Its government seems eager to exacerbate problems, only then to present itself as a reasonable arbiter. It is a fireman-arsonist.

Who in their right mind would support Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the camel-trading Sudanese general who rose through the ranks during the genocide in Darfur? What kind of government would provide arms to his Rapid Support Forces (RSF), born of the Janjaweed militia (the “devils on horseback”), which raped, pillaged and burned their way through Darfur in the early 2000s?

Surely only the worst possible leaders – those who stand forthright against Western values – would allow themselves to be aligned with such an evil man and cause.

This year, the RSF expanded its scorched-earth campaign to the entirety of Sudan, which has descended into an anarchic civil war like no other in its history. Since April, the militia and its allies – ostensibly at war with the Sudanese army – have terrorised women and girls through sexual violence, attacking them in their homes and kidnapping them from the streets. Today, people are fleeing the sanctuary city of Wad Madani, to which they had escaped from their homes in Khartoum – running once again from the RSF.

Mohamed Dagalo, the Joseph Kony of Sudan, is winning. His men have seized the capital and plundered the private estates of countless families, including mine.

His RSF stands accused of facilitating the smuggling of Sudan’s precious gold to Russia via the Wagner Group, effectively supporting Putin’s war efforts in Ukraine. It has imported legions of foreign mercenaries from Chad and displaced five million Sudanese, who continue to leave for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, or any other country that would take them. Among those fleeing was my great uncle, who died waiting at the Egyptian border last month and was buried on the spot, hundreds of miles from home.

Many Arab governments once flirted with Dagalo, eager to familiarise themselves with the man who had protected Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist regime. He emerged on the national scene after a Sudanese revolution in 2019, led by doctors, which deposed Bashir and sought a transition to democracy. Dagalo presented himself as the protector of protesters – but it didn’t take long before his forces began to murder them in a bid to seize total power.

Read more: telegraph.co.uk

Photo: telegraph.co.uk