A Canadian who lived in Winnipeg for 14 years has emerged as the diplomatic face of a Sudanese paramilitary force that stands accused of killings, sexual assaults and other atrocities.
Yousif Ibrahim Ismaeil, who studied conflict resolution at the University of Winnipeg, has been shuttling from city to city across Europe and Africa as he seeks to soften the image of Sudan’s controversial Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the war that erupted this year. He has been granted audiences with top officials in France and the presidents of Kenya, Uganda and South Sudan, among others.
Mr. Ismaeil, 49, is one of the main leaders of the RSF’s extensive public-relations campaign, which in recent years has included multimillion-dollar lobbyists, a flood of social media messaging and daily propaganda e-mails.
The RSF and its rival, the Sudanese military, are widely accused of killing hundreds of civilians in indiscriminate barrages of artillery and other heavy weapons, often in densely populated urban areas, since the war exploded in mid-April. Their power struggle has devastated the country, blocking most humanitarian aid, triggering a sharp rise in hunger and forcing more than 2.5 million people to flee their homes.
The RSF has been specifically accused of large numbers of sexual assaults and killings, the widespread looting of hundreds of homes and relief agencies, seizing control of hospitals and clinics, and allying with Arab militias in Darfur to commit large-scale attacks against non-Arab communities.
On social media, many Sudanese have voiced outrage that Mr. Ismaeil has been using his Canadian passport to travel across Europe and Africa to promote the RSF’s version of the war. They have described him as a propagandist for war criminals. He denies the accusation.
From the beginning of the war, Mr. Ismaeil has been giving media interviews and lobbying foreign officials while working as a top adviser to the RSF commander, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti – an old friend who went to primary school with him in a village in North Darfur.
“My relations with Hemedti are more than just work,” he told The Globe and Mail in a phone interview during an Ethiopian stop in his tour. “We went to school together in the first class. We’re born in the same area and we’re friends from childhood.”
As a young man, Mr. Ismaeil was a lawyer and political activist in Sudan, but fled to Egypt after suffering arrest and torture by security forces in his home country. In 2003 he came to Canada as a refugee. In Winnipeg, after 2007, he worked odd jobs as a taxi driver and gas-station attendant while slowly getting his university degree. His two children are still in school in Winnipeg today.
Two years ago, he became embroiled in long-distance conversations with Gen. Dagalo, including discussions of the military coup in October, 2021, which he says he opposed. “Hemedti said, ‘If you want to give advice, come and work with me in the office and I will listen to your advice, but don’t call me from Canada and tell me what to do.’ So I accepted the offer.”
Mr. Ismaeil says the RSF fighters may have committed “some violations” during the conflict. But he spins elaborate theories to defend the fighters, claiming that Sudanese military intelligence put more than 10,000 mercenaries into RSF uniforms and unleashed them onto civilians to “cause a bad reaction from the Sudanese people” and to tarnish the force’s image.
He insists that the RSF is taking steps to minimize abuses, including the creation of a “civilian protection force” and a telephone hotline for civilian complaints. “The fighters try and learn every day to do better, but there is chaos in Khartoum.”
His diplomatic efforts are necessary, he says, because Islamists in the military have mobilized Sudan’s foreign ministry and embassies to spread their own propaganda abroad. “We’re facing a machine. The whole regime is trying to send false information to the world. They want to remain in power until an election and nobody knows when that election would be.”
The RSF has a long history of polishing its image and portraying itself as a democratic force, despite its roots in the notorious Darfur-based militia known as the Janjaweed, which was accused of war crimes against rebels and villagers during a brutal anti-insurgency campaign on behalf of Sudan’s military in the early 2000s. After renaming itself as the RSF and becoming more integrated into the government, it grew wealthy from gold-trading schemes with Russia and from recruiting fighters for the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia during the war in Yemen.
Its commander, Gen. Dagalo, became deputy leader of Sudan’s military regime in 2019 after the toppling of former dictator Omar al-Bashir. He quickly signed a US$6-million contract with Canadian lobbying firm Dickens & Madson, in which the firm pledged to polish the regime’s media image and boost its relations with the United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
The RSF’s public-relations efforts, however, cannot conceal the growing evidence of its violent abuses. In a report this week, Human Rights Watch described a pattern of “ethnic cleansing” by the RSF and its allied Arab militias in Darfur. “The RSF and militias committed widespread looting and arson, and attacked critical civilian infrastructure, including internally displaced camps, hospitals and markets,” the report said.
Eric Reeves, a Sudan expert at the Africa-based Rift Valley Institute, described Mr. Ismaeil’s tour of world capitals as “truly bizarre.” It is a likely result of Gen. Dagalo having “more money than he can spend,” he told The Globe.
The diplomatic campaign may reflect advice from RSF supporters in the United Arab Emirates, he said. “But no one who knows anything about Hemedti and the RSF can possibly think they are candidates for any kind of redemption or rehabilitation.”