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Sudan declares state of emergency in Red Sea state after tribal violence

The state of emergency comes after the World Bank announced it would allocate $2 billion to Sudan, as the nation struggles to reintegrate into the international community.

Reuters

A dated photo showing an Indonesian police officer, serving as part of the joint U.N./African Union UNAMID peacekeeping force in Sudan's Darfur region, during a patrol of the Zamzam refugee camp in North Darfur on February 8, 2010.

Sudan has declared a state of emergency and imposed a night curfew in some parts of the coastal Red Sea state, after tribal violence that killed at least five people, a statement and state media said.

The statement by the state governor media office on Monday gave no details of the clashes and did not mention casualties.

However, state news agency Suna quoted a local medical official as saying the clashes left at least five people killed and 13 wounded.

The report said the clashes broke out at some areas in the city of Port Sudan.

Red Sea state, in eastern Sudan, has a history of deadly clashes between the Beni Amer and Nuba, even after leaders from the two tribes signed a peace agreement to stem the violence in 2019.

Cash infusion

This comes after a statement earlier on Monday that saw the World Bank allocate $2 billion to cash-stripped Sudan as the transitional government struggles to address the county’s decades-long economic woes.

The funds would be used to finance big infrastructure projects along with others to help displaced people over the next 12 months, said Hafez Ghanem, World Bank vice president for eastern and southern Africa.

The announcement came around two months after Sudan cleared all of its overdue payments to the World Bank.

The move has given the transitional government in Khartoum access to new types of international financing for the first time in nearly three decades.

The World Bank said at the time that the payment came after the US provided bridge financing of $1.15 billion to help Sudan clear its arrears.

Sudan is now on a fragile path to democracy after a popular uprising led to the military’s overthrow of longtime autocrat Omar al Bashir in 2019.

The country has since sought to reintegrate into the international community after three decades of isolation.

The government has also sought to overhaul the country’s economy. It has in recent months taken a series of reform measures, including a managed flotation of the Sudanese pound. That unprecedented step led to hikes in the price of fuel and other essential goods.

Crippling foreign debt

Sudan has for years struggled with an array of economic woes, including a huge budget deficit and widespread shortages of essential goods and soaring prices of bread and other staples. The country’s annual inflation rate soared past 340% in March, one of the world’s highest.

The country plunged into an economic crisis when the oil-rich south seceded in 2011 after decades of war, taking with it more than half of public revenues and 95% of exports.

Sudan was also an international pariah after it was placed on the United States’ list of state sponsors of terror in the 1990s. This largely excluded the country from the global economy.

Former President Donald Trump removed Sudan from the blacklist after the transitional government agreed to pay $335 million in compensation for victims of attacks carried out by Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network while the terror leader was living in Sudan. The removal was also an incentive for Sudan to normalise ties with Israel.

SOURCE: Reuters