Sudan

The dialogues in the Horn of Africa inspire little confidence to resolve the region’s crises while U.S. diplomatic efforts seem insufficient in an area of strategic interest.

Supporters of a transition must find ways to counter the junta.

Sudanese pro-democracy protesters have been more resolute in calling for an unconditional end to military rule than many Western democracies, which have been all too willing to condone a return to the status quo ante.

U.S. policy has been largely ineffectual in reversing democratic backsliding in the Horn of Africa.

American policy in Africa has not always empowered those fighting on behalf of democracy—and sometimes even supports anti-democratic forces—taking away from its stated aim of promoting democracy abroad.

Neither the military nor pro-democracy forces are backing down after last month’s coup. The stakes are high not only for Sudan, but also for fragile democracies across Africa.

Sudan's military leaders are prioritizing their own interests over that of their country. International actors should pressure the regime by raising the cost of doing so.

The coup in Sudan shows that the military members of the transitional government were never truly committed to implementing democracy in the manner sought by protesters who forced Omar al-Bashir from power in 2019.

Reports of a failed coup attempt in Sudan make clear the fragility of the transitional government, which is riven by civil-military tensions.

The crisis in Ethiopia’s Tigray region continues to demand international attention and action to remove barriers to the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian assistance; in a volatile and strategically important region, there is no more urgent priority. Yet at the same time, the international community must find the bandwidth and will to prevent tensions on the Ethiopia-Sudan border from escalating, threatening to make an already difficult situation far worse. The specifics of the border between Sudan and Ethiopia have long been in dispute, but a 2008 compromise had allowed for a “soft border” in the al-Fashaga region, letting Ethiopian farming communities remain in place without surrendering Sudan’s claim to the territory. While the two states have different perspectives on the trigger for recent flare-ups in the area, what is clear is that both have amassed military forces along the border, creating the conditions for dangerous miscalculations. It can be tempting for some to take comfort in the historical nature of the dispute—if this issue has been unresolved for decades, goes the thinking, perhaps it is not an urgent priority. But the context in which this area is contested has become incredibly volatile. Tense and thus far unsuccessful negotiations around the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and associated management of critical Nile waters have fueled regional antagonism and suspicion. Sudan’s own transition remains fragile and its future undetermined, but what is certain is that security threats provide ample opportunity to tip the scales in favor of the military rather than civilian reformers. In Ethiopia, the demands coming from Prime Minister Abiy’s shifting base of political support, and the questions arising from Eritrean involvement in the Tigray campaign, make chauvinism on the border issue seem like an appealing, or even necessary, position.  The international community must act to prevent these trends from locking regional actors into a calculus that results in conflict, which would only worsen the pathologies that plague both countries. As inconvenient as it is to add the Sudan-Ethiopia border dispute to the list of multiple, interrelated crises in the Horn that require urgent attention, it would be far worse to neglect the issue, substituting wishful thinking for concrete preventative action.

Last week President Trump invited reporters to listen in on a call intended to celebrate the normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel, a diplomatic achievement that comes with more than a few complications. During the course of the conversation with the Sudanese and Israeli prime ministers, the president of the United States took it upon himself to casually issue a bellicose threat to Ethiopia on behalf of Egypt and its president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a man Trump has referred to as “my favorite dictator." Seemingly miffed by the failure of his administration’s clumsy effort to broker a deal on the use of Nile waters now that Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam has become a reality, Trump posited that Egypt “will end up blowing up the dam. . . . they’ll blow up that dam. And they have to do something.. . . They should have stopped it long before it was started.” He also reiterated that he is holding up U.S. assistance to Ethiopia to pressure its government to agree to his administration’s preferred deal. The notion of casually inciting war in the strategically important Horn of Africa is sickening. The idea that the United States can successfully bully Ethiopia into a deal is ahistorical nonsense—a misreading of the stakes for Addis Ababa and an insult noted throughout the continent. But worse, the president is apparently completely oblivious to the United States’ own interests. The United States doesn’t provide assistance to Ethiopia out of sheer altruism; rather, officials from both parties have long recognized that a stable and successful Ethiopia is critical to the security of the region and an important part of any vision for cooperative, mutually beneficial U.S.-African relations in the future. The president’s appallingly careless statement is only the most recent example of the Trump Administration’s unforced errors in Africa. While Administration officials charge around warning Africans about the danger of doing business with China, they ignore the damage they’ve been doing to the United States’ credibility and desirability as a partner. Just as youthful African societies are mobilizing to demand more accountable governance and more of a say in shaping their own futures, the United States is making the worst possible case for itself. The current administration gives the impression that it disregards African interests in the foreign policy issues that directly affect them and that it imagines Africans as supplicants desperate for external patrons.  If President Trump is re-elected, it is difficult to imagine a change of course. But a Biden Administration would also face the immediate consequences of the damage done by the Trump years. Getting the United States on the firm footing required to meet a more assertive, transforming Africa, finding common ground, and advancing U.S. policy will be a real challenge, and it will need to be addressed immediately. Unfortunately, history suggests that this might be difficult. New presidential administrations have struggled to get their Africa teams in place quickly. Most egregiously, President Trump’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Tibor Nagy, didn’t take office until July of 2018, a year and a half after Trump was inaugurated. A new U.S. administration will have to move fast with a trusted and empowered team and a clear vision that rejects both business-as-usual and retrograde paradigms. Africa is poised to play a more significant role on the global stage. For the United States to meet the moment, policymakers will first have to climb out of the hole dug by President Trump. 

This week, President Trump made the long-anticipated announcement that the United States is prepared to remove Sudan from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST). Sudan has been on the list of pariahs for 27 years, and delisting has been a priority of its new government since the historic uprising of Sudanese civilians in 2019 that triggered a coup and ushered in a transitional period in which the military and civilians uneasily share power. While the process to complete the lifting of the SST designation requires Congressional cooperation and will take several weeks, the announcement is a most welcome step for Sudan, and for all those around the world hoping to see Sudan’s historic political transition succeed in birthing a stable, accountable, and representative new Sudan. Yet this milestone is not uncomplicated for many Sudanese. First, Sudan’s economy is on the ropes, and leaders trying to guide the country through a fragile transition are coping with soaring inflation and massive debt. Delisting is positive economic news in that it removes significant barriers to critical banking relationships, eases investors’ concerns about reputational risk, and allows the United States to support debt relief for Sudan at the international financial institutions. But for Sudanese people suffering immediate economic hardship and food insecurity, the fact that Sudan has agreed to pay $335 million to compensate victims of the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole in exchange for delisting can be a bitter pill. Sudan’s people had little voice in the decisions of its abusive and authoritarian government during the long tenure of President Omar al-Bashir. The pain of families affected by acts of terrorism cannot be ignored, and it is not hard to understand their demands for justice and accountability. At the same time, one can understand how paying for the sins of a government that Sudanese citizens shed blood to remove can feel like misplaced punishment. The Trump Administration’s linkage of SST delisting with its desire to see Sudan normalize its relationship with Israel has only added to the discomfort of some who feel their hand has been forced on a contentious and unrelated issue.  Of course, all actors have to confront the realities of the delisting process. But those who would dismiss domestic Sudanese complications as unimportant are missing an important point. For decades the United States worked to encourage change in the nature of Sudan’s government, applying pressures like the SST designation to a brutally violent authoritarian state. Today, the United States should want popular sentiment to matter to Sudan’s leaders, and it should be heartened by the fact that they have to balance popular opinion with foreign policy imperatives. As civilians try to wrest control of Sudan’s future away from securocrats, opening up the possibility of a democratic Sudan that can play an important bridging role in the broader Red Sea area, U.S. policymakers should keep their eye on the ball and proceed with sensitivity and meaningful support. Sudan’s future, and how its population feels about its leaders and their relationship to the United States, matter to our own long-term interests.

From the dismal domestic disarray that continues to sicken and kill Americans across the country to the dysfunction at the UN Security Council and brittle fractures in international cooperation, it is easy to get discouraged about the state of the world and America’s place in it. But the future provides an opportunity to rethink tired approaches, reimagine international relationships, and pivot toward a policy agenda that meets the challenges of climate change, democratic erosion, widening inequality and metastasizing violence. That rethink requires a reckoning with the African continent, not as a venue for competition with China or proxy conflict, but as an increasingly consequential force in shaping the future. By 2050, a quarter of the world’s population will be African. The continent’s youthful and growing labor force will stand in stark contrast to the aging populations of other regions, and they will be rightly skeptical of international institutions and agreements that deny the region the same agency and voice that others enjoy. The United States should welcome rather than resist a more assertive Africa, because ultimately we confront global challenges that we cannot address alone. There are new partnerships to be forged on the continent in service of shared interests, but one prerequisite to maximizing the potential of U.S.-Africa relations is a concerted effort to support the transformative transitions currently underway on the continent. The United States cannot afford to be a bystander to these dynamics. Nowhere is this more true than in the greater Horn, where Sudan and Ethiopia are both in the throes of high-stakes, fragile transitions. For decades, Sudan was a force for instability, undermining the region’s norms and institutions. But a stable, inclusive, and democratic Sudan, with its links to the Middle East and the rest of the Sahel, could be a bulwark against a transactional model of international relations that undermines the links between the governing and the governed. That promise will never be realized if the civilians fighting for leverage in its transition cannot deliver the kind of international support needed to ease the shock of structural reform.  In Ethiopia, where the next few years were always going to be messier than some of the rose-tinted analysis suggested early in Prime Minister Abiy’s tenure, the continent's second-largest population is rewriting its national narrative in search of greater political and economic freedoms and a new method of managing its diversity. That project, which could drive growth and promote stability far beyond Ethiopia's borders, cannot succeed if it is entirely personalized. Support for a reform agenda that is inextricably linked to an inclusive politics is an investment that is needed today to yield critical opportunities in the future.  Too often overlooked is Angola, where the transition underway since President Lourenço assumed power after José Eduardo dos Santos’s 38 year tenure has been far less dramatic but no less important. Angola faces formidable headwinds, having built its economy around an oil industry now in decline and its political system around patronage that benefits only a narrow slice of the population. But the will to curb corruption, diversify the economy, and build internal strength to match the external heft that Angola can bring to the region is precious; it should be met with a serious commitment to ensure that the Angolan people see concrete benefits of reform as the long process of structural transformation unfolds. Supporting transitions that bring more stability, prosperity, and justice to the region is a long-term and labor-intensive undertaking. It will require sustained support from Congress (which fortunately has demonstrated leadership on some of these issues), energized and consistent high-level diplomacy, and thoughtful coordination with other actors interested in the region’s future, particularly other lenders, who are essential to ensuring that debt burdens do not strangle critical reform efforts. It will also require innovation and a concerted effort to engage a broad range of voices and perspectives. The United States must heighten its sensitivity to the aspirations and concerns of young Africans, not just political elites, in order to genuinely understand where interests are shared and where they diverge, and to improve our understanding of what sustainable stability requires.