Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok sent a letter on Tuesday to Abiy Ahmed, his Ethiopian counterpart, saying Sudan insists on its position that reaching an agreement between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia is critical before the latter starts filling the reservoir of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri had sent a letter on 1 May to the president of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) cautioning against the impact on “security and peace in the region” of filling the GERD without first securing the agreement of Egypt and Sudan.

Negotiations between the three countries have rumbled on for years, with little or no progress made. But while Addis Ababa has been consistently intransigent towards proposals made by Cairo, Khartoum’s position has fluctuated.

Sudanese Minister of Irrigation Yasser Abbas has called for negotiations between Khartoum, Cairo, and Addis Ababa to resume, though he offered no suggestions on how the positions of Egypt and Ethiopia might be brought closer.

Toppled Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir favoured Ethiopia in the negotiations, if only out of spite that Egypt had removed the Muslim Brotherhood from power. Sudan’s position began to change when Al-Bashir was himself toppled by popular demand.

Sudan’s transitional government is adopting a more serious approach to its domestic and foreign files, and Khartoum is far more supportive of Cairo than it was under Al-Bashir. One sign of this is the way Sudan froze its relationship with Doha, without an official announcement, after the Arab Quartet severed ties with Qatar, says Sudanese writer Haidar Youssef.

“Sudan has adopted almost the same stand on Libya as Cairo,” says Youssef, whereas Al-Bashir had sent forces to support Islamist groups there.

And on GERD, Sudan is now aligning more closely with Egypt.

Youssef points to concerns that the design of the dam may be structurally unsound, and incapable of holding the planned 74 billion m3 reservoir. Should it burst, Sudan will literally drown.

Sudanese technical experts also fear the impact of GERD reducing the flow of silt that Sudan’s agricultural lands need.

Egypt and Sudan are both parties to the 1959 agreement that guarantees their quotas of Nile water. Were Sudan to side with Ethiopia against Egypt, it would undermine its guaranteed supply of water on which it desperately relies for agricultural development.

But the situation is complicated by the fact that Sudan cannot afford to lose Ethiopia, says Sudanese economic analyst Khaled Al-Tigani. Trade links between the two are significant, and at least one of Sudan’s 18 states, Al-Qadarif, is almost totally dependent on trade with Ethiopia.

The complex mix is further compounded by history: some Sudanese forces claim Egypt looks down on Sudan and has done so since the Egyptian occupation of the country. It is a position they push keenly, trying to distract the Sudanese public from the loss of South Sudan by inflaming tensions over Halayeb, the border territory disputed by Sudan and Egypt.

Following the secession of oil-rich South Sudan, Khartoum lost 65 per cent of its revenues. It was unable to import wheat, medicines and fuel, a situation that fed the uprising against Al-Bashir which led to Al-Bashir’s fall in April 2018.

Now, Khartoum increasingly views Cairo and its Gulf allies a gateway to the US and Europe, and is desperate to attract investments from the West.

Some observers believe Khartoum’s geographic position, and its relations with both Ethiopia and Egypt, place it in a strong position to mediate between its neighbours. Unfortunately, such an analysis is likely to prove wide of the mark, given how susceptible Khartoum is to pressure from either.

It is unlikely, then, that Sudan’s position on GERD, Egypt and Ethiopia is going to be clarified more than it is at present any time soon, though Cairo can take heart that neither will Khartoum veer suddenly away from the Egyptian position.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 14 May, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly