Sudanese army claims it thwarted Ethiopian incursion amid protests in the east

JUBA – Sudan’s military says it has repelled an attempted raid by Ethiopian forces in the border area between the two countries.

Ethiopian forces were forced to withdraw from the Umm Barakit area, a military statement said Sunday, without giving further details.

Sudan’s army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan told reporters that the incident took place on Saturday. He said it showed how the military was protecting the country after an attempted coup in Khartoum last week.

Colonel Getnet Adane, Ethiopia’s military spokesman, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tensions along the Sudan-Ethiopia border have escalated since the outbreak of conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region last year that sent tens of thousands of refugees to eastern Sudan.

Tensions have centered in an area of ​​fertile land known as al-Fashqa, where the border is disputed.

‘Closing ports, blocking roads’

Meanwhile, protesters in eastern Sudan have shut down a pipeline carrying imported crude oil to the capital Khartoum.

Protesters from the Beja tribes in eastern Sudan have been closing ports and blocking roads in protest against what they describe as poor political and economic conditions in the region.

Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said the dissatisfaction of the Beja tribe, one of the main tribes in eastern Sudan, dates back to October 2020, when the opposition and armed groups signed a peace agreement with the Sudanese government.

The Beja tribe said the agreement “is not representative and does not address the root causes of marginalization” and “underdevelopment in the eastern region,” Morgan said.

“They say they want to make sure the government understands what it means to have an economic crisis, to be underdeveloped and to make their voices heard,” he added.

According to Morgan, the objective of the protesters is to hold a conference with various tribes and ethnic groups in the eastern region to find an alternative to the peace agreement.

Anger ‘boiling’

The ministry has asked protesters to end the shutdown in one week to spare the country huge financial and technical losses.

Gadian Ali Obaid, Sudan’s oil and energy minister, said in an interview: “The authorities are trying to solve the problem of the closure of ports.”

On Saturday, he said there are enough reserves for the country’s needs for up to 10 days.

The Khartoum oil refinery, which produces fuel for domestic consumption, continues to operate normally, according to the ministry.

Another pipeline used to export crude oil from neighboring South Sudan is still running, but is vulnerable to freezing and damage because protesters have been preventing a ship from loading the oil, the ministry said.

Oil depots at the Bashayer oil terminal port in eastern Sudan will be completely full after a maximum of 10 days if the export blockade continues, the ministry said. That, in turn, would cause South Sudan’s oil fields to halt production.

Waleed Madibo, founder and president of the Sudan Policy Forum, said protesters’ complaints are “justified.”

“It is not just the concerns of the Beja tribe … I think it is the demands of the people in the eastern part of the country,” Madibo told Al Jazeera.

“The anger has been simmering for decades and has reached a point where they could no longer bear it,” he said. The anger escalated “especially” after the Juba deal was signed with groups in Darfur, which excluded others in the eastern and northern parts of the country, he added.

“Consequently, we see the anger building up and reaching a point where they are now, I think, sabotaging the entire country,” Madibo said.

On Friday, an adviser to Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok accused unidentified forces of using those protests to damage the economy and put pressure on the transitional government, which is ruling after Omar al-Bashir’s removal from office in 2019.

Stopping oil exports “will lead to significant economic losses,” the aide, Yaser Arman, said in a statement. He calculated the potential damages from a prolonged shutdown at more than $ 1 billion.