On 8 October, Mohamed Azraq al-Fangari defected from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and joined the Sudanese Armed Forces, the national army.
The special forces commander was accompanied by some 300 fighters from Kordofan, a region in central Sudan where the army has made advances in recent weeks.
Al-Fangari’s forces played a key role in besieging North Darfur’s capital of El-Fasher in April 2024.
The chokehold lasted 18 months and culminated in the mass killing of sedentary farming ‘non-Arab’ civilians. A UN probe found that the atrocities bore the ‘hallmarks of genocide’.
By then, al-Fangari had long been living in neighbouring Chad, where he was lobbying the RSF’s leadership for better equipment, higher salaries, and medical treatment for his fighters, according to Ahmed Gouja, a local journalist who hails from the same nomadic ‘Arab’ Hawzama tribe as al-Fangari.
“Al-Fangari had a lot of fighters who were injured in his special forces, but the RSF’s leaders treated them as an afterthought,” Gouja told The New Arab. “For those reasons, he defected.”
Dozens of disgruntled RSF officers have defected to the SAF in recent months, a trend that could fragment the RSF across tribal lines, according to local journalists and analysts from Darfur.
Like al-Fangari, most defected fighters hail from nomadic Arab tribes that the RSF’s top brass excludes from powerful positions. The RSF’s leadership is made up almost entirely of the Dagalo family, which hails from the nomadic ‘Arab’ Mahariya tribe.
The family’s grip on power has exacerbated tensions between its own tribe and other Arab communities, which the RSF leans on to fight the SAF.
The SAF’s warm embrace of RSF defectors is also stoking tensions within its own camp, which includes dozens of militias from various ethnic backgrounds and ideological leanings.
Defectors have been awarded impunity, arms and vehicles as a way to tempt other RSF commanders to change sides.
This has agitated some SAF-aligned militias who fear losing power and resources to RSF defectors, analysts say.
Favouritism and neglect
Throughout the war, the RSF’s leaders have sidelined ground commanders despite their role in spearheading major battlefield victories, which they achieved by committing systematic atrocities.
Former RSF commander Al-Nour ‘al-Gubba’ Ahmed Adam expected to be appointed governor of North Darfur for playing a substantial role in the RSF’s genocidal campaign to capture El-Fasher in October 2025.
Yet as a member of the nomadic ‘Arab’ Mahamid tribe - a community divided over its support between the RSF and the SAF – he was passed over for a fighter from the Mahariya.
In April 2026, al-Gubba defected to the SAF, partially because he was denied that powerful post. Many others have followed suit for similar reasons.
“Many [Arab] community leaders have come out and said publicly that these defections don’t represent the position of their tribes, but merely the self-interest of the officers who defected,” said Gouja.
Despite these statements, Gouja added that the RSF has stigmatised these communities, often arresting young men based on unfounded allegations that they are collaborating with the SAF by helping commanders defect.
This has compounded grievances among many nomadic Arab communities, who believe they are shouldering an unfair burden in the war against the SAF.
Many have sent their sons and fathers to either die or suffer life-altering injuries on the front lines, according to Abdel Nasser Suluk Hamid, an analyst from Darfur who is in touch with many Arab tribal leaders and civilians across the region.
“Fighters belonging to [the Mahariya] are sent abroad for life-saving hospital treatment, while the rest of the fighters are abandoned in South Darfur’s capital of Nyala or in Kordofan,” Suluk Hamid told The New Arab.
Despite the discriminatory treatment, Suluk Hamid believes that nomadic Arab tribes won’t turn against the RSF any time soon. Most still fear that the army will subject them to collective punishment if it recaptures Darfur - a fear the RSF stokes to keep them aligned and to attract new recruits.
“Arab communities in Darfur are told that SAF will rape their mothers and loot their lands,” Suluk Hamid told The New Arab.
The irony is that while both sides have committed atrocities such as torture and summary executions, the RSF is disproportionately responsible for systemic sexual violence and mass looting, according to human rights groups and media reports.
Simmering tensions
The wave of RSF defections could also lead to infighting within the delicate alliance of armed groups fighting under the banner of the SAF.
On 8 October, Minni Arko Minnawi, the leader of the SAF-aligned Joint Forces, which is composed of non-Arab militias that rebelled against the state in 2003, warned that he would rebel again if the army supported the creation of new militias.
“We are against any militias that are supported by the state with our money and taxes,” he said during an address to reporters from his residence in Khartoum.
Noon al-Baramkee, a journalist from Darfur, said that many of the RSF’s defectors are present across Sudan’s capital of Khartoum and in eastern Sudan. She said that Minnawi’s speech was likely prompted by fear that these groups would be empowered at the expense of the Joint Forces.
In addition, she believes Minnawi is agitated by the racist rhetoric of vocal SAF supporters, who are calling on the SAF to replace non-Arab armed groups with a new force.
Still, al-Baramkee said that Minnawi’s speech had exacerbated ethnic tensions.
“His speech was very dangerous and poorly timed. Many people now believe that Minnawi may be planning another rebellion [against the army again],” she told The New Arab.
A day after Minnawi’s speech, he walked back his threat of rebelling against the state, saying that he supports one state and one army. However, Gouja believes that Minnawi succeeded in warning the SAF against diluting his power and influence.
He noted that the Joint Forces remain a pivotal force, leading ground battles against the RSF in the broader Kordofan region, and that the SAF can’t afford to betray them.
“There are members of the SAF and of Sudan’s deep state that don’t view Minnawi as a trusted partner,” Gouja told The New Arab.
“But the leadership in the SAF knows that they would be weaker without him.”
Mat Nashed is an award-nominated journalist who has covered the MENA region since the Arab Spring
Follow him on X: @matnashed
Edited by Charlie Hoyle