Sudan blames Ethiopia, UAE for recent drone attacks: What we know

The Sudanese government has accused Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates of being behind recent drone attacks, including at Khartoum airport.

Military spokesperson Brigadier General Asim Awad Abdelwahab told a news conference on Tuesday that Sudan’s government, which has recalled its ambassador from Ethiopia, had obtained evidence of four drone attacks since March 1 originating from neighbouring Ethiopia’s Bahir Dar airport. It claims the UAE provided the drones used in the attacks.

“What Ethiopia and the UAE have done is direct aggression against Sudan and won’t be met with silence,” Abdelwahab said.

Foreign Minister Mohieddin Salem said that while Khartoum will not initiate attacks against other countries, “whoever attacks us will be met with a response”, and that Sudan was ready to “enter into an open confrontation” with Ethiopia “if it becomes necessary”.

His comments came following a strike on Monday at the airport in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. Previous attacks have been launched towards the Sudanese states of Kordofan, Blue Nile and White Nile.

A drone attack on Saturday on Omdurman, Sudan’s second-largest city, killed five people travelling on a civilian bus, while another attack the following day in the central Sudan state of Gezira killed relatives of Abu Agla Kaikal, a commander with the Sudan Shield Forces, a group allied with the Sudanese military, who defected from the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) earlier in the war.

Drone attacks have been frequent since Sudan descended into a bloody civil war on April 15, 2023, the result of a power struggle between the RSF, a powerful paramilitary force, and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), but Khartoum was now considered largely safe.

Khartoum International Airport, where some of the early fighting between the RSF and Sudan’s army took place, received its first international flight in three years last ‌week, before the string of attacks shattered the sense of calm in the capital and in central Sudan.

(Al Jazeera)

Why are Sudan and Ethiopia trading accusations?

Both countries are facing enormous internal challenges and have accused each other of supporting their armed opponents.

On Tuesday, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected Sudan’s “baseless accusations” and blamed its army for supporting “mercenaries” from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), whose armed wing fought a civil war against Ethiopia’s federal government from 2020 to 2022.

“Sudan is serving as a hub for various anti-Ethiopian forces,” the Foreign Ministry in Addis Ababa wrote on X.

“The Sudanese armed forces have also provided arms and financial support to these mercenaries, thereby facilitating their incursions along Ethiopia’s western frontier.”

The statement added it was “evident that these hostile actions, as well as the recent and earlier series of allegations by officials of Sudanese armed forces, are undertaken at the behest of external patrons seeking to advance their own nefarious agenda”.

Sudan and Ethiopia have long been embroiled in armed conflict over disputed strips of farmland along the frontier in the al-Fashaga region. Most recently, the construction by Ethiopia of Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), led to tensions with Sudan and Egypt, which rely heavily on the Nile for water supplies.

Alan Boswell, Horn of Africa director at the International Crisis Group, said Sudan and Ethiopia are becoming increasingly vocal in their reciprocal accusations. “That obviously creates a very dangerous dynamic between the two countries and risks making their own internal challenges much worse,” he told Al Jazeera.

Boswell added that this makes both conflicts more “regionalised”, requiring de-escalation efforts to come from abroad. “That has been a focus of US diplomacy, but that has yet to gain traction,” he said.

What is the UAE’s involvement in Sudan’s war?

Sudan has accused the UAE of providing support to RSF paramilitaries during the civil war with the Sudanese army, a charge the Gulf state denies.

An unnamed UAE official told the AFP news agency: “These fabrications are part of a calculated pattern of deflection – shifting blame to others to evade responsibility for their own actions – and are intended to prolong the war and obstruct a genuine peace process.”

But Abdelwahab, Sudan’s military spokesperson, said the government had “conclusive evidence” from data recovered from a drone shot down in el-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, that UAE-made drones had been launched from Ethiopia’s northeastern Bahir Dar airport region. These struck Sudanese army positions across several states on March 1 and 17, he said.

Unmanned vehicles also attacked sites in Khartoum since Friday, including Khartoum’s airport on Monday, he added.

Rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have also accused the UAE of providing arms to the RSF.

Several observers have argued the UAE’s alleged involvement in Sudan’s civil war could serve Abu Dhabi’s desire to expand its influence across the Red Sea and East Africa, especially since relations with Saudi Arabia – which supports Sudan’s army – have been increasingly tense. Abu Dhabi has sought to position itself as a global trading hub for gold as it seeks to diversify from its oil-dependent economy, and may view Sudan’s untapped mineral wealth, including gold, as an opportunity, experts say.

Boswell, at the International Crisis Group, said Sudan’s General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed were being “emboldened and encouraged on the path towards escalation by their outside backers”.

“But they have shown in the past that they’re able to meet together and de-escalate things,” he said. “Because really [it] benefits neither [to] get more deeply involved in the other’s civil war.”