New Delhi, Nov. 5 -- Hemedti's rise from camel trader to gold-backed commander has turned mines into money and militias into government, remaking Sudan's map and deepening a humanitarian nightmare.

KHARTOUM - Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the paramilitary commander known as Hemedti, has reemerged at the center of a crisis that is quietly remaking Sudan's political map. Once a camel trader who parlayed control of goldfields into a private empire, Hemedti now presides over territories that amount to a de facto state within a failing state, a shadow administration that has deepened the country's rupture and complicated any international path to peace, according to BBC reporting.

The arc of Hemedti's rise is familiar to students of modern Sudan, f...