The seven countries bordering Sudan are exposed to an increase in violence from armed groups in the midst of chaos
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has warned that the open conflict between the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) could be the prelude to a food crisis in the entire region of East Africa and the outbreak, according to experts, of armed violence in the seven countries that share a border with Sudan.
The director of the WFP in Germany, Martin Frick, recalls that “a third of the 45 million people that make up the country’s population was starving before the outbreak of the fighting and now there is a shortage of everything and prices are skyrocketing “, as he declares to DPA.
This situation has spilled over to South Sudan and Chad, which have taken in tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees in recent days despite their own food crises. In South Sudan, Frick recalls, prices have shot up 28 percent due to the extreme weather affecting the Horn of Africa.
The violence, recalls Frick, has caused the WFP to have to temporarily suspend its emergency aid operations to more than seven million inhabitants of Sudan, whose breakdown could mean the beginning of a new era of instability in the seven countries that surround: Egypt, Libya, Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Central African Republic.
VIOLENCE
“It is a region where there is a lot of gold and diamonds,” the former prime minister of the Central African Republic, Anicet-Georges Dologuele, told Bloomberg. “The armed groups finance their operations through these resources and I fear that this could be a pull factor,” adds the former president about the possibility that Sudan could become the epicenter of a wave of new conflicts in the medium term.
Chad, a key Western ally in the fight against terrorism and a bulwark against growing Russian influence in the region, has in recent years rebuffed two serious coup attempts originating just across the border in the Sudanese region. Darfur, where there have already been intense ethnic fighting that has left dozens dead over the past week between Arab and Masalit tribes.
Many of Darfur’s rival groups “may also have connections on the borders of Chad and the Central African Republic,” Sarra Majdoub, an independent conflict analyst based in Sudan, adds to Bloomberg in this regard. To give an example of proximity: the cousin of the paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, alias ‘Hemedti’, is the main adviser to the current transitional president of Chad, Mahamat Déby Itno.
That is why, according to researcher John Lechner, specialized in central Africa, Sudan’s relationship with its neighbors is “at the moment very asymmetrical” and “what happens in Khartoum will have an impact on the Central African Republic and Chad, while that these countries have little control over the situation in the capital.”
RUSSIA
Among the armed groups operating in the region is the Russian mercenary group Wagner, with a presence in Sudan, Libya and the Central African Republic, where it is involved in the diamond and gold trade. The group also has ties to a gold processing facility on the outskirts of Atbara in Sudan, according to recent EU sanctions.
Foreign fighters have helped the government of the Central African Republic to secure its northern region, as rich in gold as it is riddled with armed groups, some with links to groups in West Darfur, and Moscow could see its position strengthened in this conflict, although the Central African government maintains that the only Russian forces in the country are unarmed trainers.
“The situation is very worrying,” stressed the former Central African Prime Minister Dologuele. “Our government has no influence on what happens in Khartoum. We will only have to deal with the crisis if, or rather, when it gets here,” he warns.