Musa Hilal to mediate between warring tribes in South Darfur

Mahameed clan chief and former Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal yesterday announced a reconciliation initiative between the Beni Halba and Salamat tribes that have been fighting each other for nearly two months.

In early August, clashes broke out between Beni Halba and Salamat tribesmen in South Darfur’s Kubum. Several efforts to reconcile the cattle herders failed so far.

Both tribes are ‘Arab’ cattle herders. The stronghold (dar) of the Beni Halba lies in Ed El Fursan. The Salamat settled in Um Dukhun more than two decades ago.

Musa Hilal** yesterday announced a reconciliation initiative to put an end to the fighting that has left hundreds of tribesmen dead.

RAC spokesperson Ahmed Abakar told Radio Dabanga that “Sheikh Musa Hilal will lead the initiative as head of the council and native administration* leader, along with other native administration notables and community figures from Darfur and some other states of Sudan”.

He said that “the root causes of the clashes need to be defined and addressed, to stop them forever”.

The spokesperson added that the war “now taking place in Khartoum and some states is political, not tribal,” and called on the Sudanese “to not take it as an entry point for hate speech, tribalism, racism, and social segregation”.

* The Native Administration was instituted by British colonial authorities seeking a pragmatic system of governance that allowed for effective control with limited investment and oversight by the state. The state-appointed tribal leaders were also responsible for executing policies, collecting taxes, and mobilising labour on behalf of the central government. According to the Darfur Bar Association (DBA), the Native Administration during the 30-year rule of dictator Omar Al Bashir did not represent the real community leaders.

** Musa Hilal is the head of the Mahamid clan of the large Rizeigat herders tribe, while the RSF are mostly made up of members of herders’ clans in Darfur. RSF Commander Hemedti is a former militia leader from the Abbala (camel-herders) Rizeigat Arabs based in Chad.

Hilal is held responsible for numerous atrocities committed in Darfur against civilians after the conflict erupted in 2003. In that year, he was released from prison by the Sudanese government with the purpose to mobilise impoverished Darfuri Arab herders to fight the insurgency in the region. With full government backing, his militiamen, popularly called janjaweed, targeted villages of African Darfuris. They rarely came near forces of the rebel movements. In 2006, the UN Security council imposed financial and travel sanctions on the janjaweed leader.

He was appointed Presidential Assistant for Federal Affairs in Khartoum in 2008. Five years later, however, he announced his defection from the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), returned to Darfur and established the RAC.

The RAC, formed in 2014, consists of Hilal’s militiamen and a number of North Darfur native administration leaders. RAC commanders took control of the Jebel Amer gold mines in North Darfur in July 2015. According to a UN Security Council report in April 2016, Hilal and his entourage were profiting from vast gold sales. Two years later, when

Hilal and his militiamen refused to hand in their arms to the authorities, he was held, together with a number of his relatives and followers, in a raid on his stronghold in Misteriya, North Darfur, in November 2017. His trial in Khartoum secretly began on April 30. Sources claim that Hemedti was behind Hilal’s detention, as the RSF commander took over the operation of the mines. According to a Global Witness report two years later, Hemedti had captured a large part of the gold market in Sudan by December 2019, and started arrangements to hand the Jebel Amer gold mines to the government.