44 MiddleEast&Africa TheEconomistJuly17th 2021
ETHIOPIASUDANWhiteNileBlue
NileNileKhartoumPort SudanAddis
AbabaGrand Ethiopian
Renaissance DamERITREALIBYA EGYPTCHADCARTigrayRed
SeaDarfur al-FashagaSOUTH SUDAN400 kmer jobs and government portfolios. Critics
blame Mr Hamdok’s aloof and timid go
verning style for failing to maintain unity.
The fragmentation makes it harder for
the civilians to handle the prime minister’s
second challenge: to rein in the army. Mr
Hamdok says he had “very frank discus
sions” with the generals early on about the
army’s excessive power over the economy.
General Burhan says this has ended, but
that stretches credulity. Several firms
which used to belong to Mr Bashir’s family,
for instance, now belong to the army.
General Burhan, meanwhile, has
emerged as the most powerful and effec
tive of the three. He has muscled in on for
eign policy, which is Mr Hamdok’s job. He
has strengthened Sudan’s relationship
with Egypt and overridden civilian objec
tions to the deal with Israel last year. He
has also burnished the army’s nationalist
credentials by taking back control of dis
puted territory on the border with Ethiopia
(see box). “Burhan is a shrewd general,”
says Yasir Arman, a former rebel who is
now advising Mr Hamdok. “He bought
time to shore up the army’s position. And
now it is stronger than ever.”
But General Burhan’s assertiveness may
have exacerbated the third problem Mr
Hamdok identifies: fragmentation within
the armed forces, and competition be
tween the army and the paramilitary rsf.
Created by Mr Bashir as a counterweight to
the army and the intelligence service, the
rsf has its own command structure and
funding. As part of the powersharing deal,
Mr Dagalo is supposed to integrate his forc
es into the army, which would mean giving
up some of his power. The general says this
will happen “in the right time”. Mr Dagalo
insists it has already happened.
But this superficial harmony could
quickly evaporate. In June the rsfand the
army began barricading their respective
headquarters in Khartoum with sandbags.
“It had reached a point where they could
have been killing each other on the
streets,” says Shaddad Hamid Mauwid, an
academic at Khartoum University. Talksbetween General Burhan and Mr Dagalo
have since calmed nerves. Some reckon the
general may have agreed to postpone inte
gration indefinitely. Yet that would put
him at odds with Mr Hamdok, who feels
Sudan should “have one national army”.
Big questions remain about Mr Dagalo.
Few doubt he has presidential ambitions.
(Over a sumptuous breakfast at his home
he tells The Economisthe has been taking
English and French lessons.) But his foot
ing looks a bit shaky. Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates, which used to pay
for thousands of his soldiers to fight in Ye
men, no longer have much use for him.
And the death of Chad’s dictator, Idriss Dé
by, has deprived him of another regional
ally. Recent visits to both Qatar and Turkey
suggest he is seeking new friends.
Perhaps in a sign of anxiety, Mr Dagalo
warns of a “coup” by people tied to the old
regime. Though this is unlikely, Islamistsfrom Mr Bashir’s former party may con
ceivably ally with factions in the army to
force Mr Dagalo out, notes JeanBaptiste
Gallopin, a French researcher. This could
set off fighting across Sudan. Yet other ob
servers believe Mr Dagalo himself would
pose a bigger threat to the transition,
should he fear for his economic interests—
or his freedom. An investigation into a
massacre of over 100 protesters in 2019
may point the finger at his gunmen.
Mr Hamdok has been sounding the
alarm. In June he warned of civil war if the
armed factions are not unified in a single
army. He has set a deadline for forming a
legislature with civilians in charge and
called for a constitutional convention to
clarify the place of the army in politics.
“For all the years since independence to to
day, we have been dominated by themili
tary,” he says. The civilians have a chance
to reverse this. But only a fleeting one.nA
t firstsightit looksanunremark
able place. Open savannah scattered
with thatchedroof homesteads. Bumpy
and unpaved roads. Upturned soil that
appears rocky and blackened.
But then come Sudanese soldiers. One
is on a tractor. Another walks through a
field, cigarette in one hand, rifle in the
other. Tanks face east towards Ethiopia.
For eight months this slice of fertile
farmland known as alFashaga has been
on a war footing. Army camps have
sprung up across fields of sesame and
sorghum. There are thought to be tens of
thousands of soldiers on the Sudanese
side. Nobody knows how many have
been deployed by the Ethiopians. But
after months of skirmishes and some
small battles, many fret that just one
spark could trigger a fullblown war.
The conflict dates back to the early
20th century, when the British who then
ruled in Khartoum signed border treaties
with Ethiopia placing alFashaga inside
Sudan. Ethiopia has long disputed them.
But an uneasy compromise established
between Sudan’s former dictator, Omar
alBashir, and Ethiopia's late prime
minister, Meles Zenawi, allowed Ethiopi
ans to till the land, provided they recog
nised Sudanese ownership of the area.
That bargain ended in November
when war erupted in Tigray, a northern
Ethiopian region which borders alFash
aga. Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian prime
minister, asked the Sudanese to seal the
border to stop the Tigrayans from smugglinginsupplies.Sudanesetroops
moved in and expelled thousands of
Ethiopian farmers. Ethiopian officials
called it an invasion and sent in rein
forcements backed by units from neigh
bouring Eritrea.
Some reckon that Sudanese generals,
including the de facto president, are
using the threat of war to strengthen
their hand within Sudan’s interim pow
ersharing government (see main story).
Also, several army officers are known to
own land in alFashaga. But the civilians
sound as incensed as the generals. “We
are actually very surprised by the [Ethio
pians’] rhetoric,” says Abdalla Hamdok,
Sudan’s civilian prime minister. “You
can’t invade your own land!”
Aggravating matters is the Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (gerd)
being built by the Ethiopians on the Nile
near the border. Abiy’s government
suspects dirty tricks by downstream
Egypt, which it believes wants to scupper
the dam. “If you search for the cause of
every problem, you find the gerdbehind
each of them,” said Abiy in March.
In June rebels in Tigray seized control
of most of their region. Some of Abiy’s
defeated troops are now being sent to
reinforce those on the border with Su
dan. His government has also indicated
that it will blockade Tigray in order to
weaken its leaders. If so, the rebels are
likely to fight for access to the Sudanese
border—making alFashaga the civil
war’s next front line.Al-FashagaThe most dangerous place in the Horn
A L-FASHAGA
Why nerves are jangling on the border between Ethiopia and Sudan