Horn of Africa
US efforts are to leverage the Nile river for political advantage, exert naval control over the Red Sea (Yemen is lost) and commercial control over Sudan’s vast gold and oil resources.
Russian naval base, US fears, Sudan struggle
On 14 March 2023, Sudan announced it would host Russia’s first naval base in Africa. The base would ensure a permanent presence of the Russian navy in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and would spare its ships long voyages to reach the area. The new base would expand on the power-projection support provided by the Russian naval facility in Tartus, Syria. However, exactly one month later, Saturday 15 April 2023, the streets of Sudan’s capital city woke up to heavy clashes between the army and the powerful paramilitary organisation known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The two rival military forces have long competed for relevance and power in Sudan, but analysts and activists say an internationally backed political process led by the United States has exacerbated tensions between them.
The US had persuaded the generals to sign an agreement to hand power to a parliament by April 11, the fourth anniversary of former president al-Bashir’s ouster in a 2019 color revolution. While the so-called “drum revolution” was blamed on the Sudanese cabinet’s inability to pass timely economic reforms, Western intervention has been identified as the catalyst for the protests that began in 2018. The visits and discussions of Ambassador of the Netherlands Karin Boven, British diplomat David Lelliott, and US senior diplomatic service officer Stephen Koutsis illustrate this fact. The US State Department had openly stated that it was ready to put pressure on the government. The Americans played both sides, working with the “old guard” and the opposition to achieve their aim of denying any other power access to Sudan’s immense resource base or position on the Red Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs).
Negotiations between Russian president Vladimir Putin and former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for a possible Russian naval presence in Sudan began in 2017. However, Russia’s Red Sea naval ambitions ran afoul of the complicated dynamics of external interference and fragile balance of internal forces. Since the borders of Sudan do not quite coincide with its various ethnic groups, internal ethnic conflicts have also helped fuel regional conflict. Ethnic groups in the Darfur region in eastern Sudan cross over into neighbouring Chad, resulting in both countries waging mediating wars against one another for many years.
From a geopolitical point of view, the strategic position of Sudan, including its access to the Red Sea and borders with Libya, Egypt and Eritrea, inspired US fears of competition with Turkey, China, India, Iran and Russia. The building of Ethiopia’s new dam on the Blue Nile, border conflict with Chad near gold mining activities, dispute over agriculturally rich Alfashaga, and the recent Tigray separatist rebellion are intimately connected to these internal/external dynamics.
Much of what has happened in Sudan in past decades was provoked by the United States. The US has pushed an intentional campaign to isolate Sudan by fermenting its image as an international outcast comparable to North Korea or Iran and imposed crippling sanctions. Meanwhile the US has also engaged with successive Sudanese governments to gain proportional control over Sudan’s rich deposits of gold, silver, copper, zinc and other precious minerals. Moreover, by gradually loosening sanctions, the United States was counting on each new government making concessions and allowing western players to acquire profitable oil contracts.
However, the composition of Sudan’s external trade partners underwent a seismic change as US objectives did not align with Sudan’s economic priorities. China and other East Asian partners, along with India, became central to Sudan’s external economic relations. Russia has developed strong political ties, but these do not approach the nature and importance of the multifaceted partnership Khartoum cultivated with India and China.
In 2019, Russia and Sudan revisited the original 2017 negotiations and signed an agreement granting the Russian Navy access to Sudanese ports. In exchange, Russia would provide Sudan with military equipment and other government assistance. The deal allowed Russia to station 300 troops and four navy ships, including nuclear-powered ones, in the strategic Port of Sudan.
However, for the naval base agreement to proceed Sudanese parliamentary approval was needed. The Sudanese army chief Gen. Mohammed Othman al-Hussein said in June 2021 that the deal was under review, noting that the legislative council, the body responsible for approving such measures during the transitional government, had yet to be formed. However, in October 2021 Sudan’s two most powerful generals, which led the the army and the RSF, joined forces in military coup to oust the transitional government again frustrating Russia’s efforts. Sudan has now been without a parliament since the military overthrow of Omar al Bashir in 2019.
Although the deputy head of the country’s ruling military council, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo—known as Hemeti—has embraced Moscow, the coup leader and de facto head of state, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has sought to avoid alienating the West and his other key allies in the region, including Egypt, which is increasingly seeking support in its campaign to frustrate Ethiopia’s development of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile. Ethiopia and Sudan are also in a dispute over a region known as Alfashaga, which led to fighting in the Summer of 2022.
The RSF evolved from Arab armed groups created in 2013 by former President Omar al-Bashir, who placed the group directly under his command and tasked it with protecting his rule from top army generals and his feared intelligence service. However both the army and RSF turned against al-Bashir during the US backed 2019 color revolution. The RSF continued to operate independently from the army, while the two forces competed for state assets, foreign patrons, legitimacy and recruits. After the two forces overthrew Sudan’s civilian administration in October 2021, experts and activists warned that the interests of both forces would diverge as they continued to ignore the issue of RSF integration into the army.
Dialogue over the Russian naval base had resumed in 2022, on the occasion of the visit to Moscow of Gen. Mohamed Hamdan "Hemeti" Dagalo, deputy commander of the Military Council and head of the RFS. Following the visit of the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov to Sudan in early February 2023, the terms of the long-sought agreement on establishing a base for the Russian Navy were finalised. Lavrov had met with Sudan’s ruling military leaders Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto head of state of Sudan, and his deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. The meeting agenda was reportedly on Russia providing Sudan with weapons in return for the renewal of the agreement. To circumvent the absence of a national parliament, the Chief of Staff of the Sudanese Armed Forces, General Mohamed Othman al Hussein, stated that "if the agreement offers advantages for us and satisfies Russia's interests, there is no problem". The news was confirmed during a joint press conference between Lavrov and his Sudanese counterpart Ali al-Sadiq Ali. US intelligence officials, fearing Moscow would use the base to project power further afield into the Indian Ocean began another round of intense diplomatic activity to undermine the agreement.
Concurrent with Lavrov’s visit in February 2023, six envoys representing the US, UK, France, Germany, Norway, and the European Union envoy to the Horn of Africa met with the head of the Sovereignty Council, Lt Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan, his deputy, Lt Gen Mohamed ‘Hemeti’ Dagalo, and Ambassador Ali El Sadig, acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, with the aim of advancing the political process to prepare for civilian governance which “will open Sudan up to the international community,” limit Russian and Chinese influence in the region and ensure continued US and EU influence.
No longer able to sustain its divide and conquer strategy in Central Asia or the Middle East, the US has focused its attention on the Horn of Africa, while simultaneously pursuing war in Ukraine and provocations over Taiwan. Thus, Sudan is once again embroiled in a power struggle that seems to the casual observer to be the outcome of internal warlordism, grinding poverty and violent corruption over control of Sudan’s vast spaces and energy and mineral resources. However, the world is actually witnessing another US effort to gain control over one country [Sudan] to put pressure on another [Ethiopia] to gain traction with a third [Egypt]. At its heart, the US efforts are to leverage the water resources of the Nile for political advantage, exert naval control over the Red Sea (it has lost any control over Yemen) and commercial control over Sudan’s vast gold and oil reserves. The US Two Front Three Oceans Grand Strategy is now Three Fronts and Three Oceans.