While global attention remains fixed on the “epic fury” unfolding in the Israeli-US-Iranian confrontation, quieter yet equally lethal events are taking place across the Nile Basin and the Horn of Africa.
Ethiopia has moved to strike deep into Sudanese territory, exploiting a widening regional security vacuum to encroach upon land and impose new military facts on the ground. This places Sudan, and, by extension, Egypt, before a shifting fait accompli in matters of water and sovereignty that fall within a broader Israeli plan to shape a “New Middle East” and attempt to divert Arab attention from it.
The Nile has always been a river that offers both natural bounty and is heavily bound up with politics. Today, Ethiopian drones are attempting to redraw the map between Khartoum and Addis Ababa. As Sudan struggles to contain the wounds of a brutal civil war, and one in which Ethiopia has been accused of involvement through support for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, Addis Ababa is once again immersing itself directly in the conflict.
However, it is not deploying soldiers on the ground but instead is employing the treacherous means of drones overhead. Their strikes deep inside Sudanese territory carry a political message in the firing of missiles and in the dust of the Horn of Africa.
Now in its third year, the war in Sudan has drawn in multiple external actors, transforming it into a broader arena of regional competition. Within this context, accusations against Ethiopia have intensified, including supporting the RSF through training camps along the Sudanese border, mobilising mercenaries, and facilitating the transfer of military supplies, particularly in areas such as Blue Nile, Benishangul-Gumuz, Al-Fashaga, and Gedaref.
These dynamics have effectively turned the border between the two countries into a theatre of limited clashes and undeclared military operations. Sudan’s Foreign Ministry recently announced that it had detected Ethiopian drones carrying out strikes inside Sudanese territory, as if Addis Ababa had been declaring that its sovereignty extends as far as its drones can reach.
These are no longer just border skirmishes, however. Sudanese-Ethiopian relations are passing through an exceptionally delicate phase marked by strategic deadlock. While the tensions have not yet escalated into full-scale war, the traditional mechanisms of containment are steadily eroding. The crisis may still be subject to limited containment, but only under sustained regional and international pressure.
The developments come at a time when Ethiopia continues to adopt a hardline position on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). It has ignored a US presidential initiative on the issue and is pressing ahead with plans to construct three additional dams on tributaries of the Blue Nile. At the same time, it has signalled a willingness to use force to secure access to a Red Sea port through one of the Horn of Africa countries.
Such moves reflect Ethiopia’s persistent ambition to reshape the regional power balance without regard for the interests of neighbouring countries and regardless of the potentially catastrophic consequences. This escalation constitutes another link in a broader pattern of destabilisation in Sudan and Somalia that is aimed at imposing a political and military reality that serves Israeli interests and constrains Egypt’s regional role.
Ethiopia’s expanding footprint, backed by regional actors, and the possibility of renewed clashes along the Sudanese border threaten to further fragment what remains of stability and accelerate the militarisation of the Nile Basin and the Horn of Africa, a region already fraught with volatility.
Under such conditions, the Nile risks being transformed from a lifeline into an area of confrontation. Ethiopian intervention could also ignite latent ethnic tensions across the Horn of Africa in a domino-like chain reaction, and instability in Sudan could reverberate into Eritrea, Somalia, and even Djibouti.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appears to be intent on turning Sudan into a rear base in the ongoing rivalry between Addis Ababa and Asmara. The competition between Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki is also not confined to their shared border but extends into attempts by each side to reshape the surrounding security environment.
By manufacturing an external enemy, Ethiopia is seeking to deflect attention from its internal crises, but in doing so it risks entrenching a long-term, even historical, hostility with neighbouring peoples. The timing of the strike on Sudan signals a willingness to participate in redrawing the contours of a “New Middle East” through interventions in Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea, destabilising the region and threatening Egyptian national security. The broader objective is to erode the centrality of major states in the Horn of Africa and reduce them to fragmented entities.
Ethiopia is thus playing the role of a proxy implementing Israeli strategic designs in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa region, an evolution of considerable military gravity that threatens to ignite the southern front of the Nile Valley.
Israel’s growing presence in the Horn of Africa, particularly through deepening ties with Ethiopia, is also not viewed in Khartoum in isolation from the GERD dispute. Reports from Israeli technical experts participating in sectors linked to security and water management in Ethiopia have heightened Sudanese concerns that such external support may diminish prospects for a binding agreement on the GERD’s operation, especially in a regional climate where water security is increasingly entangled with power struggles in the Red Sea.
Ultimately, Ethiopia’s geopolitical ambitions, whether in relation to the GERD or its pursuit of maritime access, intersect directly with the interests of Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia. This convergence makes the security of Khartoum, Mogadishu, and Asmara an integral part of Egypt’s own battle for security.
At a time when Sudan is grappling with profound internal fragility, Ethiopia’s increasingly aggressive posture towards Khartoum risks opening a new front of conflict, encouraged by actors seeking to reorder the region. This means that the Ethiopian escalation is no longer a purely internal or bilateral matter but approaches a direct Egyptian red line.
Any threat to Sudan’s unity and security constitutes a direct threat to Egyptian and Arab national security and a test of the collective will of Cairo and Khartoum to defend their shared strategic space. Both capitals understand that the emergence of hostile facts on the ground in eastern Sudan could amount to a final nail in the coffin of Arab and African stability, while global attention remains distracted by the conflict taking place in the Gulf.
* The writer is managing editor of the daily Al-Ahram.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
Short link: