Sudan Conflict Spills Into Northern CAR, Complicating Security

By ADF On Jul 16, 2024

United Nations experts say the fighting in Sudan has begun to spill into the Central African Republic, where the border crossing at Am Dafok has become a transit point for weapons and for fighters the Rapid Support Forces are recruiting from the CAR. AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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Sudan’s war has begun to spill into the Central African Republic as both sides of the fight conduct operations along Sudan’s southwest border.

According to the United Nations, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) launched air raids on militia positions along the border, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have recruited fighters from rebel groups in the CAR.

Meanwhile, the CAR, which remains mired it its own 11-year violent conflict, has become a refuge for more than 31,000 Sudanese residents fleeing the fighting in their own country. Many of those Sudanese are sheltering in remote areas of the CAR’s Vakanga and Haute-Kotto prefectures, where they are beyond the government’s protection.

Observers told Corbeau News Centrafricaine that displaced Sudanese are living without clean water, medicine and food. Local CAR leaders have called on the government to do more to help.

“The spillover effect of the conflict in the Sudan has significantly affected the situation in the Central African Republic,” the U.N.’s Panel of Experts on the CAR said in its report to the Security Council.

The RSF controls border crossings with the CAR in Central Darfur and South Darfur. RSF leader Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo ordered that the border be closed in 2022 to thwart a suspected attempt at overthrowing CAR leadership.

Hemedti reopened the border and Um Dafuq in January 2023, three months ahead of the April 15, 2023, outbreak of fighting with the SAF. Since then, the border with the CAR has become a transit point for the unfettered movement of weapons and fighters feeding conflicts in the CAR and Sudan.

“Opposition armed groups from the Central African Republic have been reported to have actively recruited for and sent members of their own groups to fight in Sudan under the RSF,” the Panel of Experts reported.

Among those recruits are rebel fighters from the Popular Front for the Renaissance of Central Africa (FPRC), which controls parts of Vakanga prefecture in northern CAR along the Sudanese border. In turn, FPRC fighters are using Sudanese territory to launch their own attacks in the CAR.

Observers note that the RSF’s relationship with FPRC is at odds with Hemedti’s support for the CAR leadership in Bangui. Both groups share a long-running relationship with Russia’s Africa Corps, the mercenary group formerly known as the Wagner Group.

The U.N. report identifies RSF figure Habib Hareka as one of the recruiters who moves fighters across the border from Am Dafok, Sam Ouandja, the Ndah mining site and Haute-Kotto prefecture. Fighters ultimately end up in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur and a strategic link between the CAR and Sudan. The RSF has controlled Nyala since October 2023.

Beyond the RSF’s recruitment efforts, the spillover from the war in Sudan is having other effects in the CAR. The Am Dafok-Um Dafuq border region is a crucial point for transporting goods from ports in Sudan to the eastern areas of the landlocked CAR. Sudan’s war is disrupting that trade, dramatically increasing the price of food and other resources in Vakanga and elsewhere.

The U.N.’s CAR experts urged the Bangui government to block RSF recruiters and foreign fighters on their territory and to shut down the flow of weapons being driven by the Sudanese conflict.

The movement of fighters and weapons across the CAR-Sudan border and the SAF’s air raids in response pose “a grave and enduring threat to regional stability,” the experts reported.