For most countries, the Sudan war has arrived as news; for Egypt, the Sudan war has arrived as five threats.

The first is strategic. As mentioned in the previous article in this series, one of the few agreed upon points amongst Egypt’s serious schools of strategic thinking is that Egypt’s south, all the way to the sources of the Nile, is the country’s strategic depth. From Cairo’s perspective, Sudan is the core of that south. This idea has for decades stirred sensitivities amongst large sections of the Sudanese society, which is understandable given that Sudan had remained for a century directly under the Egyptian crown during the reign of the Mohammad Ali family. Properly understood, however, strategic depth means neither a backyard nor an area of influence. It is also not vacuous rhetoric about abstract values. Strategic depth means recognising that developments in Sudan have direct consequences for Egypt, that for centuries the two countries’ border has been one of Egypt’s most important and active trade frontiers, and that the Egyptian and Sudanese people share the same lifeline (the Nile), certainly the most important determinant of their fate.

That strategic depth is at the risk of being fragmented. Sudan has, for almost four years now, been effectively divided between areas under the control of different military forces, which are increasingly not incentivised to negotiate. The map of Sudan is hardening into a stalemate, almost exactly 15-years since the partition of the country, in 2011. The result is the fragmentation of the historical Sudan that the post-colonial regional order produced. The glaringly clear threat now is that this historical Sudan might disappear in the foreseeable future.

This situation has given rise to the second threat. This historic Sudan of the post-colonial order has become a political landscape and an economic marketplace for interests and commodities that different regional powers steer or buy, largely with cash and weapons. For those regional powers and for distant observers, Sudan has become yet another Arab and Middle Eastern theatre of operations. For Egypt, the threat is that the core of its strategic depth is partly on fire and partly for sale.

The Nile is at the heart of the third threat. Sudan’s view of the Nile waters dossier had, in reality, never been identical to Egypt’s. Still, the two countries, at different times, came together in negotiations about the future of the relationship between the Nile basin countries. Now, the descent of Sudan into war and effective division means that the only other Nile downstream state (apart from Egypt) has effectively left the table.

The fourth threat concerns regional positioning. A Sudan divided between different factions invites external powers to create footholds in it. Crucially, Egypt’s view of the Sudan crisis is vastly different from those of other key regional actors who, indeed, have for years now become stakeholders in the war in Sudan, a situation that has created sensitivities in bilateral relations important for Egypt.With that, the war in Sudan has created a tangled web of contradictory alliances. For example, there are Islamist brigades that fight alongside the national army (the only remaining element of the spine of the Sudan of the post-colonial order) against rebel militias. This situation has produced dilemmas in Egyptian decision making concerning the Sudan dossier.

The fifth threat is economic. The chaos the Sudan war has generated imposes on Egypt significant costs, from heightened border patrolling to increased military vigilance. The war in Sudan has also closed in front of Egypt one of its nearest and closest in character markets. Geoeconomics exacerbate the problem. Based on several serious developmental studies, Sudan was arguably Egypt’s most likely serious partner for farmland development and livestock rearing, both central for any long-term food-security strategy. That option has now become frozen for the foreseeable future.

The previous article in this series has presented how the Red Sea has become an exposure for Egypt. Combined, these five threats, presented above, have turned the core of Egypt’s strategic depth into yet another exposure for the country.