Worries mount among Sudan’s neighbours

Sudan is at the center of long-lasting permanent crisis. It is characterized by frequent armed conflicts,” Marina Peter, founder of the Sudan and South Sudan Forum, tells DW. “When a conflict breaks out in one of these countries, be it Egypt, Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea or — looking across the Red Sea — Saudi Arabia, the neighbouring country is always affected as well.” For the last week in Sudan, already politically unstable for years, the two most powerful generals and their units have been fighting for control. The outbreak of violence between forces loyal to the head of the army — Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler — and his deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemedti, who commands the paramilitary RSF group, only increases the risk of destabilizing the region, Peter says.

All of these countries depend on good relations with Sudan, she adds, but especially South Sudan, which declared independence from the north in 2011. Since then, different ethnic groups have been vying for power, sparking a civil war in the young state by 2013 that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Of the approximately 11 million South Sudanese, several million have been internally displaced or fled to neighbouring countries. The war has been officially over since 2020, but peace is fragile: “To this day, there is still fighting between rebels in various places in South Sudan,” Peter says. Still, a shared history strongly connects people in both countries, says Gerrit Kurtz from the Africa and ME research group at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. “Many people from both countries live or stay in each other’s countries, including refugees, and of course there are also close political and economic ties,” Kurtz told DW.

South Sudan relies on foreign currency from crude oil sales, which comprises around 95% of public revenue, he adds. Sudan is crucial to these exports, as the oil pipeline runs through Sudan to the Red Sea. The government of South Sudan therefore has a strong interest in ensuring that this connection remains in place, Kurtz says.

But the government is itself at odds — a situation in which RSF leader Daglo has previously acted as a mediator. “And now that this is no longer the case, and somehow the South Sudanese parties are also trying to position themselves with regard to the conflict in the north, this could now also lead to explosions of violence in South Sudan,” Kurtz warns. Chad’s military reported that on Monday it disarmed 320 paramilitary fighters from Sudan who crossed the border. But it is mostly civilians who are now on the move. Refugees from contested areas in western Sudan have already arrived in Chad, the country’s Communication Minister Aziz Mahamat Saleh tells DW. And this is despite the fact that the 1,500-kilometre border with Sudan has been closed.

Chad has a culture of hospitality and cannot hermetically seal its border, Saleh says. “We appeal to international partners to support us in this humanitarian crisis on the horizon,” he adds. The country is already hosting more than 500,000 refugees, Saleh says, adding that he fears an ongoing war could have a lasting impact on the entire Sahel region, including trade between the two neighbours. Traditionally, there has been a lot of border traffic between Chad and Sudan, such as the flow of herders grazing their flocks on both sides of the border. While relations deteriorated during the Darfur conflict, they have since recovered.

This article was provided by Deutsche Welle