The ripple effects of Sudan’s war are being felt across three continents
IT IS HARD to see past the human tragedy of the war in Sudan. Perhaps 150,000 people have died since fighting began last year and more than 10m have fled their homes. Millions could perish in the world’s worst famine for at least 40 years. These are reasons enough to care about the conflict. But the collapse of Sudan, at the intersection of Africa and the Middle East, with seven fragile neighbours and some 800km of coast on the turbulent Red Sea, has alarming geopolitical consequences, too.
Sudan is a chaos machine. The war sucks in malign forces from the surrounding region, then spews out instability—which unless the conflict is halted will only get worse. As the country disintegrates, it could upend regimes in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. It could become a haven for terrorists. It could send an exodus of refugees to Europe. And it could exacerbate the crisis in the Red Sea, where attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis have already contorted global shipping. “This is a war that is impacting severely on three continents,” says Endre Stiansen, Norway’s ambassador to Sudan.
It is also a disorderly war for disorderly times. America, distracted by China, Gaza and Ukraine, its influence diluted by rising middle powers, is almost irrelevant. International norms, laws and arms embargoes are widely flouted. Institutions such as the UN Security Council and the African Union (AU) are failing dismally. Sudan may be a harbinger of future conflicts in an anarchic, multipolar world.
Sudan’s importance stems from its location (see map). Nestled in the north-east corner of Africa, it is a gateway to the Sahara, the Sahel and the Horn. It is also part of the Gulf states’ sphere of influence, a zone that encompasses the Red Sea, which at its narrowest point separates Arabia from Africa by just 30km. Port Sudan, the coastal city where the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) are based, is closer to Abu Dhabi and Tehran than it is to N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, Sudan’s western neighbour.
Of all Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has the most influence on the war. The UN suggests there is “credible” evidence that the UAE has armed the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the main foe of the SAF, leading to a “massive impact on the balance of forces”. (The UAE denies this.) Minni Manawi, the SAF-aligned governor of Darfur, the region where the RSF is accused of genocide, says, “The war in Sudan without the UAE would be zero.”
The UAE’s support for the RSF is in part a product of personal relationships developed over the past decade. The RSF’s leader, Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, sent his forces to Yemen on behalf of Saudi Arabia and the UAE and fought in Libya with Khalifa Haftar, another warlord backed by the UAE. The RSF’s vast network of businesses, in everything from gold mining to tourism, is managed by an adviser based in the UAE.
But the UAE’s backing of the RSF is also part of a broader strategy. The Emiratis want to build a network of clients across Africa in order to vanquish political Islam, to extend the UAE’s influence over the Red Sea and to pursue commercial ventures in everything from minerals to logistics to agriculture. Emirati firms have bought tens of thousands of hectares of Sudanese farmland, and in 2022 signed a deal to build a port that would export the produce. “If they get their man in Khartoum, they think they can secure their access to food and farmland in perpetuity,” says an adviser to the Emirati government.
Eleonora Ardemagni of the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), a think-tank, notes that the UAE has built a network of temporary military outposts in Chad, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya and parts of Somalia. Since 2010 it has trained eight African armies, including Ethiopia’s. These partnerships dovetail with its strategy in Yemen, where it backs a secessionist regime in the south and is building bases on islands off the coast.
African states within the UAE’s orbit have been drawn into the war. The RSF has supply lines through Libya, South Sudan and Chad, whose leader, Mahamat Idriss Déby, has received military aid from the Emiratis. It has recruited fighters from Chad, Niger and the Central African Republic. Hemedti visited several African countries in December and January, travelling on a plane registered in the UAE. Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister and another Emirati client, gave him an especially warm welcome.
Neighbourly interest
Egypt, meanwhile, has delivered Turkish drones to the SAF, according to the Wall Street Journal, although the UAE’s promise in February to invest $35bn in Egypt may curtail such assistance. Turkey, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Somalia, wants more influence in Sudan, too. Sarsilmaz, a Turkish arms-maker, supplies small arms to the SAF. Qatar is rumoured to have deposited $1bn in the Sudanese central bank to prop up the currency and recently signed a deal to boost trade in gold between the two countries, at Dubai’s expense. Saudi Arabia, which does not want a failed state just across the Red Sea, has hosted peace talks, to no avail.
The SAF, which sees itself as the legitimate government of Sudan (despite toppling a civilian one in a coup in 2021 with the connivance of the RSF), is frustrated by what it sees as half-hearted support from notional allies like Saudi Arabia. So it is befriending Iran. In July it re-established diplomatic relations, which had been broken off in 2016. “Both the UAE and Iran try to obfuscate their arms deliveries, but nobody is fooled,” says Justin Lynch of the Conflict Observatory, an American ngo.
At the start of the war the Wagner Group, a firm of Russian mercenaries, provided the RSF with surface-to-air missiles. The two outfits, kindred spirits in many ways, smuggled gold together. Wagner’s role reportedly led Ukrainian special forces to conduct covert operations against the RSF. Wagner seems to have been less involved in Sudan since the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, its founder, a year ago. Russia may be shifting its approach: in May the SAF said it would be allowed an outpost in Port Sudan, though “not exactly a military base”, in exchange for fuel and arms.
The longer the war endures, the greater the risk that the Sudanese state fails entirely or that the country is split into two regions, each backed by a different international coalition, as Libya has been in recent years. “To get a sense of what state collapse looks like in Sudan, look at Libya—now multiply that by ten,” says Cameron Hudson, a former American official. Libya’s implosion led to a proliferation of weapons, jihadists, traffickers and gangsters, destabilising regimes in the Sahel. That upheaval, in turn, spurred military coups, spawning juntas that have embraced Russia.
Similar forces could spill out of Sudan. In Chad Mr Déby is under pressure from political elites who oppose his links to the genocidal RSF. The war is jeopardising the flow of oil via a pipeline from South Sudan to the Red Sea, destabilising a war-torn petrostate. Ethiopia could try to take advantage of the war to encroach on long-disputed agricultural land along its border with Sudan. The instability could also rekindle Ethiopia’s civil war, in the Tigray region, or its long-running conflict with Eritrea, both of which border Sudan. Eritrea is training Sudanese militias aligned with the SAF. Tigrayans have been spotted fighting alongside the SAF in the region of Sennar.
In February American intelligence agencies warned that Sudan, which hosted Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, “could once again become an ideal environment for terrorist and criminal networks”. Western officials worry that branches of al-Qaeda and Islamic State all over Africa will gain new sources of or smuggling routes for guns, cash and fighters. Israel is concerned that Iran might try to find new ways to supply Hamas via Sudan.
Iran has asked for a naval base on Sudan’s coast, according to the Wall Street Journal. Though the SAF says it demurred, it might accede to the request if it gets desperate. Arms-smuggling is already rife between Yemen, Somalia and Sudan. Sudan could give Iran another node in its network of proxies. American officials are concerned that the Houthis and al-Shabab, a jihadist group in Somalia, have been discussing co-operation. They would be all the more alarmed if Sudanese Islamist groups got involved as well.
The balance of power in the Red Sea could be altered in other ways. A Russian base would threaten Western interests and make it easier for Russia and Iran to co-operate. If the RSF were to defeat the SAF and seize Port Sudan, the Emirati client across the water would exacerbate tensions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Even if none of this comes to pass, the messy collapse of Sudan would still be a huge risk to the Red Sea. “If Sudan becomes a failed state, then its instability no longer stops at the water’s edge,” argues Mr Hudson. Malik Agar, the number two in the SAF’s junta, warns: “If Sudan collapses, the Horn of Africa collapses. It will be a great economic hindrance for Europe and America…Navigation will be impossible.”
Then there are refugees. Though the vast majority of the 2.2m people to have fled Sudan are now in neighbouring countries, migration to Europe “is only going to pick up speed”, says a European diplomat. In February dozens of Sudanese drowned when a boat carrying migrants from Tunisia to Italy capsized. Médecins Sans Frontières, a charity, says that at least 60% of the people in camps in Calais hoping to claim asylum in Britain are Sudanese.
Bandwidth exceeded
It is another of Sudan’s misfortunes to disintegrate as the world is preoccupied by Ukraine and Gaza. America’s attention is focused on those conflicts and on China; Africa, never a priority even in less busy times, has been sidelined even more over the past few years. Tom Perriello, America’s special envoy to Sudan, was appointed only in February. He has yet to visit Sudan in his current role. The White House has been wary of upsetting the UAE because it needs Emirati support on Gaza. Britain and the EU have largely ignored the war. The UAE, for its part, feels that it has not suffered any consequences for breaking with American policy.
International law on atrocities, arms-smuggling and access to humanitarian aid has been repeatedly flouted. The UN secretary-general has used little of his convening power; the Security Council, which in the past might have sent peacekeepers to stop the killing, is paralysed by hostility between Russia and the West. It has outsourced diplomacy to regional bodies, such as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (an eight-country trade block in the Horn) and the AU, which are riven by their own internal rivalries. “The failures of these institutions are on African political leaders and diplomats—arguably the most complacent elites in the world,” says Ken Opalo, a Kenyan scholar.
Sudan, in short, is a grim reminder that the international order is on shaky ground. Often the deterioration of the rules that have governed international relations since the second world war seems modest—a blind eye turned to sanctions here, a trade agreement undermined there. But the collapse of a huge state at the crossroads of Africa and Asia, partly as a consequence of the West’s lack of interest and the impunity of ascendant middle powers, is much starker. If a theme of the 2020s is a growing sense of international disorder, then Sudan is its most glaring instance yet. ■
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