Issue No. 311

Ethiopia's Quiet Pivot Toward the RSF
 

After well over two years of calamitous war, Ethiopia has appeared to have quietly broken from its 'independence' on Sudan's internationalised conflict. In recent weeks, satellite imagery has confirmed suspicions that an Emirati military training base is being developed in Ethiopia's western Benishangul-Gumuz region in the Mengi district. Rather than the Ethiopian military, however, the facility is believed to be intended to house Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters, the rampaging paramilitary forces in the Sudan war drawn from Darfur. And so, Ethiopia appears to be now willingly-- most likely at the behest of the UAE-- drawn into the morass of competing interests within the region and Gulf that is tearing apart Sudan.

This is far from the first war in Sudan that Ethiopia has engaged in, with the 1990s being a particularly acrimonious decade between Khartoum and Addis. But the stakes are different this time, with the scale of the current conflict in Sudan unprecedented-- Khartoum razed, over 30 million in need of humanitarian assistance, and genocide returned to Darfur by the RSF. And so are the actors, with much of the rationale and drivers of the conflict now lying across the Red Sea in the Gulf. Sudan is one epicentre of a broader struggle between principally Saudi Arabia and the UAE for supremacy over the aortic waterway, with the former falling in behind the Sudanese army along with Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye, while the Emirates —though it has repeatedly denied this —is understood to be backing the RSF. 

The unrelenting conflict has become a Gordian Knot-- nigh-impossible to untangle with a swamp of both domestic and foreign vested interests, ranging from an aversion to the Islamists within the Sudanese army to natural resource exploitation. But though there is a glimmer of movement in Washington pushing for a ceasefire, the diplomatic finesse and clout needed to finagle the Saudis and Emiratis to find some common ground is immense-- and maintaining the American strategic relationship ranks far above the issue of Sudan for all parties. And despite some signalling from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, reports of weapons continuing to flood into Sudan have continued-- and increased in the wake of El Fasher's fall.

Meanwhile, accentuated by the clientelist Horn-Gulf dynamic, nearly every neighbouring government of Sudan has been drawn in on both sides of the conflict, with the Emirates' allies in Chad, Gen. Khalifa Haftar's forces in Libya, South Sudan, Puntland and more, facilitating support for the RSF, and Egypt and Eritrea delivering assistance to the Sudanese army. Ethiopia, on the other hand, had maintained an outwardly neutral stance on the Sudan conflict, repeatedly urging for a Sudanese-led process and deferring to the African Union or Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) since the conflict erupted in April 2023. Though undoubtedly aligned with the Emirates, Addis had sought to stay above the fray, focusing on its domestic troubles as well as regional adventurism with Somaliland in 2024 and the renewed threat of war over Eritrea's Port of Assab this year.

But the Sudanese army and Addis's relationship has remained somewhat strained as well, not least because of the former's linkages with Cairo-- with heightened discord over Nile water use with Ethiopia this year-- and Asmara. Just this past few days, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki travelled to Port Sudan to reaffirm his ties with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). And in recent weeks, the Sudanese army is believed to have hosted a meeting between members of the Oromo Liberation Army, Fano insurgency, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, and the Eritrean regime to discuss strategy against Addis. There is hardly a dearth of vulnerabilities of the Ethiopian state that the Sudanese army and its various allies can exploit, even if it does not go as far as open conflict, nor threaten Addis. And so another major unanswered issue for Ethiopia is whether the Sudan war is heading for a de facto partition of the country, as indeed it appears to be, then coming explicitly behind the RSF at this juncture invites a series of awkward questions for Addis. It is the Sudanese military-- and UN-recognised government-- that Ethiopia largely shares a border with, not the RSF in Darfur. 

The revelation that Addis is acquiescing to another Emirati military base being built on its border with Sudan also comes at a moment of teetering politics in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. For months, Addis has repeatedly threatened war with Eritrea, pledging on numerous occasions that it would 'return' control of the Port of Assab to Ethiopia, while simultaneously training and arming proxy forces in Afar. But Addis has also been keenly aware of the ties between Eritrea and the Sudanese army in the event of a war with Asmara, with the latter having trained and armed thousands of militiamen drawn from eastern Sudan against the RSF. And while Abiy and other senior Ethiopian officials have maintained their bellicose rhetoric publicly, in June, spy chief Redwan Hussein and exiled Tigrayan politician Getachew Reda were dispatched to Port Sudan. Their meeting was an explicit request to the Sudanese army not to engage if Ethiopia were to invade Eritrea. 

But with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) breathing down the neck of Addis and Ethiopia's domestic production capacity eviscerated from insecurity and internal conflict, it is doubtful whether Addis has the money to prosecute another major war. There is little question that Addis has wanted a war with Eritrea this year, but even attracting the attention of the US may be considered enough of a 'win' for Abiy to back down and negotiate with Asmara. But, amid financial constraints and mass insurgencies in Oromia and Amhara, the Abiy government is more dependent on the largesse of Abu Dhabi than ever. And so the question of 'why now' may simply be that the pressure from the Gulf proved too great. Whether such support extends to war with Eritrea is another matter entirely.

But Addis is playing a high-wire game with Eritrea and Tigray, and much could go wrong-- as it could with facilitating a new Emirati military base. It does not yet appear complete, and it is unclear if the RSF could use it as a staging post into Sudan, but opening a new front in Sudan is folly of the highest order and sure to invite further instability into Ethiopia's own borders. Indeed, the impact of Sudan's war has spilt over into Ethiopia already, with hundreds of thousands of refugees being hosted across Gambella, Benishangul-Gumuz, and the Amhara regions. Further, Ethiopia hosts the African Union and holds the executive secretary position at IGAD, and allowing the construction of an RSF military base flies in the face of both of their fairly feeble responses to the war. 

Much of this is performative-- but the suffering in Sudan and Ethiopia is not. Opening potentially another front into Sudan or facilitating conflict through Benishangul-Gumuz would be disastrous, offering military architecture to prolong a war that is further destabilising Ethiopia. The raging fire of Sudan-- and the tinderbox of a fragmenting Ethiopia-- threatens to plunge the entirety of the Horn of Africa into one mass conflict system with yet unknown consequences beyond mass humanitarian suffering. And so, after avoiding the fray and rather than a strategic hedging of bets, this military base may yet prove another grave misstep for Ethiopia. It is a gamble that Addis can ill afford.