tamil organisations and political assassinations damaged its political legitimacy, while international isolation narrowed its strategic options. Between 2006 and 2009, the Sri Lankan state rebuilt its military capacity, recaptured LTTE territory and dismantled the organisation. Prabhakaran was killed in May 2009.

The comparison with Hemedti should not be understood as a prediction that the RSF will necessarily follow the same path. The differences are substantial. The RSF developed from Sudan’s own security architecture and has accumulated extensive military, commercial, political and regional networks. Sudan’s conflict is also characterised by much greater territorial fragmentation.

Nevertheless, the LTTE experience highlights Hemedti’s central challenge: military power can create political space, but it cannot by itself create a durable state.

Three broad trajectories are therefore conceivable.

1. The LTTE scenario — military defeat

RSF territorial control could progressively contract as its military capacity is degraded, external support becomes insufficient and its leadership loses the ability to sustain a separate political project. This would broadly resemble the LTTE’s final trajectory, although Sudan’s circumstances are very different.

2. The negotiated-power scenario

Hemedti could retain substantial territorial and political influence through a negotiated settlement. The RSF might not establish an independent state but could become part of a new Sudanese political arrangement, perhaps retaining significant autonomy or military influence. Such an outcome would require difficult compromises among Sudan’s principal political and military actors.

3. The fragmentation scenario

The RSF could survive but become increasingly decentralised. Commanders, commercial interests, tribal networks and local authorities could acquire greater autonomy while Hemedti’s personal authority weakens. Unlike the highly centralised LTTE, the RSF is embedded in complex social, economic and regional networks. A weakening of Hemedti therefore might not produce the collapse of the RSF, but its fragmentation into competing centres of armed and economic power.

The third scenario could be particularly dangerous for Sudan. Instead of producing a single alternative state, the war could generate multiple localised centres of authority and competing political economies.

This raises the broader possibility of competitive state formation: rival authorities exercising effective control over territory while competing to establish legitimacy, institutions, revenue systems and security structures.

The deepest lesson of the Tamil Tigers is therefore not simply that military movements can be defeated. It is that military power and state-building are fundamentally different projects.

The decisive question for Hemedti is not merely whether the RSF can retain territory or survive the war. It is whether he can transform personalised armed power into an institutional political order capable of surviving him.

That is the real limit of territorial power—and the most important historical analogy with Prabhakaran.
London 15/09/2026

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