Sudan commits to Yemen military campaign

Sudan has confirmed its commitment towards fighting in the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen after its Defence Minister had said earlier that the government in Khartoum was assessing its participation in the war.

There are already at least 3,000 Sudanese ground troops and several fighter jets in Yemen as part of the coalition. Dozens of Sudanese soldiers have been killed on coastal battlefronts, local and Yemeni media have reported, prompting the reassessment of Sudan’s role.

Defence Minister Ali Salem considered withdrawing troops after calls to evaluate his country’s participation in the Yemen military campaign. Objections essentially boiled down to whether the military losses incurred and limited financial support received from wealthy Gulf Arab states justified Sudan’s involvement.

Sudanese parliamentarian Hassan Othman Rizq, who has spearheaded a campaign to withdraw the troops from Yemen, told Reuters that the decision to dispatch troops there was illegal in the first place because MPs had not approved it.

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Speaking at a meeting on Wednesday with Mohamed Abdullah Al-Aish, Saudi Arabia’s Assistant Minister of Defence, Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir said that economic hardship will not deter Khartoum from “playing its Arab role in restoring legitimacy in Yemen, given that Sudan’s declared principle is to defend the land of the two holy mosques [Saudi Arabia].”

Sudan has endured significant economic hardship throughout decades of US sanctions — lifted last October — which inhibited the country’s access to international financial aid. Its economy has been struggling since the South seceded in 2011, taking with it three-quarters of its oil output and source of foreign currency.

Al-Aish added that Saudi Arabia thanks Khartoum for the “heroic roles played by Sudanese forces that contributed to victories and progress” in the operations in Yemen, according to SUNA, the official news agency.

The Saudi-led coalition intervened in the Yemen civil war in 2015 against Iran-backed Houthi rebels who had captured most of the main population centres of the country and forced President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi into exile in Riyadh.

Read: Pressure mounts for Sudan to withdraw troops from Yemen