Sudan’s neighbors fear spillover as death toll from clashes nears 200

NAIROBI - The fierce clashes that erupted over the weekend between rival armed forces in Sudan are unnerving its neighbors, and they have begun contacting the warring leaders in an effort to keep the turmoil from spilling across borders and destabilizing the fragile region.

As fighting stretched into a third day and confirmed civilian deaths approached 200, analysts warned that prolonged conflict could benefit Islamist extremists and Russian-backed insurgents in the region and well as undermine its trade and economic growth. Previous fighting inside Sudan has often entangled neighboring countries.

Apart from calling for peace, Sudan’s neighbors have so far been largely tight-lipped in public. But these countries “are all working the phones behind the scenes separately. . . . Nobody seems to be making any progress for now,” said Cameron Hudson, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Sudan’s two most powerful men, military chief Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and paramilitary head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — widely known by his nickname, Hemedti — have been battling since Saturday morning. The two generals had formed an uneasy alliance during a joint 2021 coup that deposed a short-lived civilian government, but a draft power-sharing deal in December stoked their rivalry. President Burhan commands the military, while Vice President Hemedti heads the heavily armed paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

With clashes spiking to their most intense level since Sudan’s independence 67 years ago, the heart of the capital, Khartoum, and other cities around the country have been pounded by airstrikes and fire from tanks, mortars and artillery. Mortars have eviscerated hospitals in the capital, which have run out of blood supplies and generator fuel. Nine hospitals in Khartoum have shut down, three because of direct hits, a doctors group said.

Many of Sudan’s neighbors - including South Sudan, Chad, Libya, Ethiopia and the Central African Republic - have been confronting unrest within their own borders, and those challenges could grow.

“Sudan’s instability means instability within the region,” said Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, South Sudan’s former oil minister.

South Sudan, which broke away from Sudan after a decades-long civil war, could be the first to be affected. South Sudan has been mired in civil war and corruption since independence in 2011. Its oil fields provide 90 percent of the country’s revenue, but the oil can only be exported through a pipeline snaking through Sudan to the Red Sea.

“The trade with Sudan and oil production can be affected. . . . We need peace in Sudan,” Gatkuoth said.

Ben Hunter, East Africa analyst at the risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, said the fighting in Sudan is already disrupting oil exports. Maritime data shows three tankers circling off the coast rather than docking at Port Sudan’s export terminal.

A disruption of oil exports could devastate South Sudan, where hyperinflation has impoverished families, and unpaid soldiers and gunmen have looted aid warehouses and killed humanitarian workers. Floods, fighting and poverty mean more than half the population needs food aid.

Chad, which shares a long, porous border with Sudan, also fears drawn-out fighting. Rebels and militias crisscross the desert shared by the two nations. Hemedti has deep ties to the border region. He hails from Sudan’s western Darfur region, has family ties in Chad and his RSF militia was born from the notorious Janjaweed forces accused of gang rapes, village burnings and mass killings during the 20-year Darfur war.

Two Western diplomats said Chadian officials fear he may harbor regional ambitions. The diplomats spoke on the condition of anonymity to frankly discuss conversations with another government.

Chad shut its border with Sudan on Saturday in a bid to prevent a spillover. But if Hemedti’s forces are pushed back to Darfur, they could be a source of fighters and guns for years to come, potentially destabilizing Chad.

“If this war continues, Darfur will burn,” said Alan Boswell, Crisis Group’s project director for the Horn of Africa. “The longer this drags on, the more likely we will see external actors starting to back sides . . . that will make a political process more difficult.”

Hemedti also has ties to Russia’s Wagner Group, which is active at the gold mines in northern Darfur. Hemedti visited Moscow as the war in Ukraine began, and has promoted a possible Russian base on the Red Sea.

Wagner is also active in the Central African Republic, where rights groups have accused Wagner personnel of killing civilians at mining sites, and has also been involved in Libya’s civil war.

But Burhan, for his part, has support from the military-backed government in Egypt, the most populous Arab nation. Arab powers, including Egypt, are wary of any reemergence of Islamist extremism in Sudan, fearing this could fuel militancy in their own countries. Across the Red Sea, both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have called for a cease-fire in a joint statement with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“People in Sudan want the military back to the barracks,” Blinken told reporters Monday. But Western countries have little leverage right now. Sudan has been largely isolated since the 2021 coup and already owes $56 billion to foreign lenders.

Majak D’Agoot, a senior research fellow at King’s College London who previously served as Sudan’s deputy chief of intelligence, said the Arab League, for its part, has been divided over conflicts in Libya, Syria and Yemen, and might not function as an effective mediator between Sudan’s rival forces.

“Where is the regional leader?” he asked. “The moment Sudan becomes ungoverned space, it opens up vast territories for terrorists to move.”

While government officials worked the phones, civilians begged for help. U.N. envoy Volker Perthes said Monday evening that more than 180 people have been killed in the fighting.

Yasir Yousif Elamin, spokesman for the Sudan Doctors Union, said nine major hospitals had been forced to close in the capital. Three had been shelled, one had been attacked and the others had to evacuate patients, he said. Six others remained open but were critically low on staff, supplies or had no water or generator fuel, he said.

“We are on the brink of collapse of the entire health-care system,” he said. Hospitals in other cities were struggling to cope without staff, food and water, medicine or intravenous fluids. One had been overrun by combatants, a statement from the union said.

Gunmen looted hospitals, government offices, compounds and warehouses belonging to aid groups and the United Nations in several cities of the western region of Darfur, activists and officials based there said.

“Our hospital is closed and we have no blood bank or supplies,” said Mahmoud Hassan Fadul Ismail, a surgeon at Nyala Teaching Hospital. “The RSF stole the ambulance yesterday and kicked out the doctor and driver and patients by the side of the road,” he added, gunfire crackling in the background.

Karem Aldeen Adam, humanitarian aid coordinator in Nyala, said armed men looted markets and many compounds and warehouses belonging to international aid groups and U.N. agencies. An activist also said aid agencies’ offices had been looted in the Darfur town of Al Fashir.

The U.N. World Food Program said Sunday it was temporarily halting its operations in Sudan - where 15 million people don’t have enough to eat - after three of its Sudanese staffers were killed in Darfur.

It’s unclear what started the fighting. Each side blames the other.

Residents described the country as a tinderbox waiting for a spark after the two generals signed an internationally backed draft deal in December meant to provide a road map to civilian leadership. Sudanese activists say the deal elevated Hemedti into a direct threat to Burhan by making the men equals and exacerbated tensions by failing to set a short timeline for the RSF’s integration into the national armed forces.

Although Hemedti commands tens of thousands of forces around the country, Burhan has retained control of the air force. Satellite photographs supplied by commercial imaging companies Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies and examined by Sean O’Connor, the lead analyst for satellite imagery at Janes, show at least 20 military aircraft have been damaged or destroyed, a relatively small fraction of the total.

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Pietsch reported from Seoul. The Washington Post’s Miriam Berger and John Hudson contributed to this report.