For Awad Usham Al-Amin and thousands of others, Abyei provides shelter and an opportunity to eke out a living as war rages back home.
This week, Sudan’s conflict caught up with them there too.
A drone strike believed to be targeting a fuel depot used by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) hit the Amiet market, killing over 150 people in the town, which sits in a territory contested by Sudan and South Sudan.
“I came as a refugee, running from Sudan … but still faced with another conflict here,” Al-Amin told Reuters, nursing shrapnel injuries on his right hand and left leg.
The attack flattened shops and stalls in the market where Al-Amin offloads fuel and pushes wheelbarrows to earn a living.
It highlighted how far the tentacles of supply lines linked to the war between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces stretch across the region, sucking neighbours into a conflict involving proxy powers from across the Horn of Africa and broader region.
Five diplomats and analysts following the conflict said the market was an established part of a fuel network serving the RSF fighting across Sudan.
A large volume of the fuel imported into South Sudan is transported through Abyei, where it is collected by RSF networks then transported through Sudan in smaller shipments, the sources said.
“It’s clear that the attack in Amiet market targeted fuel storage facilities as well as a truck suspected of carrying fuel,” a diplomat said. “The RSF is still present in Abyei… it’s difficult to identify them because they are embedded in the community here.”
