As fighting intensifies in El-Fasher, North Darfur State, both warring parties have conducted mass recruitment campaigns across the Darfur region.
Ms. Halima Hamdan is naturally concerned about her three sons, who recently joined the Rapid Support Forces' recruitment camps, a paramilitary group that has been at war with Sudan's national army since mid-April last year.
Following Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo's (aka 'Hemedti') last October video speech, civil administrations and indigenous leaders in RSF-controlled areas are conducting large-scale recruitment campaigns in response to his call to mobilise a million fighters.
The promise of a monthly salary of one billion Sudanese pounds, reflecting the dire economic conditions her family faces due to the ongoing war, enticed Halima Hamdan's three sons to join the recruitment camps.
"The difficult living conditions forced three of my sons to join the Rapid Support Forces training camps in Nyala, especially after the Rapid Support Forces promised them a monthly salary of one billion pounds," Hamdan told Ayin, a resident of the Al-Wahda neighbourhood in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur State.
"I don't know what will happen to my children... and I hear terrible news every day about the war and the killing of dozens of young men from my region in the battles of Khartoum and Al-Fasher," the 52-year-old mother added.
The ongoing mobilisation campaigns organised by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and armed movements allied with the Sudanese army in the Darfur region have forced hundreds of families, including Halima Hamdan's family, to send their sons into the fighting.
An official in the RSF Training Department, South Darfur Sector, told Ayin that they opened seven training camps, most of them in South Darfur State, despite facing funding challenges. The commander, who requested anonymity, stated that the primary goal of the ongoing mobilisation in Darfur is to deploy more fighters to the battlefront, particularly to El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State, which serves as the final stronghold for the army and its allies against armed movements in the region.
On 1 and 2 December, the RSF shelled Sudan's largest displacement camp, Zam-Zam, local residents told Ayin, killing at least six civilians and displacing thousands more. According to the same sources, the RSF are trying to target an armed group aligned to the army within the camp without considering the civilians residing within. UN OCHA reports that the RSF and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have engaged in intense fighting in Zam Zam, south of El Fasher, since April 2024, forcing over 400,000 people to flee their homes.
Fight for survival
"You must move to fight, and if you do not go, they will come and fight you in your towns and homes," warned a civil leader in a town meeting in Daraya, South Darfur State, during an RSF recruitment campaign. According to Ghulam Allah Al-Tijani, a local leader of the Misseriya ethnicity in Nitega, a town northeast of Nyala, joining the RSF is the only way their community can survive. Refusing to join the RSF will only bring destruction upon their community, he said.
In West Darfur State, the Tendalti area in Forbaranga witnessed a wide mobilisation of fighters to join the RSF under the supervision of local leaders and RSF officers.
Multiple sources told Ayin that there were mobilisation operations and calls for fighters to join the RSF in the villages of Qilu, Rahad Qard, Kalang, and Maroro, in the Tendalti area of West Darfur State.
Counter-mobilisation
In contrast, armed movements allied with the army led a parallel mobilisation in the Chad-bordering areas of Ambaro, Karnoi, Abu Gamra, and Al-Tina in response to the RSF's recruitment drives.
These forces have mobilised thousands of fighters to their ranks, motivated by the need to protect their villages from armed attacks launched by civil militias supporting the Rapid Support Forces on their towns.
Haroun Juma Khater, the civil leader in North Darfur, told Ayin that civil groups are mobilising their sons from Libya and Chad through recruitment camps in the towns of Tina, Karnoi, and Ambaro. The recruitment is to halt the advance of civil militias assisting the RSF in the historical areas north of El Fasher, he added.
Khater's account is consistent with what military sources in the joint forces of the armed movements reported: that hundreds of young fighters arrived in the town of Tina to join the army-aligned armed movements. The recruitment drive aims to counter the expanding RSF-aligned groups in north and west Kutum, who have been targeting villages in October and November, according to the same sources.
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Opposition voices
Despite the wide response to the mobilisation campaigns, a group of civil activists expressed their rejection of the recruitment drives. In many localities in the region, they spearheaded campaigns opposing the civil administration's mobilisation.
Activist Hussein Haroun cautions young people against participating in the ongoing mobilisations led by the civil administrations in Darfur, emphasising the need to consider the potential future consequences.
"Many young people have begun to realise that the trend toward mobilisation is no longer beneficial, given that the promises of financial rewards to anyone who fights in the ranks of the Rapid Support Forces are illogical and have not been implemented before," Haroun said.
Meanwhile, military expert Ali Eidam believes that catastrophic consequences await the region as a result of the mobilisation and counter-mobilisation of civil groups in Darfur by both sides of the war.
Idam notes that the RSF's new recruitment was more organised after these civil groups were represented in the RSF's civilian governments in four states, which threatens to prolong the war.
