Quiet Cold War Inside the Gulf Part II: The African Front

In recent years, Sudan has become one of the world's most strategically significant conflicts, alongside the wars involving Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Palestine, and the recent confrontation between the United States and Iran, despite receiving far less international attention. As Africa's third-largest country, covering approximately 1.89 million square kilometers (729,700 square miles) and home to nearly 53 million people, Sudan has been trapped in one of the longest and most complex internal conflicts of the twenty-first century.

Although the roots of Sudan's instability extend back to independence in 1956, and even earlier, the current conflict cannot be understood without recognizing the legacy of the Second Sudanese Civil War, which began in 1983. Decades of political fragmentation, civil war, and institutional weakness have transformed Sudan into one of the world's most fragile countries. The ongoing conflict has been compounded by ethnic violence, forced conscription, famine, and the widespread destruction of critical infrastructure, displacing approximately 12 million people and creating one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world.

The country's instability cannot be explained through a single factor. Ethnic, religious, political, economic, and geographical divisions all contribute to a conflict that has evolved far beyond a conventional civil war. Sudan has become one of the clearest examples of the return of proxy warfare, where regional powers increasingly intervene directly or indirectly in pursuit of their own strategic interests.

Geography creates opportunity. Weak institutions invite competition.

Sudan illustrates this relationship remarkably well. Its strategic location, connecting North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea, and the Nile Basin, makes it one of the most valuable geopolitical crossroads in Africa. At the same time, decades of institutional weakness have created the conditions for external actors to compete for influence with relatively limited resistance from the central state. Geography explains why Sudan matters; weak institutions explain why so many outside powers are able to intervene.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this conflict is not who is present, but who is absent. Unlike many of the major crises of the last three decades, Sudan has witnessed remarkably limited direct involvement from Western powers. Instead, the principal external actors are regional ones: Egypt, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia.

More importantly, Sudan has become one of the principal arenas where the quiet strategic competition between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi is being projected beyond the Arabian Peninsula. If Part I of this series examined the origins of that rivalry inside the Gulf, Sudan demonstrates how it is increasingly shaping the geopolitics of the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.

The importance of Sudan extends far beyond its internal conflict. Control over influence in Sudan means influence over the Red Sea, access to one of the world's most important maritime corridors, proximity to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, political leverage over the Nile Basin, and a strategic position connecting the Middle East with Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet geography alone does not explain Sudan's importance. The country also possesses abundant natural resources, particularly gold, which has become one of the principal financial engines sustaining both domestic armed groups and the growing involvement of external actors. Gold finances wars, but it also finances influence.

For the Gulf monarchies, Sudan represents something even larger. It offers an opportunity to project economic, military, and political influence well beyond the Arabian Peninsula. Investments in ports, agriculture, mining, logistics, infrastructure, and local political actors allow regional powers to extend their strategic reach into East Africa while simultaneously securing access to critical trade routes and valuable natural resources. Sudan is therefore not simply another African conflict; it is one of the principal geopolitical crossroads of the emerging regional order.

This explains why the interests of regional powers differ. Egypt views Sudan primarily through the lens of Nile security and border stability. Turkey seeks to expand its political, economic, and maritime influence across the Red Sea. Russia views Sudan as an opportunity to secure a permanent naval presence on one of the world's most strategic waterways while expanding its influence throughout Africa. Iran has gradually reestablished relations with Khartoum as part of its broader regional strategy.

Yet the most interesting competition is taking place between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Both countries officially support regional stability, but each increasingly projects a different model of power. Saudi Arabia relies primarily on its political weight, financial resources, diplomatic influence, and traditional regional leadership. The Emirates have developed a more agile strategy based on ports, logistics, commercial infrastructure, strategic investments, mining, and selective military partnerships.

As argued in Part I, Saudi Arabia projects weight. The Emirates project agility.

Sudan has become one of the places where these two models increasingly overlap, compete, and occasionally collide.

This external projection serves another strategic purpose. Regional powers do not necessarily seek to remain confined within their own semi-enclosed regional security systems. On the contrary, they attempt to preserve strategic flexibility by expanding their influence into adjacent regions. By projecting power into Sudan and the Horn of Africa, Gulf states keep their geopolitical environment open, diversify their strategic options, and reduce the risk of becoming geographically and politically constrained inside a single regional balance of power.

This is precisely why the return of proxy wars and buffer zones is becoming increasingly important. They are not simply instruments of indirect conflict. They also function as mechanisms through which regional powers manage the interaction between neighboring regional security systems, preventing local rivalries from becoming geographically trapped while simultaneously limiting the expansion of wider conflicts.

This does not mean that Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are enemies. They remain strategic partners on many issues and continue to share important security interests. Nevertheless, the fragmentation of the Middle East has created new spaces in which allied powers increasingly compete for influence without openly confronting one another. Sudan represents one of the clearest examples of this phenomenon.

Seen from this perspective, Sudan is not an isolated crisis. It is part of a much broader geopolitical transformation in which regional powers increasingly export their rivalries into neighboring strategic spaces.

The quiet Cold War inside the Gulf is no longer confined to the Arabian Peninsula. Its consequences are now visible across the Red Sea, throughout the Horn of Africa, and increasingly across the African continent itself. Understanding Sudan, therefore, is not simply about understanding another civil war. It is about understanding how the regionalization of international politics is reshaping the geography of power in the twenty-first century.

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