Darfur governor and army ally Minni Arko Minnawi told Sudanese in Kuala Lumpur that the RSF grew out of the state's failure to build an army that protects all its citizens. One newspaper reported him going further, crediting the RSF with protecting borders the army had left exposed.
Minni Arko Minnawi, leader of a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement and governor of the Darfur region under the army-aligned authorities, addressed members of the Sudanese community in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday 31 October. Sudanese outlets have given sharply different accounts of what he said about the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Two versions
According to the English edition of the newspaper Assayha, Minnawi "acknowledged" that the RSF "filled the void left by the Sudanese Armed Forces" and had "tirelessly protected the borders and citizens after the Sudanese Army failed to do so".
The news site Al-Tabia reported the remarks more narrowly. Its headline, in CERHA's translation from Arabic, reads: "The Rapid Support militia is the result of the state's failure to create an army that protects all borders and citizens." The Sudan Times noted the conflicting accounts. It said other outlets reported Minnawi calling for state institutions to be rebuilt and for a unified army based on a national doctrine, and that his exact wording could not be independently verified.
Minnawi's own account of the meeting, reported by Reyam from a post on his page, does not mention the RSF. It says he called for an inclusive national dialogue that "excludes no one" and for peace to be built through state, educational and community institutions rather than slogans. The visit followed a Malaysian–Sudanese conference on education and humanitarian recovery organised by Sudan's embassy.
Why it drew attention
Minnawi's forces are part of the Joint Force of Darfuri armed movements that has fought alongside the army since 2023. He has previously urged the UN to designate the RSF a terrorist organisation. Even the narrower version of his remarks, that the RSF grew out of the state's failure to build a national army serving all Sudanese, echoes an argument often made by the Tasis alliance: that Sudan's security institutions served a narrow centre and left the peripheries unprotected.
Analysis: Whatever words he used, the episode shows that leaders in the army's own camp are debating what kind of national army should come after the war. That debate will matter to any future settlement. Both Tasis and the army's allies say they want a single professional army, but they disagree on who should build it and on what doctrine.
Photo: Minni Minnawi (left) with US President George W. Bush in the Oval Office, July 2006. White House photo by Kimberlee Hewitt, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.