Sudan’s war is no longer confined to the country’s borders. We saw the shift unfold in August, when Chad accused the Sudanese Armed Forces of carrying out drone strikes more than 100 kilometres inside its territory. The incidents exposed the wider regional contest that has grown around the conflict, drawing in neighbouring states and powers from the Gulf to the Horn of Africa.

Sudanese aircraft hit a vehicle convoy on 20 August in Chad’s Ennedi-Est region, more than 100km from the shared border. Eight days later, Chad accused the Sudanese army of another air strike on a fuel market near the frontier that killed 12 people and wounded seven. Sudan’s foreign ministry has denied responsibility. Neither of these strikes were the first. A drone attack launched from Sudan in March killed 17 people in the Chadian town of Tiné, keeping the border unsettled for much of the year.

The US government has described the August strikes as a regional problem rather than a bilateral one. Massad Boulos, President Donald Trump’s adviser for Arab and African affairs, condemned the attack. “We discussed the recent SAF aerial strike on Chad and underscored our deep concern about the war in Sudan spilling across its borders, fuelling further escalation and threatening regional peace and stability,” he said after a meeting with Chadian President Idris Deby. Boulos also called for an end to the external military and financial support that keeps the war going. The US government has also called for the extension of the existing UN arms embargo on Darfur to the whole of Sudan.

A dozen external suppliers is a large number for a single war and this also helps us understand why the fighting along Chad’s border cannot be treated as an isolated security incident. Sudan’s western frontier opens onto the Sahel, while its Red Sea coast connects it to Egypt, the Gulf and the Horn of Africa. Governments across those regions now have to account for the war in their own security calculations.........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)