Contestation between old and new political forces in Ethiopia and Sudan has seen those countries’ transitions veer violently off course in the last two years.
Recent developments in Ethiopia and Sudan contrast starkly with the situation at the end of 2019. At that time, there was broad-based optimism about the future in both countries and an abundance of international goodwill and support for governmental reforms. Besides this, there was a general sense of hope that reforms in Ethiopia and Sudan could enhance regional stability and provide a template for political transitions elsewhere in the Horn of Africa.
However, relations between the two countries, which had been cordial for over a decade, were unsettled by seismic changes within both governments from 2018, resulting in increasingly strained working relations at the governmental level, with a lack of communication contributing to heightened disharmony over several cross-border issues.
From hope to hostility in Ethiopia
Abiy’s ascent to the office of prime minister in April 2018 followed several years of popular protests that eventually ended the 27-year rule of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), an ethnic federalist coalition dominated by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). As the country’s first Oromo leader, Abiy’s rapid rise to power dramatically redrew the political and ethnic dividing lines in Ethiopia, shifting the country’s centre of power southwards from the northern highlands. In his first year of office, Abiy pushed forward with liberalizing policies, including releasing political prisoners, enabling the return of exiled opposition figures, increasing press freedoms, installing a more inclusive and gender-balanced cabinet, and initiating institutional reforms. He also made international overtures: in July 2018, just three months after his election, he moved to end Ethiopia’s long-standing border dispute with Eritrea. These early reconciliation efforts and reform agenda bought Abiy much support and goodwill, particularly among Ethiopia’s urban elites. It enabled him to claim a mandate to address Ethiopia’s deep ethnic divisions, while the creation of the Prosperity Party (PP) in late 2019 sought lay the foundations for centralized political reform in the country.
However, Abiy’s efforts to rebalance Ethiopian politics faced challenges from rival parties and the country’s embedded structures of ethnically based federalism. Rising insecurity across the country in part reflected the huge number of competing interests and demands for recognition, as well as resistance from the EPRDF old guard and from ethno-nationalist opposition groups opposed to Abiy’s centralizing ambitions.
Escalating tensions with the TPLF culminated in November 2020 with the outbreak of conflict in Tigray, with the PP-led federal government confronting the TPLF-led Tigray regional administration. The war quickly provoked broader ethnic tensions, with the country’s ethno-nationalist movements roughly splitting into two camps: (i) the federal government, which primarily drew on ethnic Amhara paramilitary and youth groups (known as ‘Fano’), corralling troops from the Afar region and other regions where possible; and (ii) the TPLF, which during the conflict allied itself with other pro-federalist forces such as the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) and Gumuz militias in Oromia and Benishangul-Gumuz states, respectively, as well as minority Kimant and Agaw militias from the Amhara region. Eritrean forces intervened in support of the federal government, contributing to a brutal two-year civil war that has so far cost up to 500,000 lives, according to some reports. Violence has also spread to other parts of the country – notably Oromia, where in February 2023 the regional president called for reconciliation talks with the OLA, which have subsequently been taken forward by the federal government. Moreover, contestation between Ethiopia’s two most populous regions, Oromia and Amhara, has seen hundreds killed and thousands displaced in 2022 and 2023.
A fragile humanitarian truce in Tigray, declared in March 2022, failed to engender the confidence-building required for sustained talks between the warring parties. Instead, both sides used the time to prepare for renewed conflict. Fighting duly restarted in late August with an offensive by federal government and Eritrean forces, alongside Amhara and other Ethiopian groups, against Tigray. The land and air assault upended fragile arrangements for humanitarian access in that state, reimposing a federal government blockade on the region, disabling critical public services and exacerbating an already grave humanitarian crisis.
The AU-brokered Pretoria Agreement was eventually signed by the federal government and the TPLF on 2 November 2022, in Pretoria, South Africa. Ultimately, the autumn offensive had significantly weakened the Tigrayan forces, who, unable to break through heavy Amhara, federal and Eritrean fortifications in western Tigray to reach the Sudanese border, had limited options for resupply. The Tigrayan leadership concluded that a ceasefire and political settlement were preferable to another sustained period of guerrilla warfare, which would have further devastated the civilian population. Subsequent talks between the parties have led to progress on several fronts, including the facilitation of improved humanitarian access, the resumption of flights into Tigray and the slow restoration of critical services in Tigray such as banking, electricity and telecommunications. Tigrayan disarmament and demobilization prefaced the return of federal forces to major cities in the region, and their assumption of responsibility for the protection of federal infrastructure, including airports and military installations.
The normalization of relations between the regional and federal governments has led to the establishment of an interim regional administration in Tigray, with the TPLF selecting Getachew Reda as its president-elect, and the Ethiopian parliament voting to rescind the party’s designation as a terrorist organization in March 2023. It is also expected that regional elections will be rerun. However, critics within Tigray are sceptical both about the Pretoria Agreement, which they see as a win for the federal government, and about whether an elite bargain between the government and TPLF can produce a broad-based interim arrangement. Many of those critics feel that an administration inclusive of opposition parties, civil society and diaspora groups is needed to reconfigure longer-term governance structures in Tigray, as well as to ensure that accountability and transitional justice are not ignored.
It is hoped that the ceasefire and goodwill created through dialogue and continued incremental gains will help to secure a sustainable peace in Tigray and northern Ethiopia. However, potential internal and external spoilers remain. Elites in the Amhara region are concerned about what peace between the federal government and TPLF will mean for the future administration of territories contested by Amhara and Tigray, with Amhara forces having captured vast areas of western Tigray in November 2020. Any initiatives to alter the status quo – including the suggestion of interim arrangements in those territories – will be fiercely resisted.
In addition, the conflict in northern Ethiopia has becoming increasingly regionalized and has recalibrated cross-border power dynamics and alliances, with far-reaching consequences for politics and peace in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea’s role in the conflict remains a crucial impediment to peace. The administration in Asmara could seek to influence outcomes in its favour by leveraging its expanded connections to political and military actors in the Amhara region. Moreover, Sudan’s interests along its shared border with Ethiopia, including those concerning Al Fashaga and the GERD, remain a significant factor in its approach to Tigray. The Sudanese government has concerns over the mobilization of Amhara nationalists in response to its takeover of territory in Al Fashaga. It could choose to maintain its influence over and support for elements of the TPLF/Tigray Defence Forces (TDF), both as a way of retaining leverage over the Ethiopian federal government and as a response to the actions of Amhara regional actors and Eritrea.
A stalled transition in Sudan
Meanwhile, in Sudan, fragile progress towards greater stability and accountable, inclusive governance was halted by a military coup in October 2021 that derailed the country’s transition to civilian rule. The coup ended a power-sharing deal between civilian and military authorities that had been in place since August 2019. The deal had been undermined by ongoing internal divisions within and between both the civilian and the military camps.
Despite the military’s insistence that its takeover would bring stability, the country has in fact become less stable as a result. Regular street protests in the capital, Khartoum, and beyond have placed even greater pressure on the already foundering Sudanese economy. Popular unrest shows no sign of abating, amid attempts to bring back into government members of the deeply unpopular Islamist old guard from the Bashir era. The military has responded with violent crackdowns that have killed over 120 people and injured thousands more, primarily in Khartoum. This political chaos has evidently affected the neglected peripheries of Sudan’s east and south, and particularly its western region of Darfur, where lawlessness and violence have soared, with hundreds having been killed and tens of thousands displaced since early 2022.
More dangerously for stability in Sudan, divisions within the military itself have been growing. The country’s two most powerful leaders – the head of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and chairman of the country’s Sovereign Council, Burhan, and the commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and vice chairman of the Sovereign Council, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo (known as Hemedti) – have been increasingly opposed and are working to cultivate domestic and international support to weaken one another.
Political chaos has evidently affected the neglected peripheries in Sudan – particularly its western region of Darfur, where lawlessness and violence have soared, with hundreds having been killed and tens of thousands displaced since early 2022.
Hemedti has captured key sectors of the economy and increased the strength of the RSF, which rose in prominence during the final years of Bashir’s rule. The RSF has, with some limited success, styled itself as the guardian of Sudan’s marginalized peripheral regions, and represents an inherent challenge to the SAF, which is largely led by officers from communities in Sudan’s Nile Valley heartland. Figures from those heartland communities have dominated the country’s post-independence politics and economy. Though the two wings of Sudan’s military jointly executed the October 2021 coup, they are locked in battle for domestic supremacy.
Amid the current political vacuum, Sudan’s economy and public services have deteriorated, insecurity has risen and foreign policy is muddled by the competing power centres within the military. It is hoped that the signing of a political framework agreement in December 2022 between the Forces for Freedom and Change-Central Council (FFC-CC) – a coalition of civilian political groups, professional associations and civil society groups – and the military will lead to the establishment of a reform-minded and credible civilian government. However, the military has shown little will to abandon either politics or its role in the economy. Instead, it is attempting to shape and capture the political process including the result of the election – expected to be held after two years of renewed transition, as per the Framework Agreement – by cultivating allies across the political spectrum and sidelining pro-democracy groups, which have struggled to unify. Credible elections look increasingly unlikely, with the foundations for greater transparency and inclusion laid by the earlier civilian-led transitional government crumbling before they could be properly established.
Diplomatic and economic pressure by the AU, IGAD, the UN, the EU, the UK and the US for the restoration of civilian rule has thus far failed to persuade the military. In the meantime, Burhan and Hemedti have worked to strengthen bilateral engagement with Gulf Arab countries, Egypt, Israel and Russia, seeking political and financial support to help resist the demands of both protesters and diplomatic stakeholders keen to see a civilian dispensation in Sudan. Regional and geopolitical stakeholders suspicious of a democratic government are themselves divided about which side of the country’s military they want to see prevail. During the transition to date, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been overtly supportive of Burhan and the SAF, while Israel, Russia and the UAE have backed Hemedti’s RSF. Sudanese analysts, Western diplomats and UN officials suggest that more recent Emirati and Saudi Arabian engagement in Sudan has ostensibly supported progress towards a working political process, albeit with a view to legitimizing a military-led or military-friendly government through elections.
