War revives arms trade in eastern Sudan

2 September 2023 (Al Jazeera) Eastern Sudan is witnessing an active movement in arms trafficking, especially in the border area with Eritrea and Ethiopia in light of the 4-month-old war in the country, to the extent that traders can no longer meet demand.

The battles began on April 15 between the Sudanese army led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces led by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo (Hemedti), and have so far resulted in the death of about 5,000 people and the displacement of 4.6 million, both inside and outside the country.

On August 10, an army force in the eastern state of Kassala exchanged fire with smugglers traveling in two trucks loaded with weapons, according to the official Sudan News Agency, which added that the two shipments were on their way to Khartoum for the Rapid Support Forces.

A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that during the past months of the war, authorities also confiscated two shipments of weapons, "one south of the Red Sea port of Suakin and another near Kassala," pointing to a number of other "small (seizure) operations."

At the end of last year, the Arms Collection Committee, a government body formed in 2017, prepared a report stating that there were "5 million weapons in the hands of citizens, other than those of rebel movements in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile."

As for the prices of weapons, one of the smugglers says that the Russian automatic machine gun "Kalashnikov" reached the equivalent of about two thousand dollars, compared to about a thousand dollars before the war, and the price of the American sniper rifle amounted to the equivalent of 8300 dollars.

"Arms and drug smugglers use ports in remote areas of the southern Red Sea, whose geography is rugged," the security official said, adding, "One of the most famous areas is the Gulf of Salem area, south of the city of Tokar and near Sudan's border with Eritrea."

The arms trade in this region is not limited to Sudan only, he said, but "smugglers from Yemen and some smugglers from Somalia are active. They are part of groups linked to global arms smuggling networks."

"The tri-border between the three countries (Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia) is historically a hub for the illegal arms trade due to the activity of Ethiopian-Eritrean armed groups against their governments," the security official explained.

He refers specifically to the Batana area, a flat plain area that stretches from eastern Sudan to the capital and passes through the states of Kassala, Gedarif, Gezira and the Nile River, and "represents a corridor for arms smuggling."

While the army accuses the RSF of being the first buyer of the seized arms shipments, the forces have denied this.