Regional and international aspirations for broader regional stability would benefit from greater international focus on the array of factors linking Ethiopia and Sudan, and from meaningful coordination among international stakeholders, who have to date largely delinked the two crises.
Competing visions of regional stability
There is considerable disagreement among stakeholders in Ethiopia and Sudan, as well as regional and international parties engaged on the Horn of Africa, as to what stability for the region entails and how to achieve it. The clearest example of this is in the divergent definitions of stability held by Sudan’s FFC-CC, the broader pro-democracy movement that includes neighbourhood resistance committees, the two main military components and a splinter FFC component comprising former rebel movements and political parties, who have largely supported the coup.
These differing visions are often based on narrow interests or on the application of the specific foreign policy tools available to the governments and entities in question. For example, while some multilateral and bilateral stakeholders – such as the EU, Kenya and the US – support a negotiated solution in Tigray, others like Eritrea view a military solution that subdues the TPLF as central to their concept of regional stability. Other states – including China, Russia, Türkiye and the UAE – have been supportive of the federal government as the legitimate sovereign actor in Ethiopia. These states have provided or facilitated the supply to the government of military hardware to this end.
Weakening neighbours to impact the balance of power is hardly a novel strategy in the fractious Horn, but it requires restraint. While Egypt and Sudan see a weakened Ethiopia as more likely to make concessions over the GERD, they remain concerned over Ethiopia’s overall instability. Sudan is rightly anxious about the prospect of further cross-border spillovers of conflict and displacement, while Egyptian diplomats have rightly insisted that their country’s interests are not served by Ethiopia becoming too fragile.
Limits to the effectiveness of the AU and IGAD
The AU has been party to the mediation processes to resolve the domestic crises in both Ethiopia and Sudan. Alongside IGAD, the AU’s continent-wide scope of works makes it the stakeholder best positioned to address cross-border tensions. Indeed, such work is fundamental to both bodies’ charters. The AU and IGAD have nonetheless struggled to fulfil this mandate and to operate effectively or decisively in such contexts. To protect its place in these processes, the AU has consistently invoked principles of subsidiarity (i.e. the prioritization of local actors to resolve conflict) to defend its diplomatic role, a doctrine backed overtly by UN secretary general António Guterres. This is despite an unconvincing record of intervention and a spate of coups across the continent in the past year, as well as concerns in some diplomatic circles over the AU’s impartiality.
The AU has, in theory, an arsenal of available mechanisms to address issues in the Horn of Africa that feature a cross-border component. These include the AU High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP), AU Border Commission (AUBC), the Panel of the Wise, and the High Representative for the Horn of Africa (or ‘Horn envoy’). Unfortunately, these mechanisms have been either diluted (as is the case with the AUBC), unused (the Panel of the Wise), subject to serious internal AU political wrangling (Horn envoy) or simply moribund (AUHIP).
Mandate limitations and oversteps, personality clashes and the personal political interests of key AU figures have all drastically limited the effectiveness of the interventions in both Ethiopia and Sudan. AU and US envoys have also been increasingly focused on addressing the more violent Ethiopian context ahead of Sudan’s political crisis. This is despite Sudan having played an important and underappreciated role in the Ethiopian conflict, and the fact that its own transition has slowed to a near halt.
In Sudan, the AU, while in theory a helpful addition to resolving the country’s political stalemate, effectively diluted a UN process because of its own conflicted internal politics and an apparent reluctance to back a fully civilian-led transition in Sudan. In Ethiopia, the AU retained the overarching lead role in developing solutions to the conflict. While both the Ethiopian federal government and Tigray regional administration accepted AU-led mediation, the latter raised questions about the neutrality of the process, with Tigray regional president Debretsion Gebremichael criticizing the AU Horn envoy, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, for his ‘proximity… to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia’. The Tigrayans were also concerned about the AU commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat’s close relationship with the federal government.
For much of the conflict, the AU-led mediation worked at a slow pace. Staffing and financial limitations in Obasanjo’s team were reflected in the lack of urgency and results needed to avert a resurgence in violence.
For much of the conflict, the AU-led mediation worked at a slow pace. Staffing and financial limitations in Obasanjo’s team were reflected in the lack of urgency and results needed to avert a resurgence in violence. The international community sought to address questions around the effectiveness and impartiality of the mediation, pushing the AU to accept two co-mediators to support Obasanjo – former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta (named as Kenyan envoy to Ethiopia), and South African politician Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Kenyatta’s participation provided an important counterweight to Obasanjo, proving instrumental to the TPLF’s acceptance of AU facilitation and to achieving a final agreement. The revised mediation structure ultimately helped to resolve long-standing credibility questions and brought the AU and Kenyan mediation tracks together. IGAD, which had struggled to secure a foothold in responding to the conflict – partly because its executive secretary is the former Ethiopian foreign minister, and partly because Sudan is the current chair of the organization – was also brought on board during the Pretoria talks.
On the GERD, Ethiopia has continued to back the AU to oversee talks, because it has felt able to influence the organization – not least because of its seat on the AU’s Peace and Security Council and because the bloc’s headquarters are located in Addis Ababa. However, Egypt and Sudan both favour the EU, the US and the UN to take this role. Western mediators had signalled their preference for a more comprehensive approach to the two countries’ shared issues that would consider the GERD, Al Fashaga, and questions of human rights violations in the Tigray conflict together. However, this approach was given short shrift by Ethiopia and contributed to the souring of relations between the federal government and Western capitals.
In Sudan, the AU and IGAD have been leading negotiations to resolve the country’s post-coup political crisis as part of the ‘trilateral mechanism’ alongside the UN. This work resulted in the December 2022 Framework Agreement that enabled subsequent consultations among political and military actors on key thematic issues. In practice, the mechanism has afforded little meaningful progress to date. As in Ethiopia, the importance attached to the idea of African entities being seen to lead such a process obscured the real catalyst for progress: namely, the ‘quad’ grouping of countries comprising Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the UK and the US. Egypt, Israel and Russia, meanwhile, have all worked to ensure the continued primacy of security actors in Sudan, badly diluting any pressure applied by the US and other governments supportive of the pro-democracy movement.
The role of the UAE
The UAE has already illustrated its significant sway over events in Ethiopia and Sudan by helping the Ethiopian government to reverse its military fortunes in late 2021, and by providing early geopolitical and economic cover for the Sudanese military to remain in charge of that country’s transition. Following the October 2021 coup, though, the UAE has shown more nuanced understanding of the Sudanese context, striking a more constructive tone and seeking to defuse growing tensions between Burhan and Hemedti. With its financial strength, agricultural and strategic interests, and recent history of engagement in the Horn, the UAE has particular scope to enable or stunt progress towards sustainable solutions to the Ethiopian and Sudanese political crises. The Emiratis are well placed to become one of the guarantors of a lasting ceasefire in Tigray. They also mediated the most recent round of GERD talks, with several meetings taking place between March 2022 and January 2023, and could oversee a deal on the operation of the dam. Additionally, the UAE is able to leverage relations with the Sudanese military to influence the security forces’ actions domestically or regarding relations with Ethiopia.
The UAE has equally shown that it can be a damaging influence in both contexts. In Sudan, it has ostensibly boosted both sides of Sudan’s military divide, though giving greater backing to Hemedti’s RSF. That support has undermined both Sudanese and international attempts to deliver a civilian-led transition to democracy and enabled the military’s October 2021 coup. In Ethiopia, meanwhile, the Emiratis have provided extensive military support to the federal government, including facilitating the transfer of drones that proved integral to the recovery of Ethiopia’s military in its brutal conflict with the TDF. Conversely, the UAE also sought to reinforce the ceasefire by providing aid to the Tigray region.
Food security, economics and political motives for the UAE
Emirati interests in Ethiopia and Sudan – and in the stability and security of the two states – are based primarily on its desire to boost the UAE’s food security and on opening new markets for Emirati business. Because it has existing commercial relationships with all three countries that are set to expand in the coming years, it is likely that the UAE is keen to see a settlement on the use of Nile waters across the three countries affected by the GERD, in order to protect its agricultural investments: the UAE is dependent on food produced in the Nile river region and has invested heavily in farmland. In December 2022, a UAE consortium agreed a deal with the Sudanese government to invest $6 billion in developing the Red Sea port of Abu Amama and other economic assets, including 415,000 acres of farmland in Red Sea state. The deal was fronted by finance minister Gibril Ibrahim, together with Osama Daoud, chairman of the DAL Group and one of Sudan’s wealthiest businessmen. This deal remains controversial, partly due to having been agreed by the military-led government, and partly as Ibrahim, who is head of the Islamist Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), has so far refused to sign the Framework Agreement.
In Sudan, the UAE’s interests are also shaped by multiple factors, including continuing gold exports to Dubai and the Emiratis’ desire to control Red Sea access through the development of Port Sudan. Its involvement is also guided by its sense of Sudan being an Arab country within its sphere of influence, anxiety over the effects on domestic opinion of a successful civilian transition in Sudan and concerns over a resurgence of political Islam in East Africa and beyond. In Ethiopia, the UAE seeks stability – including suppression of non-state armed groups and denial of a new space for Islamist militancy – an investment destination, the consolidation of the Berbera joint port venture in Somaliland (despite uncertainty surrounding the status of the Ethiopian government’s 19 per cent stake), and the international gravitas bestowed by a successful diplomatic intervention. Its transactional approach to the region is a result of the UAE’s highly centralized and securitized decision-making on both Ethiopia and Sudan. Both files are run by security directorate figures, rather than civilian policy professionals. Additionally, the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, holds major commercial interests in a string of companies with interests in Sudan.
The UAE’s involvement is guided by its sense of Sudan being an Arab country within its sphere of influence, anxiety over the effects on domestic opinion of a successful civilian transition in Sudan and concerns over a resurgence of political Islam in East Africa.
This approach serves neither the countries in the Horn nor the UAE well in the medium to long term. Supporting the Emiratis to take a less securitized approach which incorporates these factors may be the most effective way of improving outcomes in the region. This is not an unrealistic goal: in confidential communication with diplomats in 2021 the UAE expressed the belief that its policy on Sudan had delivered little to nothing in the way of positive outcomes and expressed a readiness to seek new approaches.
Saudi Arabia’s interests in the Horn are shaped by similar factors to the UAE. However, its recent engagement on Sudan differs from that of its Gulf neighbour. Saudi concerns about worsening instability in Sudan under military rule informed their joint efforts with the US to bring the FFC-CC and military to the table for talks. The ‘quad’ held talks with officials in Khartoum in mid-February 2023, coinciding with a visit by six Western envoys. The UAE’s current stint on the UN Security Council may represent a further platform to incline the UAE to a less transactional approach to foreign policy.
A narrow but influential vision
The UAE’s engagement on Al Fashaga exemplifies some of the opportunities and limitations in the Horn. While Eritrea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan and Türkiye all offered to mediate on the issue, only the Emirati effort gained traction with both the Ethiopian and Sudanese authorities. The UAE’s proposed deal to resolve the Al Fashaga tensions during talks in Abu Dhabi in April 2021 was ambitious, if also self-serving: the proposal specified a 99-year lease for the UAE on one-half of the territory. The idea was quickly rejected by both Ethiopia and Sudan for its indifference to local and national interests on both sides of the border. Despite this rejection, the proposal was resurrected in March 2022 as part of UAE-brokered talks over the GERD that showed crucial awareness of the links between the two issues. The UAE’s flexible and finance-oriented approach to both negotiations could still yield success. Vitally, the UAE has the financial capacity to assist the struggling economies of both Ethiopia and Sudan and could also possibly wield influence over Eritrean interests.
The US
With early progress on transitions in Ethiopia and Sudan stalled, Gulf allies increasingly assertive, and the war in Ukraine continuing (and consuming considerable diplomatic bandwidth), the US has, by and large, reduced its direct involvement in Horn affairs. The US’s sense of its scope to shape Sudan’s transition was tempered by the Sudanese military’s outright rejection of high-level, in-person US diplomatic demands not to undertake the forceful takeover of the transition in October 2021. In Ethiopia, meanwhile, relations between the US and the federal government were damaged by Washington’s open consternation at the brutal nature of Addis Ababa’s prosecution of the conflict in Tigray.
This reluctance to be involved contrasts markedly with the strong positive ambition of the US in the region prior to the Tigray war and the coup in Sudan, reinforcing the impression for some in the Horn of the US as a fair-weather interlocutor. The US government has been seen to be outsourcing elements of its Horn policy to regional allies such as Kenya, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, reducing the scope for US regional strategy to be effective and impactful. Shifting diplomatic focus to the conflict in Ukraine has further reduced US bandwidth to invest diplomatic capital in the Horn. Many Africa-focused observers and practitioners in Washington are seeking more thoughtful and robust US policies on the region, while some senior Africa policymakers seem to simply not believe in the US’s ability to effect change in an increasingly challenging and insecure region that has also seen a surge in geopolitical interest.
The US relationship with Ethiopia’s federal government has deteriorated under the administration of President Joe Biden, which issued assertive calls for unfettered aid access, a ceasefire in Tigray and political talks, and the removal of Ethiopian access to the US duty-free trade programme AGOA in 2022. Biden’s policies met with the displeasure of Prime Minister Abiy, souring US–Ethiopian relations. This was partly why the US simultaneously sought progress and influence via regional partners with better relations, including Kenya and the UAE. The US has remained engaged on supporting direct and indirect mediation tracks, but the quick turnover of two US Horn special envoys since the departure of Jeffrey Feltman in April 2021 led some observers to question how committed the US is to this engagement. Feltman’s replacement, David Satterfield, himself ended a short stint in the role in the summer of 2022, and was succeeded by Mike Hammer, who has received direction from State Department principals that his chief focus is to be Ethiopia, although in actual terms his remit is limited to Tigray and does not include other conflict areas in the country.
Special Envoy Hammer did play an integral role in both bringing the Ethiopian federal government and the TPLF to the table and finding the concessions needed to secure the November 2022 ceasefire. The government’s motivation for signing the Pretoria Agreement was partly a response to the worsening economic situation in the country, and the hope that the deal would lead to improved relations with the US and other Western partners, including the restart of suspended development assistance and trade programmes, as well as support for reconstruction efforts in the north. Abiy’s invitation to the US–Africa summit in December 2022, followed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Addis Ababa in March 2023, signals a gradual normalization of relations between the US and Ethiopia, subject to progress towards sustained peace in Tigray and the northern part of the country.
Likewise, the US was vital to getting Sudan’s problematic Framework Agreement signed, though the deal’s severe limitations given the ongoing primacy of the military in Sudanese politics has made its value and relevance a hotly debated topic in Khartoum and beyond. A key US motivation for pushing the deal through was to return to office an acceptably pro-democracy civilian transitional government that would enable the reopening of funding flows to Sudan. The starkly divided Sudanese military has to date been broadly unwilling and unable to endorse such a step, though hopes have been boosted by the breakthrough of reaching an agreement to form a new civilian-led government by mid-April 2023.
In a 15 October 2021 email to then-envoy Jeffrey Feltman and State Department staff, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee acknowledged that there had been some ‘confusion and discontent about who is doing what’ in Ethiopia and Sudan. US officials themselves expressed worry that, by separating responsibilities – with Hammer focusing on Ethiopia and Phee (and, more recently, the new US ambassador in Khartoum, John Godfrey) overseeing engagement in Sudan – the US is limiting its ability to understand the links between the two contexts, and to strategize and act accordingly.
Other geopolitical stakeholders have taken advantage of the US’s tentative approach, and the limits to its bandwidth, to promote their own interests more forcefully. For example, Israel and Russia have expanded their influence in Sudan through closer military ties. Russian interests in Sudan are largely overseen by President Vladimir Putin’s apparent confidant Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin’s role includes oversight of the paramilitary Wagner group, whose expanding activities in Sudan include gold- and uranium-mining and the export of military hardware, as well as training and strategic communications for Hemedti’s RSF. Russia has also lobbied the Sudanese authorities to allow it to establish a naval base at Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Russia’s expansion of economic and political interests in Sudan and several neighbouring countries are viewed by the US and analysts as a key component of feeding into renewed ‘great power’ competition. US caution on the Horn, along with the ebbing and flowing of backing by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, has enabled Hemedti and the RSF, as well as Burhan and the SAF, to act with little restraint, although the US Congress has discussed the prospect of imposing sanctions on the former.
