The recent flurry of congressional and executive attention on Sudan needs to be married to a long-term strategy toward the Horn of Africa. 

The would-be independent state strikes a contrast with Somalia as a place of relative stability, and despite its lack of international recognition, Somaliland continues to push its own foreign policy…

An already tense security environment in the Horn of Africa is growing even more perilous.

It’s a matter of conventional wisdom that the crises gripping the Horn of Africa are fundamentally political, and that viable, sustainable solutions can be found only through inclusive political dialogue. But in both Sudan and Ethiopia, current dialogues—one internationally backed and one a domestic project—inspire little confidence. The United States has real interests at stake in the region that are ill-served by relying on these processes to stabilize these two fragile countries.  In Sudan, where a more just and accountable political dispensation has been a U.S. priority for decades, the administration seems determined to defer to the United Nations (UN)-African Union (AU)-Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) tripartite mechanism, which the State Department recently described as “the most inclusive mechanism to achieve an urgently needed agreement” on a way forward in Sudan.