The nearly three-year-long Sudanese War is increasingly becoming a major international conflict. Up until recently, the state of play was that the UAE was accused of supporting the “Rapid Support Forces” (RSF) rebels from supply bases in Chad and Eastern Libya, the second of which is controlled by General Khalifa Haftar’s “Libyan National Army” (LNA). They’re fighting against General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s “Sudanese Armed Forces” (SAF), who are backed to varying degrees by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkiye.
Three new actors are now reportedly entering into the fray while two existing ones are intensifying their involvement. Regarding the first trend, it was reported in early January that Pakistan is finalizing a $1.5 billion arms deal with the RSF. Shortly after, unconfirmed and possibly false reports circulated alleging that Ethiopia had begun secretly aiding the RSF. This coincided with an RSF offensive on Blue Nile state that was allegedly launched from South Sudan, which itself risks slipping into another round of civil war.
As for the second trend, Egypt reportedly bombed an RSF convoy in mid-January close to the LNA-controlled Libyan border. The New York Times (NYT) then reported in early February that this attack and an earlier reported one from late last year were carried out with Turkish drones launched from a secret airbase in southern Egypt. They reminded readers that the SAF is known to field such arms, but these were reportedly delivered directly to Egypt, and it’s unclear whose troops pilot them from that base.
For those who aren’t aware, Egypt backs the LNA against the Turkish-backed “Government of National Accord”, but the LNA and Turkiye have quietly entered into a rapprochement over the past year while Egypt and Saudi Arabia are now reportedly pressuring the LNA to cut off the RSF. The larger dual contexts concern the increasingly heated Emirati-Saudi rivalry, which recently led to Saudi-backed Yemeni forces swiftly reconquering UAE-aligned South Yemen, and talk of an “Islamic NATO”.
To elaborate, Bloomberg reported that Turkiye wants to join the Saudi-Pakistani “Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement”, and then they reported that Riyadh is finalizing a military pact with Turkish-allied Somalia (which reached a security deal with Pakistan last summer) and Egypt. The NYT’s report about Turkish-Egyptian coordination in Sudan might lead to them replicating this in Somalia, which is also allied with Egypt, against newly Israeli-recognized Somaliland, where the “Islamic NATO’s” interests converge.
Turkiye’s deployment of three F-16s to Somalia, ostensibly for anti-terrorist purposes, could be followed by Egypt doing the same ahead of a campaign against Somaliland. Egypt might also exploit any putatively Turkish-inspired anti-terrorist F-16 deployment to Somalia to threaten its historic rival Ethiopia. Although Turkiye and the rest of the “Islamic NATO” are on good terms with it, Egypt could try to manipulate them into the false zero-sum dilemma of picking sides, in which case they might choose Egypt over Ethiopia.
The Sudanese War is now a testing ground for optimizing military coordination between the members of the “Islamic NATO”, which could serve as a minilateral platform for regional coordination even if their military ties aren’t ever formalized. For this reason, reportedly close Turkish-Egyptian coordination in Sudan might bode ill for Somaliland, which would in turn threaten Ethiopia’s only viable alternative to Djibouti for sea access and thus provoke a security dilemma between it and the “Islamic NATO”.
