The borders of Sudan are barely calm until they flare up again.
Over the decades and years, the country has seen border disputes with most of its neighbors.
In the north, relations with Egypt are tense from time to time over areas such as the Halayeb Triangle and Shalateen, and in the south the country suffered for a long time until it was divided and the state of South Sudan emerged.
In the east, the border dispute with Ethiopia dates back more than 120 years, when Britain completed its occupation of Sudan and began demarcating its borders with its neighbors.
At that time, as at all times, political budgets were governing the British, who argued that they formulated the agreements with ambiguity allowing them to be interpreted by the various parties, each at his own pace.
But the discord, which had been muted during most of the past years, returned to a violent appearance this time.
The disputed area, which is called "Al-Fashaqa", which is inhabited by hundreds of Ethiopian farmers, although it is located inside the land of Sudan, witnessed more than one friction and skirmish between the Sudanese army and Ethiopian forces, often affiliated with militias close to the government.
In the second week of November 2020, the Sudanese army began to extend its control over the areas in which it had not been deployed for nearly a quarter of a century, announcing a new position, and raising the Ethiopian side.
The Sudanese move on the borders worried several parties, and made many people prepared for the deterioration of the situation in the Horn of Africa.
In this coverage, we shed light on the different aspects of the Sudanese-Ethiopian conflict, in an attempt to explore the future of the region and the consequences of the conflict.
Why mischievous?
Al Fashaqa - Special to cover (Al Jazeera)
Fashaqa is the area bordering the Sudanese Ethiopian border.
It is bordered to the north by the State River, and to the east by the Atbara River.
Al-Fashaqa is divided into Al-Kubra: It is bordered by the State River in the north, the Sea of Islam in the south, and the Atbara River in the west, and the small one: it is bordered in the north by the Sea of Islam, on the west by the Atbara River, and on the east by the border with Ethiopia.
It is a very fertile land, crossed by many seasonal rivers, with an area of 251 square kilometers, and other sources estimate it at 600 square kilometers.
The fossa is bordered by rivers from all sides inside Sudan except by the border with Ethiopia, which imposes isolation on it from the rest of the Sudanese land, especially during the flood seasons.
The fertility of the region and its natural isolation made it a coveted place for Ethiopia, from which groups have appeared since the 1950s to carry out looting and expulsion of Sudanese farmers.
These groups started out as farmers on the Ethiopian side of the border, but soon they sought help from militias called "Shifta", which are particularly active during the flood seasons and the harvest in the fall of each year.
But fertility is not the only reason for the Ethiopian interventions, which have reached the point of establishing entire villages and cities on Sudanese soil.
The Ethiopian Amharic ethnicity firmly believes that the lands of these areas belong to it historically, and the Amharic people do not see that anyone, whether Emperor Menelik II in 1902 or even Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in 1996, has the right to relinquish Ethiopian sovereignty over them.
what's new?
The Sudanese incursion on the border took place after the first filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. (French)
During the past two years, many waters have taken place in the river of politics, whether in Sudan, which witnessed an uprising that toppled the government of President Omar al-Bashir, or in Ethiopia, which elected a new leadership in 2018 and formed a governing coalition that does not include the Tigray People's Liberation Front party, which had concluded agreements with The government of Sudan requires Ethiopia to recognize Sudanese sovereignty over mischief.
Although the border tensions and violations of the Ethiopian side have not stopped for many years, observers believe that the Sudanese military component in the ruling coalition after the 2019 revolution needs to consolidate its political weight in front of its citizens, which led to its taking steps towards controlling the situation on the borders.
Another aspect of the unrest is the Ethiopian link between the border file and the Renaissance Dam file, which was reflected in the escalation of border tension with the Ethiopian rush to fill the dam reservoir, and Ethiopia's refusal to sign the Washington Agreement in February 2020, which was followed by a Sudanese incursion into Al-Fashah in March / March.
Matters developed rapidly, despite Sudan and Ethiopia agreeing during a military talks session in Khartoum in April 2020 to jointly coordinate border control, there was an attack in May that killed and injured Sudanese soldiers, which led the Sudanese army to issue a statement in which the Ethiopian army was explicitly accused of supporting Attacks on his forces and citizens.
With the outbreak of conflict within Ethiopian territory between the central government forces and the forces of the Tigray region, which is bordered by Sudan from the west, and tens of thousands of refugees fled into Sudanese territory, the Sudanese army decided to seize the opportunity and redeploy in the entire Fashaqa area to control the borders.
Despite the announcement by Sudanese Foreign Minister Omar Qamar al-Din that his country's army had control of the entire border with Ethiopia at the end of last December, the Shifta militia attacks continued, according to what Sudan announced.
On January 12, the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that militias attacked the "Quraysha" border area, killing 5 women and a child, and missing two women.
The Shifta ... from gangs of pillaging to armed militias
Members of the Amhara ethnic militia on the street of the town of Mai, Khadra, last November (French)
The Shifta militia arose in the fifties of the last century as small ethnic gangs known as the Walgites for the purpose of looting, and in the mid-nineties they turned into large and organized militias, mostly from the Amhara ethnicity, and they possessed machine guns, automatic and artillery, and launched organized attacks on Sudanese lands during which they managed to empty the entire eastern Atbara River Of the Sudanese population presence.
It also removed villages and expelled citizens and farmers, opened the way for Ethiopian farmers to seize those sites, and took over their protection along the borders of Gedaref State.
In recent years, these militias have practiced kidnapping citizens within the Sudanese borders in exchange for ransoms, and they also killed and executed many Sudanese citizens.
Sudan and other parties accuse the Ethiopian government of embracing the Shifta militia and supporting them financially and militarily, and consider them to be semi-regular forces that Ethiopia exploit to achieve its goals in the border region without direct involvement of its army. ".
In explaining the identity and motives of the various Ethiopian militias and their relationship with the Federal Security Institution, Abdel Moneim Abu Idris, a Sudanese researcher specializing in Horn of Africa affairs, says that the security structure in Ethiopia is of a bilateral nature consistent with the federal administrative system followed in the country.
Ethiopia has a federal army that is subject to the central government, and it has a staff in Addis Ababa, the capital of the country, and it consists of five sectors that are geographically distributed over the entire area of the country.
As for the second section, it includes forces affiliated with each of the ten regions of the country, led by the regional government, and it consists of two parts, one completely regular, appointed by the regional government, and the other is a militia.
Regarding the circumstances of the formation of these militias and their composition, Abu Idris says that they were formed during the days of the fighting against the military rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam, and that they maintained their formation after his fall in May 1991 and has independence in managing them, but in return they are recognized by the government, and they may use them to control security.
It can also serve businessmen or companies for money.
It may also benefit from the experiences of retired military and police personnel.
The use of militias in campaigns of control accompanied by looting and killing is not limited to Ethiopia.
A 2008 study by American researcher Sherry McFarland indicated that three countries in the Horn of Africa - Ethiopia, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo - have used local militias either to control marginalized groups operating in the vast local geography, or to confront rebel groups whose attempts by the national state institutions have failed to subjugate them.
Possible scenarios:
Self-defense units in the Ethiopian region of Humera, last November (French)
According to analysts and observers, the parties to the conflict seem ready to adopt a temporary truce, and the direction to stop the conflict temporarily.
Other, more pessimistic scenarios include slipping into an open military confrontation between the two countries, as a result of repeated skirmishes, but it does not seem that one of the parties wants to reach this stage.
The most optimistic scenario is for the Ethiopian side to accept the final demarcation of the border, agreeing on a framework that guarantees preserving the interests of the Amharic tribes, and legalizing the status of Ethiopian farmers.
But in any case, it seems that Sudan has obtained immediate gains, which are the minimum in strengthening its military presence on the borders and imposing its control over the Al-Fashaqa area almost completely, which will lead to the strengthening of the army's political position and its negotiating position inside the country with other political players, Or with the Ethiopian side, which is already exhausted by internal conflicts.
Sudan and Ethiopia Info Modified - Coverage-specific (Al-Jazeera)
Analysts' opinions on solutions and exits
The researchers Ahmed Farid Maulana, Muhammad Al-Arousi and Siddiq Ferini examined the regional dimension of the Sudanese-Ethiopian border crisis, the specifications for its solution, and the international bodies qualified to play a mediating role in it.
Staff
Editors: Abdul Rahman Ayyash - Zuhair Hamdani - Muhammad Al-Ali
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