The Myth of the Greater Pan-Zaghawa Kingdom Part II — The War That Destroyed the Myth Dr. El-Tahi

06:02 AM October, 03 2026

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The Myth of the Greater Pan-Zaghawa Kingdom

Part II — The War That Destroyed the Myth

Dr. El-Tahir El-Faki

If the Greater Pan-Zaghawa Kingdom had ever been a coherent political project, Sudan’s present war should have provided the opportunity for it to emerge.

Instead, the opposite happened.

The war that began in April 2023 exposed not a unified Pan-Zaghawa strategy, but a remarkable fragmentation of political and military loyalties among prominent Zaghawa figures.

Some aligned themselves with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), others moved toward the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), some attempted neutrality, while others entered the institutions of the Sudanese state.

This is perhaps the strongest empirical evidence against the old myth.

The Darfur Joint Forces

The Darfur Joint Forces became an important component of the coalition fighting the RSF. Among its principal components were Minni Minnawi’s Sudan Liberation Movement and Jibril Ibrahim’s Justice and Equality Movement.

According to the European Union Agency for Asylum, these movements, together with other Darfur armed groups, abandoned their earlier neutrality in April 2024 and became involved in fighting against the RSF.

This represented a remarkable transformation. For years, sections of Sudanese political discourse had portrayed the Zaghawa as pursuing an expansionist project directed against the Sudanese state. Yet substantial numbers of Zaghawa fighters were now fighting alongside the national army and other Sudanese movements.

The political leadership tells the story

The fragmentation becomes even clearer when we examine the trajectories of prominent Zaghawa leaders.

Jibril Ibrahim and his JEM aligned with the SAF and became part of the Sudanese state’s political and military order.

Minni Minnawi and his movement became a major component of the Joint Forces fighting the RSF, while Minnawi continued to serve as Governor of Darfur.

But other prominent figures followed very different paths.

Suleiman Sandal and Ahmed Tugud formerly a senior JEM figures, moved toward the RSF-aligned political project and became associated with the internal divisions surrounding the movement’s position toward the war.

Then there is El-Tahir Hajar, whose trajectory is particularly revealing. His movement initially participated in efforts to maintain neutrality and protect civilians and humanitarian routes. Its position subsequently changed. In January 2026, Sudan Tribune reported that RSF forces, supported by fighters from Hajar’s Sudan Liberation Forces Gathering and a faction of JEM led by Suleiman Sandal, attacked Joint Force positions around Jargira near the Chadian border.

The trajectories could hardly be more different:

Jibril Ibrahim — aligned with the SAF and serving in government.

Minni Minnawi — aligned with the SAF and leading the Darfur administration.

El-Tahir Hajar — moved from initial neutrality toward an alignment reported to be alongside the RSF.

Suleiman Sandal — moved from JEM into the RSF-aligned political camp.

These are not the trajectories of a coordinated ethnic political project. They are the trajectories of competing political calculations.

The fragmentation is the evidence

The important point is not that one of these leaders represents “the Zaghawa” while another does not. None of them do. No individual leader, political movement or armed formation can claim ownership of the political identity of an entire ethnic community.

The war has demonstrated precisely why ethnic explanations are inadequate. Individuals make political choices. Movements make strategic choices. Leaders respond to changing circumstances. Communities respond to threats. Alliances change.

What matters historically is that prominent Zaghawa leaders who emerged from the same broad Darfur rebellion ultimately pursued fundamentally different political destinations.

That reality is difficult to reconcile with the idea of a single Pan-Zaghawa project.

From rebels to government
Perhaps the greatest irony is the transformation of Jibril Ibrahim and Minni Minnawi. The men who once represented armed rebellion against Khartoum subsequently became participants in the institutions of the Sudanese state.

If the ultimate objective had been the creation of a separate Zaghawa kingdom, why would two of the most prominent Zaghawa rebel leaders invest their political futures in Sudanese state institutions؟

The historical evidence points instead to a more complicated struggle over representation, marginalisation, security, resources and political power.

The danger of the myth
The persistence of the Greater Pan-Zaghawa narrative has consequences beyond historical interpretation.
Once an entire community is identified collectively with an armed movement, civilians can be treated as though they share responsibility for the actions of combatants. Political disagreement becomes ethnic suspicion, and ethnic suspicion can become a justification for violence.

The war has therefore exposed the danger of reducing Sudanese political conflicts to ethnic conspiracies.

The Zaghawa did not march together toward a kingdom. Some fought alongside the state. Some fought alongside the RSF. Some sought neutrality. Some entered government. Many simply became civilians trying to survive.

That is not evidence of a hidden Pan-Zaghawa agenda.
It is evidence of a complex political community caught in the fragmentation of Sudan itself.

The Zaghawa did not create Sudan’s fragmentation. They became part of it.
The more important question, therefore, is no longer whether the Zaghawa were secretly preparing to establish a Greater Pan-Zaghawa Kingdom, but why Sudan has repeatedly interpreted political competition through the language of ethnicity—and how those interpretations can themselves contribute to the conflicts they claim merely to describe.

Part III — What the Myth Concealed — will examine why this narrative survived for so long and what political realities it obscured.

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