Al-Fashaga conflict

The al-Fashaga conflict was a territorial conflict between Sudan and Amhara militants from Ethiopia in the disputed Al-Fashaga District (an area of Sudan east of the Atbarah River and south of the Tekezé River). Since 2008, Ethiopia has dropped all claims to the al-Fashaga as long as Sudan allowed Ethiopian farmers and militants to stay in the area undisturbed. With the outbreak of the Tigray War, Sudanese forces were able to move into the region due to an agreement with Ethiopia just three days before. When Amhara militants left to assist the federal government in the war, Sudanese forces started to drive out Ethiopian farmers, effectively breaking the 2008 compromise. Ethiopia has also accused Sudan of killing Amhara farmers.

The Government of Sudan claims the involvement of Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) and Eritrean troops in the border dispute while the Ethiopian government denies this and regards the conflict as skirmishes between Sudanese forces and ethnic militias from the Amhara region. External media coverage has tended to conflate the Amhara militias with federal soldiers from the ENDF. There is some evidence to suggest that the ENDF has been involved in the conflict, although the capacity in which they are doing so is unclear. It is likely that they have had a peripheral role in the actual fighting.

In 2007 Sudan and Ethiopia signed a treaty which will allow Ethiopian farmers to stay in al-Fashaga and keep cultivate the land. After more than a decade which the treaty remain, in 2020 when the Tigray war broke, Sudan’s army took advantage of the fact that Amhara militiamen and Ethiopian military were deployed north as result, and broke the treaty by advancing into al-Fashaga militarily and expelling thousands of Amhara farmers from the disputed territory.