Issue No. 29

How Sudan's war imperils its southern neighbour

Sudan's armed conflict is affecting South Sudan in ways that are almost too many to count. From massive, sustained displacement to the drying up of remittances, South Sudan is facing intense pressure ahead of the much-delayed national elections scheduled for December 2024. Yet with international attention barely heeding the destructive conflict in Sudan, primarily fought between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), its southern neighbour has fallen off the proverbial map entirely. The twin threats of the looming presidential elections in South Sudan and the total collapse of the Sudanese state could yet push the vulnerable nation back into a widespread armed conflict. As Head of the UN Mission in South Sudan, Nicholas Haysom, said in 2023, "Now is not the time to take our eyes off the ball in South Sudan."
 
The scale of the displacement from Sudan's war is staggering. Since April 2023, some 622,000 people have crossed the porous border from Sudan into South Sudan, which has a population of just 10.9 million. The vast majority, 81%, entered at the Jodrah crossing before travelling to the principal transit centre in Renk. The demographic is overwhelmingly young, with children making up half of the displaced and fewer than 18,000 people older than 60. And the numbers continue to rise. Every day, around 1,000 people cross the border, with the South Sudanese government and humanitarian partners attempting to shepherd them away from the unstable border. Bottlenecks in places such as Renk and Malakal have raised concerns of violence erupting as returnees, refugees, and hosts compete for scant resources.
 
South Sudan's infrastructure is woefully underequipped to cope with the massive influx of impoverished people. Schools with classroom sizes of 50+ are still dealing with the arrival of new, traumatised students, and hospitals with limited doctors are similarly responding to malnourished and injured displaced. The United Nations South Sudan 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan has estimated that 9 million people will require humanitarian assistance this year, including over 1.6 million children under 5 at risk of acute malnutrition. With donors slashing funding for South Sudan, millions are expected to go without support. Many communities are already facing an inadequate supply of food and water, shelter, and healthcare, and the humanitarian situation is expected to continue to deteriorate as the number of vulnerable refugees and returnees grows. The environment is hardly conducive to free and peaceful elections.
 
The proportion of refugees entering South Sudan is also increasingly from Sudan's native Arab population, further complicating host-refugee relations. They cannot easily blend into relatives' homes and represent a more complex burden for the South Sudanese government and international assistance. Further, the hard memories of the decades-long war fought between then-southern Sudan and the north may complicate the delivery of aid to these refugees.
 
On the financial front, the disruptions from the armed conflict in Sudan on the fragile economy of South Sudan have been far-reaching and comprehensive. Pre-war remittances from Sudan to South Sudan were substantial, mainly from an underclass of South Sudanese workers in Khartoum and elsewhere. Many worked menial jobs, including as drivers, cooks, or security guards for the Sudanese elite and were subsequently among the first displaced by the conflict's eruption in April 2023. While these displaced ethnic South Sudanese have been referred to as 'returnees,' many were born in Sudan and have never stepped foot in their ethnic homeland. Meanwhile, those returning to more familiar homes and communities in South Sudan have also found themselves suddenly unable to provide for their families and joined the millions of unemployed.
 
South Sudan's formal economy also remains overwhelmingly dependent on oil exports, whose revenues are routinely syphoned off by senior officials. In recent weeks, senior South Sudanese government officials have warned that the main pipeline that transports crude oil to Port Sudan has been compromised by fighting. This is not the only threat to undermine South Sudan's primary export, though–- instability in the Red Sea driven by the Houthi targeting of transiting vessels has also raised alarms in Juba. Though many ships are still passing through the Red Sea to the Sinai Canal, Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth recently claimed that even when crude oil reaches Port Sudan, it cannot be easily exported.
 
One cannot ignore that the economic impact of war in Sudan has exacerbated South Sudan's deep inequity. Many who have long benefited from years of substantial oil revenues will surely have coping mechanisms. And then there is almost everyone else-- those who were supported by remittances face a loss of income and extra mouths to feed, un-paid government workers facing destitution, and all those attempting to access limited government facilities.
 
Meanwhile, in Sudan, the recent advance of the Sudanese army in Omdurman confirmed a suspected shift in the personnel of the RSF. Following their recapture of the Radio and Television Corporation headquarters on 12 March, the SAF announced that they had seized 14 South Sudanese nationals fighting for the paramilitary group. While it remains overwhelmingly populated by those from the Arab tribes of Darfur, foreign fighters appear to be growing the ranks of the RSF. Still, it is unclear whether these fighters were living in Sudan before the outbreak of the war or were recruited by the RSF from South Sudan, as well as whether they were coerced into fighting for the RSF or volunteered. The South Sudanese government has denied any knowledge of the presence of its nationals fighting for the RSF, and truths are easily twisted in the fog of war. Nevertheless, South Sudanese nationals fighting for the RSF certainly complicate relations between Sudan's military government and Juba.
 
Other issues, too, such as the contentious status of the oil-rich Abyei region, have been exacerbated by the eruption of conflict, with ethnic clashes between the Ngok Dinka in South Sudan and the Misseriya from West Kordofan in Sudan killing dozens in recent months. Tensions between the Ngok Dinka and Twic Dinka have also risen amid mass displacement and violence.
 
The civil war in Sudan shows every sign of continuing to fracture and expand as more armed groups are pulled into the conflagration. And South Sudan is not the only neighbouring country to be impacted by the conflict. Chad, in particular, is facing similarly destabilising pressures from the devastation in Darfur. However, the world's youngest nation is inextricably linked to Sudan, which the former emerged from in 2011 after decades of armed and peaceful resistance. Indeed, South Sudan's government, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, arose from the rebel movement that fought successive northern regimes in Khartoum. Today, the war in Sudan has handed these politicians south of the border a readymade excuse to delay or undermine the long-awaited elections and the implementation of the 2018 revitalised peace agreement. South Sudan's politics remains a tinderbox, and the war in Sudan may yet prove to be the trigger that returns armed conflict to the country.

By the Horn Edition team