Hot Take: Biden administration needs to act fast on Sudan

That was then: Ethiopia and Sudan, both of which had recently seemed economic and political success stories, are now candidates for state collapse. A military coup on Oct. 25 ousted Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and the other civilian members of Sudan’s transitional government, which came to power after popular demonstrations that overthrew dictator and war criminal Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Next door, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with Eritrea, now faces sanctions, along with his erstwhile partners in Eritrea, for war crimes committed in the ongoing Tigray conflict.

For the rest of the world, the whiplash is creating a policy crisis. The Biden administration is reassessing its ties with both countries and trying to keep the crises in the Horn of Africa from spiraling out of control. They already implicate a number of other countries in the region.

US-Ethiopia ties starting to crack: US Horn of Africa Envoy Jeffrey Feltman said on Nov. 1 that warring parties in Ethiopia, including the military and government-backed forces, are committing “rampant atrocities” in Tigray. “Alarmed” by these developments, the United States has imposed a range of sanctions on Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government, in the meantime, has declared a state of emergency and advised citizens to arm themselves in case violence spreads. If Ethiopia does not address the current political unrest through dialogue and consensus, we could see the “deterioration of the integrity of the state,” according to Feltman.