Ethiopia, Sudan Pledge ‘Peaceful Resolution’ of Border Conflict at Nairobi IGAD Summit
© AFP 2023 / TONY KARUMBA
Subscribe
A border conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo also showed signs of cooling on Wednesday after a “ceasefire” was agreed to in talks mediated by Angola.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Tuesday that he had reached the beginnings of an accommodation with his Sudanese counterpart, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, regarding the recent violence on their border.
“We have both agreed that our two countries have plenty of collaborative elements to work on peacefully,” the Ethiopian leader tweeted. “Our common bonds surpass any divisions. We both made a commitment for dialogue & peaceful resolution to outstanding issues.”
The meeting happened in Nairobi, on the sidelines of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) summit, an East African regional trade bloc. It was the bloc’s first meeting in 18 months and came after IGAD Executive Secretary Workneh Gebeyehu visited Khartoum over the weekend, meeting with Burhan.
In my discussions with Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, we have both agreed that our two countries have plenty of collaborative elements to work on peacefully. Our common bonds surpass any divisions. We both made a commitment for dialogue & peaceful resolution to outstanding issues. pic.twitter.com/UP9a9n0tJq
— Abiy Ahmed Ali 🇪🇹 (@AbiyAhmedAli) July 5, 2022
Last week, Gebeyehu called on “the two sisterly countries to actively seek diplomatic means to find a lasting and sustainable solution.”
On June 29, the Sudanese Army bombarded Ethiopian positions in Al-Fashaqa, a fertile region of eastern Sudan over which the two nations have feuded for more than a century. Ethiopia dropped its claims to the disputed area in 2008 following an agreement with Khartoum allowing Ethiopian farmers to continue working the land undisturbed, but that deal fell apart in late 2020 after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) launched an uprising against the Ethiopian government in the Tigray region that borders Al-Fashaqa.
The recent situation began after Burhan’s government accused Ethiopia of killing seven Sudanese troops along the border. Khartoum claims the soldiers were abducted from their side of the border, taken across it, and executed in a violation of international law. However, Addis Ababa says the soldiers were on the Ethiopian side of the border and encountered a local Amhara militia, which was responsible for the attack.
According to left-wing opposition forces in Sudan, Burhan’s fury at the incident and the subsequent military operation are shrewd attempts at forcing unity through nationalism, as the country is increasingly uniting against his military regime, which took power last October.
Tensions have also been brewing over the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a large hydroelectric plant on the Blue Nile just upstream from the border with Sudan. The river’s annual flooding provides water to Sudan and Egypt, leading those two nations to claim the dam as a threat; however, Addis Ababa has countered that the dam, which will be Africa’s largest once completed, will provide a huge amount of electricity to benefit the entire region.
