Suez Canal faces new threat, warns The Economist

The war raging in Sudan, Africa’s third largest country, is largely ignored by the world’s media. Yet up to 150,000 people have been slaughtered and bodies are piling up in makeshift cemeteries that are visible from space, The Economist newspaper reports. More than 10m people have been forced to flee their homes and some estimates predict that 2.5m people could die by the end of the year.

The country’s porous borders with seven ‘fragile states’ is one major threat. These countries account for 21% of Africa’s land mass and home to 280m people. The neighbours include Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Libya.

However, the conflict poses major threats to countries in many far-flung locations. Sudan has an 800 km coastline on the beleaguered Red Sea, the vital sea route between Asia and Europe.

Attacks on shipping by Houthi rebels and the danger to ships’ crews have led many owners to re-route ships around the Cape of Good Hope as a safe alternative, adding thousands of nautical miles and many days to voyages between the two continents. Some owners, however, are still risking the lives of their seafarers by taking the Red Sea route via Suez.

According to The Economist, the war in Sudan is being fuelled by a number of countries across the Middle East and beyond. Russia and Iran are demanding a Red Sea naval base in return for arming the Sudanese Armed Forces. If Sudan were to fall into permanent anarchy or become a rogue state hostile to the West, it could further imperil the operation of the Suez Canal which, the newspaper estimates, normally carries a seventh of world trade.

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Disruption to the Red Sea is currently limited by the range of Houthi attacks from bases in Yemen; similar attacks from a destabilised Sudan could bring trouble further North in the Red Sea. Port Sudan, the country's main port, sits across the water from Saudi Arabia's growing hub port, Jeddah.

The Sudan conflict has broader implications too. Expect a new refugee shock in Europe, warns the paper. Migration is an ‘incendiary issue’ in many countries and about 60% of the people in camps in Calais, on the English Channel, are Sudanese.

Following Covid, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and mounting tension in the South China Sea, the world’s economy is already under severe pressure.