\n Mohamed Idris, 27, has despaired of ever finding a job in war-torn Sudan. Instead, he's now set his sights on a training camp on the Eritrean border, hoping to join a militia.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I got my university degree but there aren't any job opportunities, if I get into a training camp I can at least defend my country and my people,\" he told AFP from Kassala in Sudan, the nearest city to the border.\n<\/p>\n
\n Analysts say the growing role such militias and armed groups are playing in the war will only prolong the country's suffering.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sudan's war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) began in April 2023, sparking what the UN calls the world's worst displacement crisis.\n<\/p>\n
\n More than eight million people have been uprooted internally and more than three million have fled abroad.\n<\/p>\n
\n The northeast African country is on the brink of famine, according to aid agencies, and a UN investigation found both sides committed rights abuses with the RSF particularly implicated in sexual violence.\n<\/p>\n
\n In Sudan's east, Kassala and Gedaref have so far been spared the chaos of war, but host more than a million people who have fled fighting elsewhere.\n<\/p>\n
\n In both cities, AFP correspondents have seen convoys of four-wheel drives mounted with anti-aircraft weapons speed through the streets.\n<\/p>\n
\n Each vehicle, blasting its horn as it went, was manned by a handful of young men waving assault rifles -- though the nearest battles are hundreds of kilometres (miles) away.\n<\/p>\n
\n The men, like Idris, are part of a generation who have lost their futures to the flames of Sudan's war.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Tribe and family' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Now, they represent recruiting potential for new armed groups being formed, particularly along ethnic and tribal lines in the country's army-controlled east.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The forces I want to join are from my tribe and my family,\" said Idris.\n<\/p>\n
\n According to Sudanese analyst and former culture and information minister Faisal Mohammed Saleh, \"these groups haven't yet joined the fray in the current war\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"But the fear is that they could be preparing for future rounds,\" he told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sudan, which has only known brief interludes of civilian rule since independence from Britain in 1956, is rife with armed groups, some with the capacity of small armies.\n<\/p>\n
\n For decades, many were locked in wars with the central government, claiming to champion the rights of marginalised ethnic minorities or regions.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 2020, most signed a peace agreement with the government in Khartoum, and several rebel leaders subsequently became senior officials in the government of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"In the first months of the war, many of these groups were neutral, but have since declared allegiance to the army,\" Sudanese policy researcher Qusay Hamrour told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n They established the so-called joint forces to fight on the army's side, while other groups \"wavered, before throwing their weight behind the RSF\", Hamrour said.\n<\/p>\n
\n According to former information minister Saleh, \"what's new now is the eastern Sudanese groups, most of which are training inside Eritrea\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Eyewitnesses told AFP earlier this year that they saw Sudanese fighters being trained in at least five locations in neighbouring Eritrea, which has not commented on the allegations.\n<\/p>\n
\n The witnesses said the camps were linked to Burhan's army or to figures from the former Islamist-backed regime of ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Loyal to no one -\n<\/p>\n
\n Historically, though ethnic or tribal armed groups \"may ally themselves with the regular army, they remain essentially independent\", according to Ameer Babiker, author of the book \"Sudan's Peace: A Quagmire of Militias and Irregular Armies\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Khartoum has long relied on armed groups to fight its wars in other parts of Sudan.\n<\/p>\n
\n In response to an uprising in Darfur in 2003, Bashir unleashed the Janjaweed militia, leading to war crimes charges against him and others.\n<\/p>\n
\n The RSF, formalised by Bashir in 2013, are descended from the Janjaweed.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 2021, army chief Burhan led a coup that derailed a fragile civilian transition that followed Bashir's own ouster.\n<\/p>\n
\n By April 2023, a long-running power struggle between Burhan and his deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, erupted into all-out war.\n<\/p>\n
\n Now, what Babiker calls \"the weakness of the Sudanese state\" has compelled it to again to depend on militias to secure territory.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said this strategy would \"only lead to these groups growing stronger, making them impossible to bypass in the future\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Already, there have emerged \"multiple centres of decision-making within the army\", he told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n According to a May report from the International Crisis Group think tank, \"both main belligerents are struggling with command and control\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Burhan, increasingly reliant on powers from the Bashir regime \"as well as communal militias and other armed groups ... risks losing his hold on the various factions.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Meanwhile the RSF is \"an ever more motley assortment of tribal militias and warlords\", according to Crisis Group, which says that both wartime coalitions have become more unwieldy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mohamed Idris, 27, has despaired of ever finding a job in war-torn Sudan. Instead, he's now set his sights on a training camp on the Eritrean border, hoping to join a militia. \"I got my university degree but there aren't any job opportunities, if I get into a training camp I can at least defend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-139085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n