- Andrew Harding
- . – Johannesburg
The conflict raging in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, threatens to affect a number of the most fragile regions of the continent
If you want to know why Sudan is important to many other countries, just look at the map.
There is a reason why the fighting that broke out in Sudan last week has caused alarm bells to sound in many countries. Not only is Sudan the third largest African country, but it also straddles a geopolitically vital and unstable region.
Whatever is happening in the capital, Khartoum, militarily or politically, it resonates in a number of the most fragile regions of Africa.
Sudan includes the Nile River, which makes the fate of Sudan of existential importance to the downstream country that suffers from a lack of water – Egypt, and the same applies to the landlocked upstream country – Ethiopia, with its ambition to exploit the Nile waters in a way that already currently affects the flow of the river.
Sudan has borders with seven countries, all of which face security challenges intertwined with political life in Khartoum.
What is happening in the Darfur region in western Sudan inevitably crosses the border into neighboring Chad, and vice versa.
Weapons and fighters from coup-prone Chad and war-torn Central African Republic often filter across the porous borders of this part of the world.
This picture also applies to Libya, to the north and west.
Sudan has borders with the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia, which has barely emerged from a depleting conflict that has drawn into it another unexpected neighbor, the highly armed, isolated and dictatorial Eritrea.
There is also tension in other common parts between Sudan and Ethiopia, and there are disputed border areas between the two countries.
To the south, Sudan faces a relatively new nation, South Sudan, which officially broke away from its northern neighbor in 2011 after one of its longest and bloodiest civil wars. The borders between the two neighbors are still unstable.
No sooner had South Sudan declared its establishment than it witnessed the outbreak of a large-scale civil war that some fear could be repeated in Sudan now.
And when South Sudan separated, the richest oil fields in the region separated with it, leaving Sudan poorer than before, which indirectly contributed to the outbreak of the current crisis in Khartoum, where two groups struggle to control the eroding economic resources, such as gold and agriculture.
image copyright GettyImages
People are fleeing from neighborhoods close to the conflict in Khartoum, where the regular army and the Rapid Support Forces are fighting each other in a power struggle.
As part of this struggle, Sudan’s generals are looking for foreign partners. In terms of agriculture, these generals invited the Gulf states to invest in vast and untapped areas of fertile soil on both banks of the Nile.
In terms of gold, the generals tended to conclude more mysterious deals with the notorious Russian Wagner Group.
The United States accuses the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, of “exploiting Sudan’s natural resources for personal gain,” as well as influencing the country’s decision-making via the Internet.
Russian interests in Sudan and the region extend even further – to eastern Sudan overlooking the Red Sea; For years, the Kremlin has been seeking to inaugurate a military base in Port Sudan, where Russian warships will anchor and control one of the densest and most important sea lanes in the world.
Moscow is about to finalize a deal over the military base in Port Sudan with Sudan’s military government – which seized power in 2021 through a coup.
It is not surprising, in light of the foregoing, that many governments seek to influence the course of events in Sudan now.
So far, the focus seems to be on ending the fighting between the regular army forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan before it spreads farther than that and threatens to escalate from a direct power struggle into a more complex civil war.
Beyond this, foreign governments are eager to guide Sudan down the path to democracy that many aspired to following the overthrow of the dictatorial Bashir regime in 2011.
However, there are countries that may prefer to support another strong man, and break the will of the Sudanese people, who have waited for decades for the emergence of a generation of fighters to detonate their energies.
