In a Horn of Africa where tension is mounting on multiple fronts, the consolidation of relations between Asmara and Khartoum appears to be an increasingly positive countertrend, suggesting good prospects for finding a way out of the dramatic civil conflict that has plagued Sudan since April 2023. Just last October 10, Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris concluded his two-day official visit to Asmara, where he was received by Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki to discuss important bilateral issues such as economic cooperation, security, and regional stability. Going beyond the appearance of a common bilateral diplomatic event, the meeting highlighted Eritrea’s increasingly active role in supporting Sudan: much more than a “brother country,” as we shall see. The Sudanese premier arrived in Asmara on October 9, 2025, accompanied by a high-level delegation consisting of Foreign Minister Mohi El-Din Salem and the Minister of Culture, Information, and Tourism, Khalid Ali Aleisir. The main objective, as reported by Sudan Tribune, was to strengthen bilateral ties between Sudan and Eritrea, with particular emphasis on security, intelligence, and joint economic projects. As stated by Sudan Horizon, during the talks at the State Palace, Idris conveyed greetings from the Chairman of the Sudanese Sovereign Council, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, praising Eritrea’s “courageous position” in supporting Sudan during “difficult times caused by an imposed war.” For his part, President Afwerki reiterated Eritrea’s unconditional support for the unity and dignity of Sudan, emphasizing that Asmara’s position is “principled and immutable.” At the end of the visit, the two parties also agreed to intensify cooperation in other sectors such as fishing, refineries, and mining, as well as to coordinate in regional and international forums, including the campaign for Sudan’s return to the African Union. Walking through the capital with President Afewerki, Idris later met with members of the Sudanese community in the country, many of whom arrived after the outbreak of the civil conflict and were hosted “as brothers, sharing bread and shelter” by Asmara. Finally, he granted a well-articulated interview to the Eritrean agency Shabait.
The visit takes place in a context of truly deep and complex historical relations between the two countries. Eritrea has historical ethno-cultural ties with Sudan (consider the Beja populations, who live between western Eritrea and eastern Sudan, along the entire border) and has played a mediating role several times in past conflicts. Since the beginning of the civil war, Asmara has actively supported the Sudanese government led by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo Hemedti, by training Sudanese military personnel, acting intelligently in mediating between the parties that turned to it, providing its airport runways to SAF planes threatened by RSF drones; and, not least, as already mentioned, by also providing refuge to thousands of civilians who would have otherwise faced death or, perhaps, ended up in a refugee camp elsewhere. According to the Dabanga Sudan broadcaster, important groups such as the Beja Congress and the United Popular Front for Liberation and Justice have aligned with the SAF. However, according to certain critical analysts, predominantly Atlantic-based, this alliance could trigger internal tribal conflicts in Sudan, with interferences by Asmara in Sudanese affairs that these sources trace back to the 1990s. This opinion is rather laughable, as precisely in those years, when Khartoum was under the long rule of Omar al-Bashir, the exact opposite occurred, with Eritrea suffering attempts at destabilization carried out against it by an unusual “triple alliance” formed by the then Sudanese, Ethiopian, and Yemeni governments. That “triple alliance,” composed of the Sudanese Bashir, the Ethiopian Zenawi, and the Yemeni Saleh, also acted with the more-than-hopeful favor of the United States and the European Union. History also teaches that those same countries, or important internal components in conflict with their respective central governments, later ended up invoking diplomatic support from Asmara as a mediator to extricate themselves from their conflicts, furthermore with an inevitable, though never adequately publicized, international applause. Consider, for example, the mediation in the peace agreement between the Sudanese government and the Eastern Front in 2006.
Today, as Mesob Journal recalls, Eritrean support for Sudan is due to various strategic interests, such as border security and stability in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa; but also to the historicity of the ties between the two countries, with common populations and cultures, and the important support that Khartoum governments preceding the Bashir era, such as that of Jaafar Nimeyri, gave to the EPLF and Eritrean civilians during the War of Liberation from Ethiopia. In his visit, Idris emphasized the need for joint projects to counter regional challenges, reflecting the Eritrean vision of a united Sudan against destabilizing external influences. Indeed, the Sudanese civil conflict, which erupted in April 2023 between the SAF and the RSF, has now lasted thirty months, being rekindled from time to time by numerous self-interested external hands. As of October 2025, according to sources from the UN, The New Arab, and Sudan Tribune, the war has caused over 150,000 deaths, in addition to over 522,000 children who died of starvation, more than 14 million displaced people, and 24.6 million people in urgent need of humanitarian aid. Especially in areas like North Darfur and the Nuba Mountains, famine, mixed with the ferocity of the fighting, reigns most ruthlessly. The epicenter of the violence is indicated precisely in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, besieged by the RSF whose attacks, as denounced by Al Jazeera, killed at least 20 civilians in a mosque and a hospital between October 5 and 8 alone, and over 53 dead and 60 injured in a few days. The fury of the conflicts and the search for food safety has caused the population in cities to drop by 62% after two and a half years, with more than 260,000 people trapped in catastrophic conditions. The healthcare system has meanwhile collapsed, inflation is marching above 170% (at the official exchange rate, 600 Sudanese pounds are needed for one dollar: imagine the black market rate), and the economy has contracted by 42% compared to pre-war levels: this is how far some countries, those that truly interfered in Sudan, unleashing the civil conflict in the spring of 2023, have gone just to subvert the political transition process inaugurated after al-Bashir. Exactly as in the case of Somalia, only by allowing the various internal components of Sudan to freely agree among themselves, without unrequested interference, will the country finally be reunited and at peace; and, just as in the Somali case, those who do everything to prevent this from happening are certainly not to be found along the shores of the Red Sea. For both Somalia and Sudan, history and current events point us to other tracks to follow: it is up to at least the most careful and reasonable observers to reach the obvious and necessary conclusions.
The Sudanese conflict is, as we were saying, exacerbated by a tangle of external interests, with regional and global powers supporting opposing factions, complicating any peace effort. A first name to be indicated is the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the main supporter of the RSF, to whom they provide arms, financing, and logistical support through Chad, Libya, Ethiopia, and the Somali states of Somaliland and Puntland. After all, Addis Ababa has more than one interest in weakening Sudan, also by favoring a new fragmentation to consolidate its grip on the Nile and gain an area instrumental to its own, even indirect, access to the Red Sea. Emirati and Ethiopian interests, on this point, have found more than one easy convergence; exactly as, looking towards the Gulf of Aden, they have found it in favoring the centrifugal internal tendencies of Somalia, primarily by cultivating the separatist dreams of what remains of Somaliland (after all, since its proclamation in 1991, its eastern and western areas have in turn split off to return to Mogadishu, leaving the “capital” Hargeisa with very little in hand). In Libya, taking advantage of the porosity of the south-eastern Saharan borders, which are under tribal control, the UAE, which has a generally good relationship with Benghazi, provides robust supplies to the RSF, and the same also occurs regarding Chad; there too, the border permeability and the familiarity between groups like the RSF, still linked to the clan-tribal congregations of the Chadian Baggara, facilitate conspicuous and similar transits. Until last year, when the French still held their bases in Chad, the UAE made casual use of them to deliver tout le nécessaire to the RSF: but today they are out of the game, and so Abu Dhabi compensates with new and more modern military material, delivered by air and even bought without the knowledge of the producing countries (for example, this happened with Chinese weaponry, sparking a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Abu Dhabi as soon as the former was informed by Khartoum, which had captured specimens from the RSF) in addition to planes loaded with Colombian and European mercenaries. Some of those planes have even been shot down by SAF anti-aircraft forces: a considerable blow to Hemedti’s men, the RSF once known as the infamous Janjaweed of Bashir.
There is also a not-too-distant interaction from Israel, always very interested in everything concerning the areas from the Red Sea to the Nile Valley, up to the Great Lakes and South Africa: it is part of its history; those familiar with the Israeli strategy of the Periphery Alliance will know what we are talking about. The United States, which had sent a certain Victoria Nuland, then their Secretary of State (who also put “a helping hand” when visiting Kyiv) to Khartoum just before the civil conflict broke out, rightly never had much to complain about; and now that they are trying to escape that serious responsibility by presenting themselves as mediators and hiding in a heterogeneous Quad formed with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, they have been sent away from the door. The Europeans, who together with the United States and the Quad had put together “marathon meetings” in Paris and London, equally slid off like rain on tiles. Kenya, attempting to engage them, also aimed to host a hypothetical parallel Hemedti government, which with the recognition of one of their parts would have certified the “quasi-secession” in Sudan. After the one already seen with South Sudan, which is now experiencing a similar civil conflict, a further fragmentation of Sudan would plunge the central area of the Nile Valley into total chaos, with a destabilization that would involve the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, the Great Lakes, and Central Africa, uniting in a single block the immense crises already underway from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Ethiopia, from Chad to the Central African Republic up to the AES (Alliance of Sahel States), and beyond.
On the other hand, supporting the SAF, adopting Asmara’s positions, are Egypt, Khartoum’s traditional partner, Saudi Arabia, which has repeatedly attempted to mediate between the SAF and the RSF with talks in Jeddah, and Iran, which supplies arms and drones to Khartoum. Riyadh, testifying to the climate of peace and neutrality created by the peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran mediated by Beijing in the spring of 2023, also allows Iranian cargo planes to fly over its airspace to supply the SAF with its weaponry. Moreover, Saudi Arabia and Iran also agree on considering the potential growth of the influence of their key adversaries such as the UAE and Israel in Sudan and Somalia, between the Nile Valley, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden, as a serious threat to their own regional security. China, a major economic, infrastructural, and energy partner of Khartoum, and with a strong diplomatic vocation, hopes for a mediation aimed at healing internal clashes and restoring cohesion and stability to the country. Finally, Russia, initially accused of providing support to the RSF through Wagner (which also attracted Ukrainian intelligence and mercenaries, who saw in it, in addition to a new opportunity to internationalize the conflict with Moscow on African soil by clashing with the Russians, the possibility of profiting from the Sudanese civil war by selling weaponry theoretically destined for the Donbass front), soon manifested its support for Khartoum as the only legitimate government and guarantor of stability in the ravaged country, even more so when Wagner itself was dissolved and largely transferred into the new African Corps of Russia, controlled by the Russian army.
