AFRICA/SUDAN - The regional risks of the conflict in Sudan

by Luca Mainoldi
Khartoum (Agenzia Fides) - The conflict between the two military factions in Sudan risks having repercussions on neighboring countries, partly because both contenders have connections with neighboring states and external sponsors.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (FAS) commanded by General Abdel Fattah Al-Bourhane have strong ties with their Egyptian counterparts, as evidenced by the fact that some Cairo soldiers, who were in Sudan for joint exercises, were temporarily detained by the militiamen of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Al-Bourhane's rival, General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo (or Dagalo), known as "Hemetti".
The proximity between the Sudanese regular armed forces and those of Egypt is part of the pressure campaign conducted by Cairo against Ethiopia because of its control of the flow of the Nile waters, compromised according to Egypt, by the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), is the largest hydroelectric plant ever built in Africa.
It is therefore understandable that Addis Ababa favors Daglo rather than Al-Bourhane. From its strongholds in Darfur (in the west of the country) Daglo with its RSF has woven a dense network of cross-border relationships centered on the trade of gold extracted from the mines in the area and on sending its own men to reinforce the ranks of its own regional allies. In particular, Daglo is supported by Cyrenaica (eastern Libya) strongman Khalifa Haftar, to whom the Sudanese rebel general allegedly supplied some mercenaries. Haftar's role shows the complexity of the regional political situation.
The Libyan general is sponsored by the United Arab Emirates, France, Russia, and Egypt. The latter, as noted, supports Al-Bourhane and not Daglo. Haftar's leeway stems, according to some analyses, from the fact that he ensures the security of Egypt's western border.
Moreover, the Emirates sponsors of both Haftar and Daglo are the receivers of gold extracted from Sudanese and Central African mines, controlled by the Russian militiamen of Wagner in their faces accused by Western countries of collusion with Daglo. The latter seems to meddle as well in the civil conflict in the Central African Republic if only to draw resources with which to finance the war. Note that both Daglo's RSFs and Al-Bourhane's FAS have their own resources that could enable the two contenders to prolong the war to the bitter end. The former, as mentioned mainly gold and the supply of mercenaries (employed, for example, by the Emirates and Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen), the latter through control of vast sectors of the national economy (banks, insurance companies, the agribusiness sector, the war industry, whose products have even been employed in Ukraine). The sanctions imposed on Sudan by Western countries for the coup of 2021 (conducted together by the two rival generals) did not prevent the conflict from erupting.
Daglo also has strong family ties with Chad, being from a Chadian Arab clan of the Rizeigat tribe. Chadian President Mahamat Déby's Chief of Staff, General Bichara Issa Djadallah, is a direct cousin of his. Within Chadian power there is a delicate balance between members of the Zaghawa ethnic group (President Déby's) and Arabs who live straddling Chad and Sudan (such as Djadallah). There are fears in N'Djamena that a possible victory of Daglo in the Sudanese conflict could incite the ambitions of the large Chadian Arab community.
The fear of the destabilization of Chad, perhaps with the support of Wagner's mercenaries, has prompted Washington to re-establish relations with Al-Bourhane, as evidenced by the visit to the USA of one of its men, Sudanese military intelligence chief Mohamed Ali Ahmed Subir, where he met with political, military, and CIA officials.
Finally, the possible destabilization of Sudan risks reverberating in South Sudan, itself in the grip of a civil war. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides, 22/4/2023)

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