South Sudan’s vice-president, Riek Machar, announced on July 14 at a conference on the management of the country’s water resources, that his country is ready to mediate in the border dispute between Sudan and Ethiopia in order to find a lasting solution shared by the parties (https://sudantribune.com/article261554/).
South Sudan’s offer of mediation is part of a crisis process marked by some positive developments over the past few days, characterized by the start of talks between Ethiopia and Sudan on the issue of the al-Fashaga area, confirmed by Sudanese General Nabil Abdallah Ali (https://sudantribune.com/article261620/).
A first tangible result of the start of these talks – the format of which remains unknown – is that Sudan reopened the Gallabat border crossing last July 17, allowing the many commercial vehicles waiting on both sides of the border to get moving again.
On July 5, General Al-Burhan and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had announced their willingness to form a joint committee to solve the al-Fashaga border area problem, and Sudanese authorities had confirmed how the Ethiopian government would offer guarantees regarding the control of Amhara units along the border between the two countries. Instead, tribal tensions are growing in Sudan’s Blue Nile region on the border with Ethiopia, where militias from the Berti and Hawsa tribes clashed on July 11, resulting in the deaths of at least 31 people and injuring about 40. The violence stemmed from disputes related to control of some farmland, following the Berti tribe’s refusal to accept the Hawsa’s proposal to create a civil authority to oversee how access to the disputed land would be achieved (https://english.alarabiya.net/News/africa/2022/07/16/Sudan-tribal-clashes-near-Ethiopia-border-leave-31-dead
