Sudan’s biggest self-described ‘jihadi’ group says it will disband once RSF defeated

The office in Port Sudan has no distinguishing features. No sign on the outside, no indication of what’s going on inside.

Young men, seemingly belonging to rich, upper-middle class families, wearing modern clothes can be found within.

They are university graduates with shaved faces. But they are part of a hardline militant group aligned with Sudan’s Islamic movement and accused of being a front for the return of an ideology that thrived under the autocrat Omar al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan from 1989 to 2019, when he was finally removed following a democratic revolution.

In Port Sudan, which serves as an alternative capital for the government aligned to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), Middle East Eye met with members of the al-Bara ibn Malik brigade, which has been fighting alongside the army. The SAF has been at war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 2023.

From this office – and others in Sudanese cities controlled by the army – the group is working on recruiting young people to join it, organising their movement and transportation to battlegrounds, and coordinating with the army’s special support forces.

The members insisted they were working under the SAF’s command and that they had no way of supplying or financing themselves outside of the army and their own pockets. 

They also stressed that they would be institutionally dismantled after the end of the war, emphasising that they have no ambitions to seize power after defeating the RSF.

Re-emergence  

Named after an early Muslim fighter and companion of the Prophet, al-Bara ibn Malik brigade was established as part of the Popular Defence Forces (PDF), an Islamist paramilitary group that fought for Bashir’s Sudanese state against the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) led by John Garang.

The PDF was dismantled after the uprising that removed Bashir in 2019, but this proved short-lived: in 2023 it returned.

Just before the war broke out in April of that year, some members of al-Bara ibn Malik re-emerged in Khartoum, organising Ramadan breakfasts and making rally speeches against the framework agreement then being thrashed out between the army, the RSF and the civilian Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) coalition.

The framework deal was one of the causes of the war, and al-Bara ibn Malik’s presence and influence grew rapidly after it broke out, particularly once army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan opened military training camps in the summer of 2023 for anyone who wanted to volunteer to fight against the RSF.  

In an exclusive interview, al-Bara ibn Malik spokesman Amar Abdul Wahab Sid Ahmed said the number of army-aligned fighters in groups like his, which he described as “jihadi”, is now above 20,000.

“Since the first days of the war in Khartoum, youth from different political backgrounds have gone to the camps of the SAF to get military training in order to fight against the RSF and defend themselves and families,” Sid Ahmed said.

“The same thing happened in the states of al-Jazira and elsewhere, which witnessed unprecedented atrocities including mass killing, the rape of women, looting of properties and enforced displacement,” the spokesman told MEE. 

According to Sid Ahmed, the group is expanding every day. Its fighters, called al-Baraoon in Arabic, vow to fight what they describe as the “Emirati invasion” of Sudan, referring to the support the UAE provides the RSF, which has been documented by Middle East Eye. 

The Al-Bara ibn Malik brigade has become very famous during the war, with hundreds of videos of the young “jihadis” fighting with the army against the RSF appearing on social media. 

The group’s growing influence, its independent operations, slogans, banners, legacy, recruitment and other tactics have seen it become controversial. 

‘Since the first days of the war, youth from different political backgrounds have gone to the camps of SAF to get military training’

– Amar Abdul Wahab Sid Ahmed, al-Bara ibn Malik spokesman

Last April, a drone strike on a Ramadan iftar being held by the group left 15 dead, while a couple of months later, in June, its leader Al-Misbah Abuzeid Talha was arrested in Saudi Arabia after he “held several meetings with a number of Islamists inside” the kingdom, according to a diplomatic source who spoke to Ayin. 

Al-Bara ibn Malik’s fighters have become famous for their trademark index finger symbol, which they said shows their orientation as an Islamic group, something that draws criticism from large swathes of civic society, which accuse the group of adopting the ideas of extremists.

This has been a problem for Burhan, who has privately admitted that the group’s prominent social media presence and openly proclaimed jihadi identity has cost the army support from some international countries.

The leaders of the al-Bara ibn Malik, which say their group is more jihadist than politically Islamic, have also appeared in intensive clashes on the war’s frontlines in the capital Khartoum, al-Jazira, Sennar, White Nile states and other areas. 

“It’s clear that the militia [RSF] is totally collapsing and it’s only a matter of time before its remaining pockets of control are ended,” Sid Ahmed said.

The army has made significant gains recently in central and southern Sudan, as well as in Khartoum and its surroundings, though the RSF continues to control almost all of Darfur.

“What we are seeing on the ground is full victory very soon,” Sid Ahmed said. “We are cleaning the capital Khartoum and also other states.”

Atrocities

The Al-Bara ibn Malik brigade has been widely and often credibly accused of committing terrible atrocities, including the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and RSF soldiers. 

Sid Ahmed denied these charges. “Al-Bara ibn Malik forces have no mandate or power to arrest or detain anyone,” the group spokesman said. 

‘We are not representing the National Congress Party or any other political group’

– Amar Abdul Wahab Sid Ahmed

“We have nothing to do with the violations. Moreover, we are working as guerrilla forces and all these allegations about the involvement of al-Baraoon in violations here or there are just lies and propaganda spread by the RSF and its allies.”

He said the group was conducting special operations protecting civilians – MEE saw videos of one documenting an evacuation of civilians north of Khartoum – and liberating prisoners of war, and that the rumours spread against them came from the RSF and Tagadum, the civilian group that has recently splintered over whether to support the paramilitary or not.

On 31 January, though, the UN issued a press release in which it expressed its deep alarm at “summary executions of civilians allegedly by fighters and militia allied to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in Khartoum North”.  

The militia was the al-Bara ibn Malik brigade. 

Army command

“We are part of the SAF and are working under the full command of SAF and its laws and regulations,” Sid Ahmed told MEE. 

“So, when we arrest someone who cooperated with the militia, we hand him over to military intelligence without any violence against civilians.”

The spokesman noted the wide coalition fighting alongside the army, including groups associated with Sudan’s revolutionary movement, like Anger Without Borders.

“For us in al-Bara ibn Malik, we are generally not representing a specific political group or have a specific political affiliation, we have only one issue, one goal and one enemy so, we are fighting only to achieve these goals and we have nothing to do with politics,” Sid Ahmed said, referring to the defeat of the RSF. 

“We are not representing the National Congress Party (NCP) or any other political group,” he continued, referring to Bashir’s party.  

“We come from a different background, different professions and we have only the goal that I told you about and we are also working on humanitarian and civilian projects to help our people,” the spokesman said. 

“When we finish our mission, this group will be disarmed and demobilised and those who individually want to continue with the army or any other regular forces like the intelligence, police or others – it’s totally up to him.”

“We are fully working under the command of the SAF,” Sid Ahmed said. “Our only focus is to defeat the RSF.”