Sudan-Egypt Relations Amidst Shifting Regional Dynamics in the Middle East

Interim Report

Edited by Housam Darwisheh and Mohamed Omer Abdin

Published in March 2019

This chapter examines historically the factors that have shaped Egyptian-Sudanese relations. It argues that Egypt’s influence on Sudan’s foreign policy has waned because of Egypt’s diminished influence in the Middle East, and its loss of hydro hegemony as the regional order of the Nile basin came to be based on power relations between downstream and upstream countries.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of Sudan’s foreign policy under Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir (hereinafter Bashir), President of Sudan since 1993, during the post-2011 Arab uprising period. In this paper, I present the preliminary findings of Sudan-Egypt Relations, a two-year research project funded by the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE). I analyze and discuss the bilateral relations of Sudan and Egypt with special attention on the perspectives of the former’s main decision-makers. To pursue this line of enquiry, external and internal factors shaping these relations have been identified as part of a wider effort to illustrate an explanatory context for foreign policy-making.