Sudan's civil war risks sparking a regional conflict ignited by water scarcity and by foreign geopolitical interests.
The civil war in Sudan has been simmering for a long time, but it escalated during the late summer and fall due to famine. The civil war risks leading to genocide on a large scale. Additionally, the unrest threatens to spread to neighboring countries, where latent and potent conflicts already exist.
Sudan's civil war is about control and foreign geopolitics
The conflict in Sudan is fundamentally about control and is only thinly veiled by religion or ethnicity. However, the conflict is being prolonged by Russia, Middle Eastern countries, and Turkey, which support both sides with weapons and money.
Russia and Iran demand, in return, the right to establish a naval base on the Red Sea. Egypt opposes this, fearing it will lead to a complete halt to commercial shipping through the Red Sea. Since the end of 2023, Houthi attacks from Yemen on shipping in the Red Sea have already reduced Suez revenues by over 60%, making Egypt dependent on emergency loans from the UAE, the EU, and the IMF.
The civil war could spark a larger regional conflict ...
The unrest in Sudan is mainly in the southern half of the country. Here, famine has worsened due to internal displacement, which has destroyed agriculture. This increases migration pressure towards the borders of countries like Egypt and Libya, and ultimately towards the EU.
Moreover, Ethiopia fears that famine will reignite unrest in provinces like Tigray and along the northeastern border, where tensions persist more than 30 years after Eritrea's secession.
...because neighboring countries are already under strain.
The risk of a regional conflict is further heightened by Ethiopia’s January agreement with Somaliland, Somalia's autonomous region, to lease a port corridor to the Indian Ocean.
The agreement was met with strong protests from Somalia, which fears it will lead to another independence attempt by Somaliland. This activated groups like al-Shabaab and prompted Somalia to sign a mutual defense agreement with Egypt in August. Somalia has since received the first major shipments of weapons as well as peacekeeping forces.
Ethiopia's agreement with Somaliland also surprised Beijing and Djibouti, as Ethiopia has invested heavily in the Belt and Road Initiative with a railway line from Addis Ababa to Djibouti. Ethiopias agreement with Somaliland was thus also to Beijings and Djibouti’s surprise.
In late August, the regional tensions led Djibouti to offer a renegotiation of their port agreement with Ethiopia. The previous offer had been 5-10 times more expensive than in Somaliland and provided insufficient capacity.
Famine and geopolitical ambitions remain a trigger for regional unrest
In other words, the conflict in Sudan could quickly ignite the entire region. Neighboring countries are therefore interested in containing the conflict within Sudan. Iran, Russia, and several regional rebel groups have the opposite interest.
Cutting off a population from food and water is one of the surest ways to escalate a conflict drastically in a very short time. Hence, food aid supplies have been targeted by several terrorist attacks, and the limited water capacity in the region, especially in Khartoum, has increasingly become the focus of kidnappings of employees from water supply companies.
However, this pales in comparison to the impact a drought in Ethiopia or increased damming in Ethiopia's GERD reservoir could haveThis could quickly involve Egypt and Sudan, potentially spreading to Ehtiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia.