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When Sudan signed a landmark peace deal last year, it was hoped it would end decades of war in the west and south, but instead it sparked unrest in the east. .
Some in the gold-rich but impoverished east felt that the October 2020 deal with a coalition of rebels, from the western Darfur region and two southern states, had left them out.
This month, furious anti-government protests shut down pipelines and the main port.
The eastern region, which includes the Sudanese Red Sea coast, has been politically and economically marginalized for decades and has itself been the scene of a decade-long rebellion.
“Since Sudan gained independence, this region has suffered economic and political marginalization,” Sudanese analyst Amir Babiker said. “The peace agreement has just revived it.”
Babiker warned that the deal had “sent a negative message” to the multi-ethnic region, where many complain that too many high-level jobs go to Khartoum’s elite.
Blockage of pipelines and ports
On September 17, a leader of the protest announced that dozens of protesters, opposing parts of the peace agreement, had blocked the country’s main container and oil export terminals at Port Sudan.
It crippled Sudan’s own exports and also blocked the 154,000 barrels of oil a day pumped from neighboring South Sudan – for which Khartoum earns lucrative transit fees that are a major source of revenue for the strapped government. money.
Ten days later, after Oil Minister Gadein Ali Obeid warned of “an extremely serious situation” with blocked pipelines, the government struck a deal on Sunday to resume exports, but protests continued elsewhere. .
“Neglect in the eastern region of Sudan has been endemic for decades,” said Sayed Abuamnah, a leader of the protest. “Our demands have been ignored since independence.”
With a Red Sea coastline over 700 kilometers (400 miles) long and regional border players with Egypt, Ethiopia and Eritrea, the region includes the three Red Sea states, Kassala and Gedaref .
The region’s Beja Congress, named after its largest ethnic group, and the Rashaida Free Lions, named after an Arab tribe, took up arms against Khartoum in 1994, in protest against an unjust national distribution of wealth and power.
After years of low-intensity insurgency, a 2006 peace accord promised government jobs and huge development dollars, and the rebels laid down their arms.
“Hostile reactions”
But little has changed in practice, and the east remains one of the poorest regions in Sudan.
“It’s a very old crisis that started before the peace accords,” Babiker said.
When longtime Sudanese hard-line leader Omar al-Bashir was ousted in April 2019, some in the east hoped the situation would change.
But when the transitional government struck a peace deal with the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) – a coalition of rebel groups and political movements from West Darfur and the “Two Zones”, the states of South Kordofan and South Kordofan Blue Nile – some in the east felt left out.
“The agreement (…) has provoked hostile reactions in other parts of the country, where some believe it gives too much importance and offers disproportionate dividends to Darfur and the Two Zones”, warned the International Crisis Group earlier this year.
The SRF included members from eastern Sudan, such as Osama Said of the Beja Congress, who insisted that the peace deal had benefited the region.
“Until now, Khartoum considered that there was no dispute with the East and therefore nothing to negotiate,” Saïd told AFP.
Rival ethnicities
But protesters said those who signed the deal were not speaking for them.
“The people who did not represent the region are the ones who signed with the government,” Abuamnah said.
Over the past year, eastern Sudan has seen several violent clashes between rival ethnic groups vying for political positions.
For the transitional government in Khartoum, which seized power after Bashir’s ouster – and which managed to shake off a failed coup earlier this month – the troubled east adds to its woes.
While Khartoum has made a deal with the protesters to keep the oil flowing and the port to function, many fear that without fundamental changes other problems could ensue.
“The remainder of the shutdown continues until our demands are met,” Abuamnah said.
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