In the run-up to the conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), both tried to improve ties with neighboring countries: the army with Ethiopia and the RSF with Eritrea.
Those countries could now be drawn into Sudan’s civil war if violence spreads to the borders, analysts told Al Jazeera.
The first sign of warming ties between Ethiopia and Sudan occurred in January. That was when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed visited Sudan and met with army commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto head of state.
The two discussed the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Egypt fears could cut the Nile’s water supply, and a border dispute over the fertile region of el-Fashaga.
Two months later, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan ‘Hemedti’ Dagalo was invited to meet Eritrea’s authoritarian leader Isais Afwerki to ostensibly discuss bilateral relations.
What was actually discussed behind closed doors is unclear.
“When you get two totally Machiavellian troublemakers in a room, the complicated combination of mischief is only imaginable,” said Alex de Waal, the executive director of the World Peace Foundation and an expert on the Horn of Africa.
After joining forces to fight in Ethiopia’s civil war against the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), relations between Abiy and Afwerki have soured. The former signed a peace deal with the TPLF in November, much to the dismay of Afwerki, who sees the organization as an existential threat, analysts said.
More recently, Abiy has called on the armed Amhara groups, which also fought alongside government forces in the Tigray region, to integrate into the national army. The Amhara ethnic group, whose leading forces receive financial and military aid from Eritrea, has responded by rebelling against the central government.
Now the flared tensions in the wider Horn of Africa threaten to mingle with the fighting in Sudan and create a wider conflict.
payback period
Shortly after Abiy declared war on Tigray in November 2020, the Sudanese army attacked the disputed border area of el-Fashaga, displacing Ethiopian and mostly Amhara farmers.
For years, a soft border allowed both Sudanese and Ethiopians to farm the land and sell their products in Ethiopia.
But the Sudanese military, perhaps looking to bolster its patriotic credentials by reclaiming what it considers Sudanese territory, moved into the fertile area when Abiy and his troops became bogged down in Tigray.
Now that the tables are turned, Amhara armed groups could take advantage of Sudan’s civil war by launching an attack on the Sudanese army in el-Fashaga, said Hubert Kinkoh, a Horn of Africa expert at the Institute for Safety studies. an African think tank.
He added that Amhara groups could simply threaten to do so in order to strengthen their influence over the central government.
“[The el-Fashaga] situation could be exploited to force Abiy’s hand to reverse or stop his decision [to integrate Amhara forces]Kinkoh told Al Jazeera.
Jonas Horner, an independent analyst who has conducted extensive research on el-Fashaga, told Al Jazeera that Amhara forces are unlikely to attack the region.
‘It is true that Sudan [army] is currently distracted, but I think so [Amhara forces] would put themselves and perhaps the region at considerable risk by invading Sudanese territory,” he said.
“The Sudanese Armed Forces, as the national army of Sudan, would be obliged to respond to threats to the country’s territorial integrity,” he added. Knowing this, Hemedti would like his enemies to be distracted by something [such] raid.”
Unfinished business
For now, Eritrea and Ethiopia maintain a neutral stance on Sudan as both are unsure who will win the conflict there, analysts told Al Jazeera.
Ethiopian Foreign Minister Mesganu Arga recently told reporters that his country was deeply concerned about the fighting in Sudan and called for a peaceful solution.
In a rare nationwide television interview this week, Afwerki also stressed that political matters in Sudan should be resolved internally and with the help of the Intergovernmental Authority for Development, a regional bloc known as IGAD.
“The task of rectifying these costly distortions falls on the Sudanese people and countries neighboring Sudan,” he said.
Awet T Weldmichael, an expert on the Horn of Africa and a professor of history at Queens University Canada, said he expected Eritrea to become more directly involved in the Sudanese conflict if the violence eventually reached or destabilized Port Sudan.
He noted that Eritrea has long-standing relationships with a number of powerful tribes in eastern Sudan, such as the Beni Amer, Beja and Rashida. In the early 2000s, Eritrea supported those tribes when they waged an armed uprising against the government of former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir.
“If an active conflict spills over into eastern Sudan,… you can be fairly certain that the Eritrean president will deploy his troops to protect his allies or use his influence to ensure that his allies are protected,” Weldmichael told Al Jazeera.
Any participation of Eritrean troops could attract Tigrayan fighters, seeking revenge after the civil war in Tigray, analysts said. Survivors of the war have accused Eritrean troops of massacring 300 Tigrayans just before the Addis Ababa-Tigray peace deal was signed. Eritrea has denied involvement.
There are already hundreds of Tigrayans who are former United Nations peacekeepers – formerly stationed in a disputed region between Sudan and South Sudan – who are now believed to live in eastern Sudan.
In May 2022, many of those peacekeepers sought asylum in Sudan and later returned to Tigray to fight Ethiopian and Eritrean government forces, according to media reports.
“The [members of the Tigrayan Defence Forces] those remaining in eastern Sudan could be mobilized in the future by [Sudan’s army] to act as a bulwark against any Eritrean involvement, although such action could potentially impact Ethiopia’s own peace process,” Horner told Al Jazeera.
Weldmichael warned that any mobilization of Tigrayan troops would spark a wider war in the Horn of Africa.
“If the chaos in Sudan … allows any actor to link up with the TPLF, then the Eritrean president will respond,” he said.