The rivalry between the Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates entrenches the conflict in Sudan: since both warring parties ‒ the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces ‒ have a resource-rich ally, there is no reason for them to stop fighting, according to political scientist Federico Donelli.

In April 2023, a civil war began between the two major rival factions of the military government in Sudan. On one side are the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and on the other the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti. The NGO has reported 28,700 fatalities including over 7,500 civilians killed in direct attacks. These numbers are likely to be underestimates ‒ as high as 150,000. According to the have either been internally displaced or have fled the country.

While the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has sided with the RSF, Saudi Arabia, through its engagement with Egypt, is indirectly supporting the SAF.

“As long as Hemedti has support from UAE and al-Burhan from Saudi Arabia, I don’t see any end to the conflict in Sudan, l’m afraid”, Federico Donelli, a political scientist at the University of Trieste says. He adds, “in this sense it is a kind of a proxy war because they are supporting one side of the conflict to create problems for their rival.” Donelli recently published a .

NAI researcher Redie Bereketeab.

However, Donelli emphasises, the Sudanese conflict originates from internal factors, so any potential resolution will have to address domestic issues first. This is also , who stresses that the ongoing conflict is in many ways a continuation of the struggle between Sudan’s north and south, which has shaped national politics since colonial rule.

“The two men do not only represent two armies; they also represent two groups of Sudanese. Al-Burhan represents the privileged people of Khartoum who have controlled power for many decades. Hemedti is from Darfur in the southwest and represents the poor and marginalised”, Bereketeab states.

If both Saudi Arabia and UAE withdrew from Sudan, Donelli believes that it would be more difficult for Hemedti to continue the war than for al-Burhan, who could still keep control over more resources and power even without support from Saudi Arabia.

So why have the former allies in the Gulf become such rivals? A simple answer is that both countries have big ambitions in terms of regional power and neither one wants to be the younger sibling. However, they also have very different views on Islamist movements. While Saudi Arabia does not have any problems with Islamists and in fact more or less openly supports them, according to Donelli, the UAE sees radical religious groups as a threat to its domestic stability, as well as stability in the wider region. This distinction is also evident in the two countries’ support for the respective sides in Sudan. The UAE supports RSF’s more secular version of Islam, whereas the SAF under al-Burhan’s leadership is widely seen as more or less a continuation of the regime of Omar al-Bashir, which was heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood.

However, Donelli points out, to understand why the two Gulf countries have such close relationships with the SAF and the RSF, respectively, one has to go back to the civil war in Yemen ten years ago when a Saudi-led coalition of Muslim states sent troops to fight Iran-backed Houthi insurgents. The Houthis controlled the west of Yemen and could therefore conveniently ship arms from African ports. The Saudi-led coalition wanted to intercept these shipments; besides putting troops on the ground in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and its partners subsequently began to approach states in the Horn of Africa to stop them resupplying the Houthis.

Political scientist Federico Donelli.

“They were very successful in that. For instance, Sudan cut its relationship with Iran and instead moved closer to the Gulf states”, Donelli remarks.

Sudan actually went a step further than the other states in the Horn. Al-Bashir sent 10,000 soldiers to fight alongside the Sunni coalition in Yemen. That decision determined why the two generals fighting Sudan´s civil war each have the support of a different Gulf state.

“The Sudanese troops in Yemen were deployed with the two leading generals that are currently fighting each other in Sudan. Al-Burhan led the Sudanese who fought under the Saudis and Hemedti was leading the Sudanese deployed with soldiers from UAE. That is how the Gulf countries got access to the Sudanese top layer”, Donelli observes.

The Gulf states´ relations with the two generals have continued throughout the different stages of Sudanese politics over the past decade: the fall of the al-Bashir regime, the transitional government with a civil prime minister, and the military coup by al-Burhan and Hemedti that followed. And later, when the two coup plotters fell out with each other, they both had very resourceful partners to support their armed struggle for power.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia’s rivalry in the Horn of Africa is a powder keg waiting to explode. Saudi Arabia supports Egypt, and indirectly Somalia and Eritrea too, while Ethiopia is receiving a lot of support from the UAE. South Sudan initially refrained from taking sides in the conflict, but later criticised and questioned the legitimacy of the Sudanese government and the SAF.

Donelli does not believe a further escalation is likely to happen, though, “simply because these countries have a lot of internal problems to resolve before they can allocate any resources for another front. However, l am more worried about possible spillover effects in the other direction ‒ towards the western neighbours.”

Libya has sent troops to help the RSF, and both the Central African Republic (CAR) and Chad have economic interests in western Sudan. In addition, people in the CAR and Chad share clan traits with many Sudanese in the Darfur region, where Hemedti has strong support. Chad, in particular, could be vulnerable to instability in Sudan, as the country has appeared fragmented and conflict-ridden ever since the killing of the president, Idriss Déby Itno, in 2021.

“Sudan sits in the middle of two regions which have high levels of instability and conflict ‒ the Sahel to the west and the Horn of Africa connected with the Red Sea to the east. It is also a link between the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa, not least as a corridor of migration flows. What happens in Sudan is of strategic interest for many actors”, Donelli concludes.

TEXT: Johan Sävström