Does Eritrea support Sudanese armed groups?

Sudanese forces in Kassala state, east of the country (Al Jazeera)

Security concerns represented a major item on Asmara's agenda towards eastern Sudan, adjacent to its western and northern borders, as the region with its three states, especially Kassala and the Red Sea, represents a strategic depth for Eritrea, due to the long, extended border and the ethnic overlap between many tribes on both sides of it.

Therefore, it was natural for “the security and stability of the eastern states and the strategy of not allowing the war to spread to them” to become one of the axes of the talks held by Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki with Malik Agar, Vice President of the Sudanese Sovereignty Council, on January 17, 2024, according to what the latter reported on His account on the X platform.

In this context, Asmara’s establishment of training camps for Sudanese fighters on its territory is an extension of its keen interest in eastern Sudan over the past three decades, where it worked - according to a study published on the Al Jazeera Center for Studies website - to build a network of close relationships with societal, political and tribal forces that ensured their permanent presence and influence. In the region.

The Eritrean security services were also active in the region to monitor the opposition factions and Eritrean groups present in the region, which prompted Professor John Young, one of the most important experts on Sudanese affairs, to say that Asmara “possesses excellent knowledge and intelligence about the region.”

Despite the official Eritrean silence about confirming or denying that it is hosting Sudanese fighters, there are talks circulating about Eritrea opening camps inside its territory to train armed Sudanese groups, with the escalation of the Sudanese war and its approach to the east of the country, following the fall of Al-Jazira State to the Rapid Support Forces in late December. First 2023.

Eritrean proactive efforts

In view of the above, Asmara’s reception of Sudanese armed forces represents an Eritrean effort to build advanced defense points in anticipation of any security chaos caused by the extension of the conflict to eastern Sudan, which may leave a vacuum that allows hostile parties to find and support an Eritrean armed opposition moving across the long border between the two countries, part of which is formed. Many of them are flat areas that are easy to navigate.

These concerns are heightened by the fact that Eastern Sudan contains one of the largest Eritrean communities abroad, as the number of those registered in the UNHCR camps in the region is more than 136 thousand asylum seekers, according to its report issued in March 2023, in addition to all those residing outside of it and those who have obtained a permit. Sudanese nationality, and many of them are from border tribes historically linked to opposition to Asmara.

In addition to this, many international reports indicate that the waves of Eritrean refugees in recent years were mainly composed of runaway conscripts who received military training within the framework of national service in Eritrea, and the violations committed within them forced them to flee to Sudan.

These circumstances make these former recruits a fertile environment for any opposition military action against Asmara if an entity capable of containment and recruitment is formed, which may not seem unlikely given a scenario similar to the attempt to establish a military front opposed to Asmara in Khartoum led by former Eritrean Defense Minister Mesfin Haqus. It was revealed. Reported in July 2021.

Support the Sudanese army

Neutrality has been a characteristic of the official Eritrean discourse towards both sides of the war since its outbreak in mid-April 2023. However, many indicators have emerged recently showing a growing rapprochement between Asmara and the Sudanese army. In addition to Agar’s statement that the Eritrean president stands with “the people and government of Sudan,” the team praised the first pillar. Yasser Al-Atta: Asmara’s position on the crisis in his country.

In this context, hosting Sudanese armed groups represents Eritrea’s support for the war effort of the Sudanese army, which these groups declared their side with, as training camps were opened after the sudden fall of Al-Jazira State into the hands of the Rapid Support Forces in late December 2023.

The collapse of the forces stationed in the state has led many military analysts to believe that there are difficulties facing the Sudanese Armed Forces, which then began arming civilians as part of what was called “armed popular resistance.”

Preventing the siege

The Rapid Support Forces' seizure of Al-Jazeera State constituted a shift in the geography of battles from Khartoum and the west of the country to central and eastern Sudan, according to a position assessment published by the Al-Jazeera Center for Studies in January 2024.

Within this transformation, the latest Eritrean step expresses Asmara’s fears about the possibility of General Hemedti’s forces reaching the Ethiopian border through Gedaref State, which means opening a supply line through Ethiopia or elsewhere, which will strengthen its field position and rid it of the obstacle of its long supply lines from the west of the country and ensure its control over Eastern Sudan.

While the expansion of these forces in Kassala State and reaching the borders of Eritrea will place the latter in a triple siege between Ethiopia in the southwest, and the Rapid Support ally of Addis Ababa from the west, its southern border with Djibouti is witnessing constant tension as a result of a border dispute between the two parties that led them to war. Limited in 2008.

Given the extreme tension experienced by Ethiopian-Eritrean relations, the Rapid Support Forces’ control of Kassala state will narrow Asmara’s options, as Sudan was the lung through which it could breathe in the event of a conflict with Ethiopia. It also portends the possibility of giving Ethiopian forces the opportunity to pass through Sudan to western Eritrea. .

Asmara had previously accused Sudan of opening its borders on this side to Ethiopian forces during the war between the two parties (1998-2000), which greatly affected the Eritrean forces in that region, as Mahjoub Al-Basha reported in his book “Enemy Brothers: The Eritrean-Ethiopian War.”

A seat at the negotiating table

Professor of Politics at the British University of Leeds, Lionel Cliffe, believes - in his paper entitled "Regional Dimensions of the Conflict in the Horn of Africa" ​​- that proxy wars are a traditional pattern in the policies of the countries of the aforementioned region, through which they aim to obtain political gains by embracing opposition armed movements.

In this context, Eritrea's support for Sudanese armed parties provides it with the most effective tool to participate in formulating final solutions and settlements when reaching the negotiation stage, where it can, through its allies, guarantee its future interests in Sudan, especially its eastern region.

Asmara had a similar experience by hosting, at the beginning of the second millennium, the factions of the Sudanese Eastern Front, which launched an armed rebellion against the Salvation regime, which ended with the signing of the East Peace Agreement with Khartoum in 2006, which Asmara won, according to which Sudan banned the activity of Eritrean opposition factions on its territory, which contributed to creating a safe security environment. On its western borders since then.

Old allies

Despite the relative scarcity of information about the nature and number of Sudanese forces active in Eritrea, many sources indicate that it includes the Beja General Conference led by Musa Muhammad Ahmed, one of the leaders of the Eastern Front who signed the East Peace Agreement in Asmara in 2006, under which he became an assistant to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Until he was deposed in 2019.

In addition to this party, the forces affiliated with Omar Muhammad Tahir Omar, the historical military leader of the Beja Congress, also stand out, who refused to sign the East Peace Agreement and has kept his fighters inside Eritrean territory until now.

While these two groups are predominantly ethnically affiliated to the Bedouin-speaking Beja tribes, other parties have established training camps for themselves inside Eritrea. Most of their fighters are affiliated with the Tigrayite-speaking Beja tribes such as the Beni Amer and the Habab, which is the United Popular Front for Liberation and Justice, headed by Al-Amin Daoud, and the emerging Eastern Sudan Liberation Forces. Newly under the leadership of Ibrahim Dunia.

Also included among these groups is the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Minni Arko Minawi, whose bases are based in the Darfur region in western Sudan, unlike the rest of the movements that geographically belong to the eastern region.

While many of the aforementioned figures are known as Asmara's old allies in Sudan, there is a new variable revealed by the formation of an armed movement from border tribes historically opposed to the Eritrean regime organized in these camps, which indicates the level of concern that exists among both parties regarding the occurrence of security disturbances in eastern Sudan.

This is what the commander of the Eastern Sudan Liberation Forces expressed in a video recording, explaining that the formation of his movement aims to defend the population of eastern Sudan in the event that the war extends to it, to prevent the repetition of the violations that occurred against civilians in the city of Wad Madani after the army’s withdrawal from it and its invasion by the Rapid Support Forces. .

Source: Al Jazeera + websites