Civil wars in Ethiopia and Sudan have developed complex transnational dimensions, involving rival interests from both countries, as well as external actors. These conflicts are largely fuelled by competition over economic resources and land.
The eruption of two devastating wars inside three years in neighbouring Ethiopia and Sudan has been the consequence of an ongoing reshaping of the previously dominant political orders in both countries since 2018, including contestation over the wider regional order which these regimes had in effect built over many years.
Through regimes that controlled each country for nearly three decades – the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and Sudan’s National Congress Party (NCP) respectively – Ethiopia and Sudan evolved to become the dominant states in their region. In each case, domestic policy was closely connected to that regime’s foreign policy. This shaped a regional system in which Ethiopia and Sudan, in their separate ways, successfully sought to influence the political, security and economic affairs of smaller neighbouring states: Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia and, latterly, South Sudan.
As a result, recent and/or ongoing conflicts – whose effects remain acutely visible in both Ethiopia and Sudan today – have consequences not only for the two countries’ bilateral relations, but also for wider transnational dynamics. In particular, the fallout from the Ethiopian and Sudanese wars risks creating instability in the Horn of Africa and increasing that region’s susceptibility to harmful influence from external actors. Such influence notably could include securitized responses by states in the Middle East and North Africa region.
War in Ethiopia and its transnational dimensions
Ethiopia’s civil war, which started in November 2020, led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and the displacement of over 2 million people in the country’s northern states of Tigray, Amhara and Afar. The war ended after Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), two of the principal belligerents, signed the Pretoria Agreement in South Africa in November 2022. However, the damage to Ethiopia’s societal fabric will last for generations given the widespread atrocities committed – including alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing – during the war by Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), Eritrean defence forces, and regional forces from Amhara and Tigray. This war is also one of the main drivers of the deepening conflict in the Amhara region.
The war evolved into a regional conflict involving divergent interests both from neighbouring countries and from further afield. Eritrea has been the most directly involved external country, sending its forces into Tigray to fight alongside those of the Ethiopian government and allied Amhara regional forces during the war, and maintaining troops and territorial control in parts of Tigray even following the Pretoria Agreement. The Eritrean government also used the war as an opportunity to seize land, to which it had long held claim, along Eritrea’s border with Ethiopia. Although some of this land had already been delimited in Eritrea’s favour by the Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) in the 2002 Algiers Agreement, Eritrea’s recent encroachment into and seizure of territory have gone beyond the areas stipulated by the EEBC.
Eritrea has also sought to develop its relations with Ethiopian subnational ethnic groups, in particular the Amhara and Afar, in part to guard against a possible deterioration of relations with Ethiopia’s federal government, a risk that has subsequently materialized. This has had consequences for one of the most contentious issues still to be resolved following the end of the 2020–22 war in Ethiopia: the status of areas contested by both Amhara and Tigray, most notably Western Tigray/Welkait. This disputed region was taken over by Amhara forces at the beginning of the war. The interim Tigrayan authorities have been calling for its return to Tigrayan control, as provided for under the conditions of the Pretoria Agreement. The Ethiopian federal government’s position is to hold a referendum on the status of the contested area after facilitating the return of internally displaced persons (IDPs).
Ethiopia and Sudan have long been competitors within the Horn of Africa region. Their governments have a history of interfering in each other’s affairs and supporting armed groups opposed to the incumbent regime of the other country. Following the outbreak of war in Tigray in late 2020, the SAF moved to occupy the contested border territory of Al Fashaga, an agricultural heartland crucial to sesame production. This move led to a significant deterioration in relations between the two national governments. Ethiopia asserts that Sudan provided weapons to the TPLF during the fighting. Regardless of the facts behind this allegation, Sudan did provide refuge to certain high-ranking TPLF members, as well as shelter for 60,000 Tigrayans who fled into eastern Sudan.
Relations between Ethiopia and Sudan are now being shaped further by the war in Sudan between the SAF regime and the RSF paramilitary group.
Relations between Ethiopia and Sudan are now being shaped further by the war in Sudan between the SAF-led military regime and the RSF paramilitary group. Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has so far sought to stay impartial and avoid inflaming tensions over border disputes. He has also contributed to efforts by IGAD heads of state to mediate between the warring parties. However, Sudan’s military regime has distanced itself from these efforts, and has sought to paint some of IGAD’s members, including the Ethiopian and Kenyan governments, as sympathetic to the RSF.
Given the recent history of antagonism between Ethiopia’s government and the Sudanese military regime, Ethiopia could see value in the RSF gaining the upper hand in Sudan, particularly if the latter is amenable to Addis Ababa’s position on issues of bilateral dispute, including the border and the operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The GERD is also a critical object of contention between Ethiopia and Egypt, which has influence over the SAF.
The possibility of the Ethiopian government overtly supporting the RSF would have to be weighed carefully in Addis Ababa, given the likely reputational consequences, and the current overall military stalemate does not make such an outcome likely. Cooperation may also be facilitated by Ethiopia’s strong ties with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the RSF’s main backer. The UAE provided pivotal military support to the Ethiopian government during the Tigray war, and also has substantial investments in Ethiopia’s economy. Should the Ethiopian government’s position on the war in Sudan shift in favour of the RSF, it would likely be influenced by the UAE to some degree, and this would represent another example of the outsized role the Gulf state has been playing for almost a decade in shaping developments in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere on the continent.
War in Sudan and its transnational dimensions
The war in Sudan has raged unabated for almost a year. The devastation wrought since April 2023 has led the country to the brink of fragmentation and created one of the world’s biggest displacement crises. Around 6.5 million people have been internally displaced, while nearly 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries – the majority to Chad, Egypt and South Sudan.
The conflict between the SAF, led by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), is driven in part by competition for power and resources and is fast evolving into an ethnicized war. A de facto partition of Sudan has emerged. As of mid-March 2024, the war was largely deadlocked. The RSF controlled much of the capital, Khartoum, and west of the country, and had expanded its footprint in the centre. The SAF, meanwhile, was in control of the east and northeast. It launched a counteroffensive in late January, retaking parts of Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum, and seeking to reverse the RSF’s progress in central Sudan, particularly in parts of El Gezira state, including the state capital, Wad Madani.
But this is far from being a national war only, given Sudan’s strategic position in relation to four regions – the Horn of Africa, North Africa, the Sahel and the Gulf. As well as causing suffering to millions of Sudanese, the war therefore has the potential to destabilize neighbouring countries such as Chad and South Sudan, create large new migration flows to Europe, and further militarize Sudan itself, owing to the arming and mobilization of ever greater numbers of civilians.
The military–business networks responsible for derailing the post-2019 democratic transition – first by carrying out a coup in October 2021 and then by plunging the country into war – continue to operate. The SAF and RSF own some of the largest companies in Sudan, and thus have access to huge financial flows with which to sustain their respective war efforts. SAF- and RSF-affiliated companies also have wide networks of international and regional relationships with state and non-state actors, competition among which has been fuelled in some degree by the SAF and RSF’s respective external engagements with them.
The SAF’s strongest regional relationship is historically with Egypt, most significantly through the Egyptian military. Many Sudanese army officers are trained in Egypt. The SAF has also had a military cooperation agreement with Egypt since 2021. SAF companies have close links with businesses affiliated to the Egyptian army, especially in the trading of agricultural commodities such as sesame. During the post-2023 war, the SAF has accrued foreign currency through the taxation of goods transiting Port Sudan. The SAF has sought support directly from foreign governments, including those of Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye, and has generated revenue by selling strategic commodities such as gold, livestock and agricultural goods to its allies.
From 2015 onwards, both the SAF and RSF received money from Saudi Arabia and the UAE in return for deploying Sudanese soldiers to the Yemen war. Subsequently, the RSF has strengthened its ties with the UAE, which has become a key backer of the RSF’s war efforts and an important conduit for the activities of the RSF’s business empire. UAE support has included hosting RSF front companies, providing the RSF with banking services, and being the main destination for Sudan’s gold exports (both legal and illicit). It is estimated that 50–80 per cent of Sudan’s gold is smuggled abroad, mainly through the UAE. In response, the SAF has increasingly sought to shift the destination of its own gold sales to Egypt (where Sudanese gold is exchanged for local currency and used to purchase commodities); this is to prevent that gold from going directly to the UAE, given the latter’s perceived support for the RSF. The outbreak of war in Sudan has also coincided with rising Egyptian demand for gold: Egyptians have been buying gold to preserve the value of their savings, in the face of a significantly weakened currency, and amid a worsening domestic economic crisis.
Just as the SAF and RSF have shaped their external relationships to align with strategic goals, external actors themselves have continued to view Sudan as an arena in which to pursue regional influence. The UAE’s support for the RSF is offset by that of Qatar for the SAF, which has also sought support from Iran and Türkiye in providing drones. The UAE’s growing rift with Saudi Arabia has also been visible in those two Gulf states’ contrasting approaches to dealing with each side. Saudi Arabia’s attempts, alongside the US, to mediate between the warring parties at negotiations in Jeddah in 2023 were derailed partly because of UAE’s backing for the RSF (plus the fact that other countries supported the SAF). In pursuit of its interests in Sudan, the UAE has continued to leverage relationships with other regional allies, including with Libya’s Khalifa Haftar – the leader of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) – and the government of Chad.
At the same time, there has been a shift in regional dynamics, with Egypt and the UAE, who have so far backed opposite sides in the war, brokering talks between the deputy commanders of the SAF and the RSF in Bahrain in January 2024, which were attended by Bahraini, Saudi and US officials. Egypt – which is dealing with the impact of the war on its southern border – is exasperated with the SAF and the Islamist control over its decision-making. It has thus increasingly sought to keep both warring parties at equal distance and is engaging more with Sudanese civic stakeholders.
These transnational relationships and cooperation arrangements not only connect Sudan to neighbouring countries and the broader region, including the Gulf and beyond, but also facilitate supply chains associated with the conflict. The warring parties are unlikely to stop fighting unless further steps are taken to target the financial flows and military supplies that are sustaining the war.
How contestation over Al Fashaga frames cross-border relations
Ethiopian and Sudanese actors have historically competed for control of land and agricultural production in their borderland regions, with cycles of cooperation and conflict shaped by internal political dynamics and prevailing bilateral relations. Disagreement over the border as set out in the 1902 Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement, particularly in respect of the disputed Al Fashaga territory, has long shaped discord between Ethiopia and Sudan. Al Fashaga covers an estimated 250 square kilometres between the Atbarah River, on the Sudanese side of the border, and the Amhara and Tigray regions on the Ethiopian side. Al Fashaga contains 243,000 hectares (ha) of fertile agricultural land and produces a variety of crops, including export-grade sesame.
The 1902 agreement was followed by border delimitation work by Major Charles Gwynn, a British army officer of that period. In 1903, this delimitation awarded Al Fashaga to Sudan, but this territorial concession was never considered legitimate by the Ethiopian government. In 1972, an ‘exchange of notes’ between Ethiopia and an independent Sudan tried unsuccessfully to address and resolve the dispute. Several subsequent joint border committees continued this work, but without success. Sudan has resisted reopening the settlement proposed in the 1972 notes. Instead, it has suggested collaborative approaches that create the conditions for a soft border. Meanwhile, Ethiopia – and especially members of the political elite in Amhara regional state – continue to insist on an amendment and finalization of the border demarcation based on the 1972 exchange of notes.
Despite this official deadlock, the de facto situation has been one of local land-sharing between those living on either side of the national border. An informal cooperation formula was purportedly reached between Ethiopia and Sudan in 2007, whereby ‘Ethiopian and Sudanese citizens could both cultivate the land, with the two sides agreeing to undertake formal demarcation at an unspecified later date’. Although there is no documentation to verify this, Ethiopian farmers, largely from Amhara and Tigray, benefited from official trade routes and land-use arrangements developed during the era of cooperation between Meles Zenawi (Ethiopia’s prime minister from 1995 to 2012) and Omar al-Bashir (Sudan’s president from 1993 to 2019). This ‘allow[ed] both Ethiopian and Sudanese citizens to grow crops, put cattle to pasture and conduct trade in the area, reducing the urgency of border demarcation’.
The claims and counterclaims on the area were among the factors that prompted the SAF to move into Al Fashaga, using force, following the start of the Ethiopian civil war in 2020.
However, the 2007 cooperation formula was not supported by a binding legal framework. Rather, it merely reflected the individual political interests of leaders who have since died or been removed from power. The demographics in Al Fashaga continued to change in the subsequent decade and a half, notably as a result of increased settlement by Ethiopian farmers and labourers. These changes contributed to tensions between Ethiopian and Sudanese farmers in Al Fashaga, fuelling recurring skirmishes and low-level conflict. The shift in the composition of the population was partly a result of the practice of Mofer Zemet – the occupation and farming of land deemed to be ‘unoccupied’ in border areas – by Ethiopian smallholders. Mofer Zemet and the search for free land for farming pushed Ethiopian farmers into Al Fashaga to ‘cultivate land they claim is part of Ethiopia, which, according to them, has been “unlawfully occupied” by the Sudanese’. Farmers engaged in Mofer Zemet are not usually permanent settlers, instead seasonally occupying areas of up to 5 ha in size.
After 2015, the Ethiopian government, particularly the authorities in Amhara regional state, allowed the practice of Mofer Zemet to increase. This partly had to do with the weakening of central authority following Meles Zenawi’s death in 2012, as well as growing radical nationalism in Amhara that included stronger claims on the disputed territory. Mofer Zemet was seen by the Sudanese government as a strategy on the part of Ethiopia to control Al Fashaga by changing the demographics of the area. Settlements have generated hostility between local communities on either side of the border, particularly among Sudanese investors who claim to own land east of the Atbarah River.
The claims and counterclaims on the area were among the factors that prompted the SAF to move into Al Fashaga, using force, following the start of the Ethiopian civil war in 2020. After the disastrous and widely unpopular military coup in Sudan in October 2021, the SAF further hardened its position on Al Fashaga and attempted to use the dispute to rally national support for its authority.
