one against another

GERD: Where does the Sudan-Ethiopia rapprochement leave Egypt?

By Mourad R. Kamel

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Posted on February 20, 2023 13:00

© Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed meets the Chairman of Sudanese Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan at Presidential Palace in Khartoum, Sudan on January 26, 2023. (Photo by Sudan Sovereignty Council Press / ANADOLU AGENCY / Anadolu Agency via AFP)
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed meets the Chairman of Sudanese Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan at Presidential Palace in Khartoum, Sudan on January 26, 2023. (Photo by Sudan Sovereignty Council Press / ANADOLU AGENCY / Anadolu Agency via AFP)

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed recently visited Sudan for the first time since the 2021 military coup. He met with the Sovereign Council head, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Khartoum, as well as General Hamdan Daglo ‘Hemeti’, head of the Rapid Support Forces. The visit is seen as a rapprochement of the two countries, to the detriment of Egypt that had depended on Sudan’s support in the on-going tensions with Ethiopia over GERD. However, why the sudden change between the two neighbours?

Relations between the neighbours have been strained in recent years over the disputed fertile fashaqa border region where troops from both countries have faced each other in violent clashes. Added to that were the tens of thousands of Ethiopian refugees who fled the civil war in the north to seek safety in Sudan, followed by the on-going debate over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

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