The impact of the military takeover of Al Fashaga
The SAF’s incursion into Al Fashaga and subsequent securitization of the area have affected many of those involved in the local sesame sector – from businesspeople to farmers and labourers. The military takeover has also disrupted relationships between Sudanese and Ethiopians living on either side of the border. Some local Sudanese businesspeople have not been compensated for the loss of their lands to their own military, with these lands instead being offered to investors more closely aligned with the SAF. The military has also brought in seasonal labourers and farmers from outside Gedaref to farm the captured land. As a result, local businesspeople have lost productive relationships with Ethiopian farmers, investors and labourers, who had previously farmed this region under mutually beneficial arrangements. Bereket, in Greater Al Fashaga, is one such area. It became a hub for Ethiopian sesame farming from 2012 to 2020. Permanent and semi-permanent roads were built from Al Fashaga into Ethiopia to facilitate the export of sesame and other agricultural products, as well as the movement of migrants and workers into Sudan. However, once the SAF took control of this area in 2021, Ethiopian residents were removed from Bereket and the previous arrangement ended.
The military takeover has disrupted relationships between Sudanese and Ethiopians living on either side of the border.
Security-linked companies and investors have moved into the sesame sector, with the presumed goal of rerouting control of the sector away from Ethiopian markets. Some of these companies are connected to Sudan’s Defense Industries Systems (DIS), a large SAF-owned conglomerate that generates financing for the army through multiple commercial ventures. DIS is headed by Mirghani Idris Suleiman and chaired by Burhan. DIS’s annual revenues were estimated at 110 billion Sudanese pounds (equivalent to $2 billion at the prevailing exchange rate) in May 2020. Zadna, one of DIS’s largest subsidiaries, operates in the agricultural and livestock sector. It was set up in 1997 under the control of the National Islamic Front, the Islamist political party led by Hassan al-Turabi, which at the time was allied in power with the NCP. Such parastatals were part of a complex economic network established under the Bashir government to empower members of the NCP Islamist-military regime, known as the al-Ingaz (‘Salvation’).
In recent years, Zadna has been under the control of the SAF’s Special Fund for the Social Security of the Armed Forces (SFSSAF). According to the US Treasury Department, citing public media reporting, this arrangement has the express purpose of shielding Zadna from civilian oversight. During the transitional period from 2019 until the military coup in 2021, DIS eluded the control of the civilian authorities, which received no taxes, duties or customs fees from the activities of army companies, even those in civilian sectors such as agriculture. The US, the UK and the EU have all sanctioned DIS and Zadna for engaging in activities that sustain the war and destabilize Sudan.
Despite these developments, there remains some domestic support for the military’s actions, particularly among certain local Sudanese investors hostile towards their Ethiopian counterparts on account of the latter’s exploitation of farmland in Al Fashaga. ‘The presence of Ethiopian farms in Al Fashaga, next to Sudanese farms, has made it easy to smuggle Sudanese crops into Ethiopia with a higher price and little to no taxes,’ said one businessman. ‘I lost some of my land 20 years ago and I am still waiting for a resolution,’ he added, ‘and until now I have lost all of my remaining land east of the river.’
The farming of sesame crops in Al Fashaga, and their smuggling into Ethiopia, has also been connected with armed Amhara militias, known as shifta (‘bandits’). These groups have perpetrated cross-border raids to steal crops and livestock, particularly during harvest periods, and have also provided armed security for Ethiopian farms in Al Fashaga. In recent years, incursions into Al Fashaga by the shifta have been influenced by a growing and politicized nationalism within the Amhara ethnic group. This nationalism has included more forceful claims over territory in Al Fashaga. Cross-border attacks increased during the Tigray war, peaking in mid-2022, when the SAF accused the ENDF of executing seven captured Sudanese soldiers and a civilian following cross-border clashes. However, the Ethiopian government blamed Amhara shifta. While armed Amhara incursions were not directly backed by the Ethiopian federal government, it has often quietly acquiesced to such attacks. This assent partly seems to have stemmed from the Ethiopian leadership’s anger over the SAF takeover of Al Fashaga, its concerns at the time over Sudanese support for the TPLF, and the implicit threat of Tigrayan militias in eastern Sudan. A further motivation seems to have been the importance of maintaining the favour of Amhara special forces and militias, and of maintaining the Amhara militias’ alliance with the ENDF, during the Tigray war.
The full extent to which the SAF and companies working with it have been able to control and redirect sesame trade flows remains unclear. Since the outbreak of the civil war in Sudan in April 2023, Al Fashaga has remained under SAF control, with eastern Sudan seeing limited fighting to date. The indications are that the sesame and sorghum harvests in 2023 were largely unaffected by the war. However, the emerging war economy will no doubt have a substantial impact on profitability for those operating in the sector. The costs of the war are high, reflecting impacts on critical processing infrastructure, the looting of key inputs, rising transportation costs (in part due to additional checkpoints), and the imposition of additional export and import tariffs through Port Sudan.
Continued war is likely to have a negative impact on the coming planting period for sesame in Al Fashaga, which runs from late May to mid-July during the rainy season. This is due to likely restrictions on the availability of agricultural inputs such as seeds and fertilizers, as well as the limited availability and increased costs of fuel. The SAF is likely to prioritize production of sesame, given that the crop has become a strategic commodity and a vital source of foreign currency (when other sources are limited). The SAF can therefore use income from sesame trade to sustain its war effort, and to maintain support from regional allies where the product is sold.
However, if the RSF, having already taken control both of Wad Madani in neighbouring El Gezira state and of key transport routes, manages to push into eastern Sudan, this is likely to have implications for the sesame trade. In particular, the transport of sesame to Port Sudan and the export of sesame from the port are likely to be restricted. This scenario would result in further negative outcomes for local business owners and their workers in Gedaref and Al Fashaga.
