Due South: Liam Karr Talks Africa.

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, good evening, good afternoon, whenever and wherever you're listening to us from. This is the Due South podcast with me, Wilfred Waimiri, Africa correspondent for Frontline Co. And today I am joined by Liam Carr. Liam is the Africa team lead for the Critical Threats Project.

I'm going to let him introduce himself because Liam is generally one of the most interesting guys I've come across.

The Critical Threats Project - if you're a regular watcher of Frontline and all the content we put out, you know, we quote Critical Threats a lot and one of my colleagues, Kyle, he used to work with the Critical Threats Team at supporting his career. So this is just a really beautiful convergence of you, a lot of shared interests, a lot of shared likes.

And now I'm going to stop talking and let Liam introduce himself.

Liam, talk to the people.

Fred, thank you so much for having me on. This is really great. Happy to be here. My name is Liam Carr. I'm the Africa team lead at the Critical Threats Project. We're based at a D.C. think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. But we are an open-source intelligence project.

So what that means is basically we try to use US intelligence tradecraft - the same stuff that they're doing at the CIA or in the State Department or those kinds of things - but we're doing that all in the open source.

So using lots of social media, using satellite imagery, using local media sources, stuff like that, to reproduce intelligence assessments and forecasting, maps and graphics, stuff like that, so that anybody and everybody - be it in government, be it an NGO, be it the general public - who's interested in keeping up with things, can use our work without

Needing some clearance level or some government tie-in or something like that.

So yeah, I lead the Africa team and we cover kind of the main conflict hotspots on the continent - the Horn of Africa, West Africa, Sahel, and then the Great Lakes, kind of the focus there being on the Eastern DRC right now. So yeah, we do our best, small team, but we do our best to cover as much of the big, very big continent as we can.

So yeah, again thanks for having me on.

And like I said, the kind of work you do allows me to access the kind of intelligence that organisations like the CIA and other three-letter agencies have without necessarily needing a security clearance or government connection. And it's been so impactful for my work. Absolutely.

One of the best decisions I ever made was opening a tab that had Critical Threats on - it's changed how I viewed geopolitics, how I viewed conflicts. And yeah, again I have used your work extensively. So to be talking about a lot of things because Liam is one of the guys with a broad range of expertise knowledge on a wide range of conflicts.

So you know, having him here, it's so just to give you a better understanding of what we're going to be discussing today.

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I had to convince him to do this podcast with me this early in the morning just so that I could have as much time with him as possible. It's 2:30 for me because I'm halfway around the world from him. But yeah, I'm really grateful to have Liam.

So again we're going to be talking about a lot of things starting with how war in Iran is shaping geopolitics across the African continent. If last episode we talked a lot about how that war is shaping realities on the continent from things like increased fuel prices to created food shortages because of the fertilizer crisis.

So today we're going to be talking about the geopolitics of it all. Liam, my first question for you is how this war is going to affect the Gulf countries' ability to project their power into Africa.

To project their influence because Gulf countries have been doing a lot in the past few years is trying to build themselves up as centres of power within the African continent. They sponsor students to go study, they have institutions here, they build mosques, basically all the traditional tenets of soft power.

So with, and having had a really massive effect on their economies, the World Bank downgraded its 2026 GDP forecast for the GCC region from 4.4% to about 1.3%. How do you see or affecting the Gulf countries' ability to influence project their influence in Africa?

A really good question. It's something I've been really focused on lately as well, seeing, you know, kind of the ripple effects from everything mainly in the geopolitical realm. It was really interesting hearing some of the economic stuff last week and reading some of that angle on things.

I think the way I'm looking at it, I don't think it's going to have an impact as people might think. But granted it will vary region by region and probably by the types of projects that we're talking.

Mainly because war has emphasised a lot of the reasons that these Gulf countries are engaging in the Horn of Africa in particular, but also the reason they're doing the kind of AI digital tech pushes across the continent. They're doing that because they want to diversify their economies beyond just oil.

They know that oil, you know, with the green wave and everything, even if that's, you know, not projected to happen as quickly as maybe it would have been five, 10 years back, that it's still something that will happen at some point in the future. And so they want to make sure that they diversify their economies.

And tech is one way that they're looking to do that. So critical minerals, stuff like that. The Iran war has made it even more acutely clear that they cannot be reliant on oil when Iran can just strangle your main choke point to export said oil.

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And I think if anything, it's probably the opposite. The Gulf countries are probably going to get even more involved in the Horn going forward.

Why do you see the Gulf countries being more involved in the Horn moving forward? Is it because of, actually, you know what? Let me not preempt you on that. Why do you see the Gulf countries being more involved?

So I think that the Iran war, aside from the economic diversification angle that I mentioned, it's really underscored a lot of competition that had been going on in the Red Sea Horn of Africa, really, for the last several years, but especially at the start of this year, folks might remember that to start the year or even late last year, that Saudi Arabia and

The UAE were fighting in Yemen.

You know, they had been fighting on the same side, but they had different proxy forces and their proxies were fighting in Yemen.

If you read into that, it ended up being at least loosely linked to the UAE being upset at Saudi Arabia for asking the US and Trump to do more to pressure the UAE on Sudan, where the UAE is one of the main supporters of the Rapid Support Forces in that civil war.

So you kind of already saw the Saudi UAE schism that began this year defining in some ways their competition in the Horn of Africa. And that extended also not just to those two, but Turkey is involved in that. Israel is involved in that. Israel recognised Somaliland again late last year.

Turkey is a big supporter of Somalia, so that makes them natural rivals. And then what this war has done is Turkey, or pardon me, Israel and the UAE have only grown closer.

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So on the geopolitical level, it's reinforced what I see as a broader schism between, you know, you have the UAE and Israel one side and then you kind of have Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey on the other side. So it's reinforced that. It's reinforced everybody's interests in making sure that they can secure choke points.

Hormuz obviously causing a lot of issues. Everyone is now looking at the Red Sea and wanting to make sure that the Houthis can't do it there or that basically make sure that nobody can do that there. But it's securitizing the whole region because everybody wants to have a say in that.

So is more interested in that, backing various local partners to make sure that they have influence there. Looking at the African side of things also, you have Ethiopia, who's been clear that they want C access. Also.

The war has only, I would say, underscored their reasoning for that because so much of their imports, exports, trade comes through Djibouti, and we've already seen shortages because of that in the supply chain issues. But on top of that, if the Houthis were to start striking the US Base in Djibouti, that would totally wreck Ethiopia's economy, basically.

So Ethiopia is going to be even more interested in the Red Sea access point, which then of course drives tensions with neighbouring countries such as Eritrea. Egypt doesn't like that either.

So then you get all of these, you know, you have the non-African dynamics becoming more intense, and then you have the African side of things becoming more intense also.

And I just see that as you know, only making things worse and only, you know, with Sudan being our example, point of the destructiveness that can happen when you have the convergence of external and internal forces. I think we're starting to see that kind of replicated across the region or more broadly.

A lot of good points earlier. So, interest of time, I want to briefly touch one thing that you've spoken about. Israel's growing ties with the UAE and something that happened about a week or two ago with the Israeli government basically saying Netanyahu completed a secret trip to the UAE, said a secret trip to the UAE, forgive me, and the

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Yeah, I think that was a really interesting moment because I think from the Israeli side, that was Israel trying to gain credit, show it's a good ally, show that the UAE is on its side, etc. But then the UAE denying that shows that the UAE is also somewhat hesitant and still knows that it might be domestically or at the very least regionally not popular for

It to be seen so close with Israel.

And I think that more broadly, the perception being reality thing is interesting as it, you know, impacts Horn affairs also because you have, you know, in Somalia, like Somalia, Somaliland, in Ethiopia, there's a perception, you know, that the UAE and to a lesser extent Israel are pulling the strings on everything, that the UAE is the one.

You know, I, I wouldn't say it's widely held, but it's something that gets talked about both locally and in, you know, kind of expert circles. This, this idea of how much agency do certain countries have? We know that Ethiopia, or that the UAE has invested a lot of money in Ethiopia, so we know that they're very close partners.

And then Ethiopia in the last few months has gotten more involved in Sudan. So there's a debate. Is that Ethiopia doing it for Ethiopia's own reasons, or is that the UAE telling Ethiopia what to do? And so I think that more broadly, I think that the Israel UAE did or didn't happen.

Aside that, it's interesting to note how perceptions are really driving a lot of concerns and tensions across, you know, both in the Gulf, but in the Horn of Africa as well.

And how that has the potential to kind of cause miscommunications, misperceptions of what certain actors are doing. And then, you know, you never know what the ramifications for that could ultimately end up being. So I don't know if that's exactly what you had in mind when you brought that up. But that just, that's where my mind went.

An important point with how influence is perceived as being all encompassing and especially in Ethiopia, which has been having issues with its neighbour Eritrea. For people who are, who might not be as informed on these issues as you and I, it's worth noting that Eritrea did gain its independence from Ethiopia.

And that act of Eritrea gaining its independence made Ethiopia landlocked. And back to an earlier point you made about every country wanting access to these choke points, to these important economic lifelines.

Do you see it, do you see a situation where Ethiopia does make, through its threats against Eritrea, your threats that have been communicated over the past few years, that it wants to take a port, it wants its own route to the sea.

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Perfect. Yeah. So much ground to cover. Yeah. I think it's really hard to give a concrete, really confident take on whether Ethiopia will invade Eritrea or not. I think right now it's still pretty unlikely. Just for kind of practical constraints, when you look at Ethiopia, it still has a lot of internal challenges that it's dealing with.

And then, you know, even if, you know, an invasion or offensive was launched that previous conflict or. Yeah, they're, they're not new enemies, they're very old enemies. And they fought a border war back in the 1990s and that was very deadly. So we also know how costly it would be. And then, you know, that previous 1990s war was before you.

You kind of have the dynamics like we have today in Sudan, where stuff would be even deadlier with drones with outside countries dumping a bunch of weapons in and stuff like that. So it would be very costly. Not to mention the geographic terrain, stuff like that also. But there's kind of varying degrees of conflict though, that we're looking at.

And, and key point being that I guess just zooming out and giving kind of some broader context for everybody. I do think that Ethiopia views the C access issue as an existential issue. It's a top priority for them and it's something that they want to secure. I think because of some of the constraints that I just mentioned.

I think that Ethiopia is very interested in getting that peacefully or negotiating some kind of access to the Eritrean port at Assab, you know, negotiating with the AirTrain governments, working with international partners to negotiate something there. I don't think that, that Eritrea has any interest in that.

Not only for the geopolitical rivalry reasons, just historically, Eritrea views a more contained and weakened and fragmented Ethiopia is better for Eritrea because it knows that, you know, it's bigger, stronger neighbour getting its ducks in a row could be a problem for Eritrea later down the line. So for that reason it's not super interested in it.

Also, the regime internally there, when they opened the borders back during the, for some context, there was a really brief rapprochement when the current Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in like 2018.

And they did reopen the border briefly and there was some trade flowing. But what we saw also was that the opening of that trade corridor and the opening of borders meant that a lot of Eritreans started fleeing to Ethiopia, saw the higher standard of living, greater development, stuff like that, and started defecting or fleeing.

And Eritrea is a very closed government system, very authoritarian, lots of mandatory conscription that kind of undergirds that.

Regime. So even for internal reasons, I don't know if Eritrea is overly interested in that. So then that kind of leaves us.

At.

At an impasse then is how I kind of view things trending. And from there then you get to the point of, you know, will Ethiopia be willing to launch a war for this? When would the timing be right for Ethiopia to launch a war given the internal issues that it has given.

Stuff like with the Iran war right now, where Ethiopia probably doesn't have the fuel to launch a war if it wanted to. So there's all kinds of outside factors and internal factors and stuff that makes it then really hard to say, okay, even if they're at an impasse, Ethiopia has exhausted all the peaceful options.

Would it go to war and then when would that happen?

That's all very hard, but hopefully kind of the dynamics that I just gave there give an overview of some of the things that all the sides are considering. And I do think that the United States, you know, getting in touch with both of them is interesting. The United States could try to mediate something.

I don't know how successful it would be because, like I said, I don't think that Eritrea is very interested, but that's kind of an interesting angle. And then, like you mentioned, to loop back to your last point on the UAE also, that if Ethiopia were to launch any military action, that it would have to be with a green light from the UAE.

Not because the UAE would be calling the shots, but because they would need the UAE's support.

They would need, you know, the same kind of weaponry and military backing that the RSF is getting from the UAE. Ethiopia would also want that kind of support probably to increase its chances of, you know, having success.

And so I think that, you know, I don't think that the UAE would be calling the shots, but I think that it would be an important partner for Ethiopia to have on its side. And then I just don't want to go on for too long for everyone. But I think the last thing that I note also is there's kind of a sliding scale that we're talking about here.

We haven't really talked about what's going on in northern Ethiopia yet, but tensions there are quite high. People might have heard of the Tigray war that happened in 2020-22, which is, you know, an internal conflict in Ethiopia.

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Sorry for rambling on. I know that's a very long answer, but I hope everyone was able to follow that one.

Actually, that kind of rambling answer is what Due south is built on. We're trying. Our audience can hear you go on all these tangents because, as we know, war, conflicts, geopolitics, it's rarely ever a straight line. It's a very messy world and nothing is ever straightforward. And when it's easy, either/or, you're not reading the situation correctly.

And I know we are going to talk about Sudan next, but just a very brief mention on something you've said. Ethiopia dealing with a big fuel crisis right now, as I mentioned earlier in last week's episode of View south, we talked about the economic impact that the war on Africa and Ethiopia is not pretty.

In Kenya, where I live, fuel prices have risen to astronomical amounts. We are paying about $2 for a litre of oil.

I don't know how that translates to my American audience, but $2 is generally really expensive for a litre of oil. A litre of petrol rather. Europe, while the prices are a lot lower, we're seeing a situation where people are sleeping in line in order to get fuel at the pump because no fuel is available across the country.

So yes, at this time, it would be advisable to consider the situation because if you can't fuel regular cars, can you really fuel your tanks and all these other military vehicles? So yeah, there is a lot to consider. And it's not just a fuel crisis. As we've mentioned, there are conflicts that are happening within Ethiopia itself.

You mentioned the Tigray conflicts. I want to really quickly bring up the Amhara conflicts. So there's an organisation, it's called the Amhara association of America.

It describes itself as a US-based NGO that documents human rights violations in the context of the conflict with Amhara. But it's a very openly pro-Amhara institution.

They put out a press release saying that between 18 May to 24 May, about two days before this podcast was recorded, there were clashes between the Amhara Defence Forces, which I'll call the Fano from now on, and the government forces, and there have been civilian casualties in 10 city administration regions across Amhara.

So there are multiple conflicts happening within Ethiopia right now that could with our potential conflict with Eritrea. So it's not a pretty situation for anyone involved.

And then I want to go back to something you said, Liam, that if Ethiopia want to go to war with Eritrea, they will need a blessing of the UAE because we need the kind of weaponry that the UAE is supplying to the RSF to something that happened a couple of weeks ago. It seemed like Sudan and Ethiopia were about to be at war.

Actions of the Ethiopian government in support of the RSF. Take us through that.

Yeah, so I certainly everything is becoming more intertwined and even the kind of local conflicts that you mentioned are also playing a role in the tensions with Sudan also.

Yeah, like you said a couple weeks back and really throughout the entirety of since late 2025 into early 2026, it became increasingly apparent that Ethiopia was getting more involved in the Sudanese civil war, at the very least as a conduit in rear base for the RSF and Emirati weapon shipments for the RSF potentially, and allegations from the SAF that

Ethiopia was getting directly involved.

And so over the course of this year, we've seen kind of varying reports and activity that at the very least, the RSF has a rear base in western Ethiopia that it has used to kind of stage forces, build up equipment, stuff like that, to open this new front into Blue Nile State in eastern Sudan.

I believe it was in March there were reports from, I believe, Reuters and Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab that part of this buildup was actually being done at an Ethiopian army base, which then would again, kind of escalate to another level of direct kind of Ethiopian involvement beyond just having the RSF on its territory, but actually, you know, having

The RSF operating in its military bases.

Again, that's something that Ethiopian officials have shot down. But Yale is very reputable. It's done a lot of good work.

So, you know, that, that accusation is coming from a very trustworthy source, I would say.

Then the, that you were referencing this latest flare up was that Sudan, the, the SAF accused Ethiopia of launching, or I should say accused Sudan of being the target of sound strikes that hit the airport in Khartoum and some other parts of the country were based in northern Ethiopia. So that the drones had come from Ethiopia.

I can't remember off the top of my head if they accused Ethiopia in particular of conducting the strikes. I don't believe that's the case. I think it was allegations, though, that the RSF or the UAE had based drones in Ethiopia that they had used to then conduct strikes in Sudan.

And so I think it is important to get into, okay, Ethiopia is involved in Sudan.

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And so the reasons that it has gets into some of these other internal conflicts within Ethiopia, which is why it's so fascinating how intertwined, you know, how you get from the conflict in Amhara and how that somehow relates to the Saudi UAE schism is so fascinating to me.

But what kind of concerns that Ethiopia has with SAF and with Sudan, one of the first that they state is the Islamist issue, which the UAE has stated also as one issue, but I think more broadly is that SAF is, or pardon me, that Ethiopia is really worried about Egyptian influence within Sudan with SAF because Egypt and Ethiopia are major rivals when it comes

To the Nile river basin, Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam (GERD), even with Red Sea access, even though Ethiopia and Egypt don't border, Egypt is very against Ethiopia getting sea access, very against the GERD and any further Ethiopian dams on the Nile River.

So there are major kind of regional rivals and Egypt is very involved with SAF because of this.

SAF is kind of a key ally not only for stability on the Egyptian Sudan border, but also as a regional partner when it comes to GERD, when it comes to Red Sea, when it comes to containing Ethiopian kind of influence, basically.

And so Ethiopia sees that as a concern on the regional level, also has these decades-long ties to the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, which is kind of the main rebel opposition group in northern Ethiopia, that people are worried that conflict might kick back up.

And so during the first, during the Tigray War from 2020 to 2022, Sudan served as a kind of rear base for the TPLF and allowed weapons to come through Sudan to Tigray.

And so that's one huge concern that Ethiopia has is that as tensions with Tigray grow, you know, that SAF probably would not be a partner and could even be more of an adversary should the Tigray war restart. Then we were talking about Eritrea earlier as well.

Eritrea and SAF have been working together and Eritrea has been an important partner for SAF during the Sudanese civil war. Again serving as kind of a rear base for aircraft, weapons flows, stuff like that. And so we wrap this up.

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There was an article in the Economist, I believe late last year, that said that the TPLF officials, TPLF officials and FANO officials met on Sudanese soil to discuss, you know, these are all to be clear, these three actors, it would be a very opportunistic, very limited, tactical kind of partnership, but they're all view the Ethiopian federal government as a

Mutual enemy.

And so there was some meeting that was had talking about, you know, could we share weapons, you know, stuff like that. And so when Ethiopia looks at Sudan, it sees kind of all of its enemies congregating in one place on its border.

This has links to the Egypt issue, which then has links to Red Sea Gerd, Eritrea is a SAF partner, links with the whole Red Sea. And then Tigray issue, the TPLF has links with SAF.

So that's another Tigray issue. And then even central Fano links also, even though again, Fano has its own tensions with SAF that have to do with like a disputed border area and stuff like that.

So there's a lot of stuff going on here, but Ethiopia looks at Sudan and sees a lot of reasons why Addis should be worried about Sudan and SAF also beyond just whatever the UAE might be interested in doing there.

So yeah, all these things are so connected, which is why again, it's so hard to predict what could happen because you never know which of these dominoes, which little thing could set off some broader regional chain of events that escalates up the scale into something much bigger than what it originally may have been intended to do.

Kind of like the Sudan stuff that you mentioned, you know, some, some drone strikes leading to a Sudan and Ethiopia war which would then have, you know, probably lead to other wars breaking out. So it's. Everything is very intertwined and convoluted at the moment, which I think makes things extra kind of risky and, and dangerous.

It's where a domino might fall and we might not even have it happening or even any knowledge that it happened, that this was the particular domino that caused the entire region to erupt into chaos. But yeah, little domino might shatter the Horn of Africa region.

And I don't want to spend too much time talking about Ethiopia because in our initial briefing we hadn't even really considered talking about Ethiopia this much. It's just an opportunity arose and I think it was a very interesting point of discussion. So let's go back to Sudan, right?

Let's, let's go down in the sense of the Iran war and the UAE's decision that with the Iran war basically shutting down a lot of the UAE's airports for weeks on end, they will still send weapons to the RSF.

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That, case in point and very telling, is to how big of a priority that is for the UAE. I think that it's incredibly telling, you know, you have this.

I don't know if we would say it's an existential threat, but a very big threat to the homeland going on, getting pounded by missiles, all this other stuff, and there's still an effort being made to make sure that supply chain to Sudan does not get disrupted. And I just think that's incredibly telling.

Granted, it's not like the stuff being sent to Sudan would be of any use, really, in the whole air war and drone war and et cetera, that the Iran kind of Gulf War going on is.

But still to dedicate the resources to making sure that those airstrips stay operable, that those flights keep flowing, the money that takes also, I just think it's incredibly telling. And that's part of the reason why, when we look at, okay, where is the Gulf likely to, you know, where's the. The UAE, other countries? Where are they likely to make cuts?

Where are they likely to back efforts, given the economic fallout and stuff like that?

I think the fact that weapons kept flowing to Sudan during the war as it was going on with minimal disruption just shows that Sudan and the Horn is probably not an area we could expect to see them suddenly now, ex post facto, making cuts when at the height of everything going on, they made sure that stuff was still flowing.

And as the. As the RSF still having its act together, pardon my French, you know, with the UAE support, one of the biggest stories that has emerged in the past few months is of the figures within the RSF, including one who is a former founder of the militia, the paramilitary militia, leaving the group. Right.

So we have a situation where the UAE is still supplying the RSF with all these weaponry, all these equipment it needs to fight against the SAF, but should be using them and are leaving the RSF to go to the SAF. So I did an episode about this for Warfronts last week. Yeah, last week, on Friday.

Not to get too much into the weeds, but we had four key generals leaving the RSF to go to the SAF. Liam, what do you make of these defections?

What do you think?

Why are they leaving en masse?

As you can imagine, really, the root of this is you saying tribal, ethnic, kind of cleavages that the RSF has been. I don't know if struggling with is the right word, but those tensions have been very present within the group for a really long time. And so I think that's at the core of it.

I do think it's interesting that it's very clearly part of the SAF strategy to secure these kinds of defections.

It seems like SAF is very adept at noticing, okay, where there might be some tensions going on either over, you know, positions that, and basically what, when I say positions, it's really just like patronage networks basically who upset, who might be feeling alienated and targeting and going after those commanders. SAF has proven to be very good at that.

And it definitely does have an impact on the RSF's kind of ability. Especially, you know, you take a commander and their forces out of a certain area and, and flip sides, that's obviously going to have a bit of a battlefield.

Do you think that kind of one of the big takeaways from, for, for me is just, it shows how fragmented the RSF is obviously, but even the SAF to an extent as well, you know, oftentimes we speak about these groups as monoliths and that's very far from the truth.

And there's really a lot of kind of interesting coalition building going on beneath the surface that these defections are kind of highlighting and exploiting. On the RSF side, you kind of have the tribe and ethnic kind of dynamics and subgroups going on.

Even within the kind of Arab tribes and clans, there are kind of tensions. And then beyond that, obviously part of the RSF's whole legitimacy, at the very least of their governing coalition or you know, parallel government that they're basically trying to set up is the idea that it's, that there are non-Arab partners also.

So you have other groups like, you know, the SPLM Al Tilu group and some other non-Arab groups. And there are obviously massive tensions there as well. Given that most of its history, the RSF, previously the Janjaweed forces, have committed, you know, several genocides against non-Arab groups. So there's all kinds of interesting dynamics.

But then on the SAF side too, you know, there's the Islamist factions that have obviously gotten a lot of attention in light of US sanctions and the UAE making that a really big issue. And so you see it a lot in Emirati linked media and stuff like that.

But even the defections itself, contentions within the, the SAF, because not all of these commanders, not all these units are really happy that these RSF guys who have been fighting on the other side throughout the war and have been linked with atrocities and other stuff are just welcomed back into the fold.

So then that could cause tensions within SAF also and is not a monolithic unit. There are, there are tensions.

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It, it does seem like, you know, that Burhan at the top doesn't have full, total, complete command and control over everything that these units do. And so there's all kinds of tensions that they really boil down to, like social, ethnic dimensions that are ultimately going to have some kind of battlefield impact.

So I think that writ large, that's kind of been my takeaway from that. And I know that we wanted to talk about Chad also. And so I think that, you know, there's plenty of that at play with how Chad is engaging with Sudan also. There's all kinds of interesting social dynamics to it.

And just understanding kind of the human nature of all these kind of coalitions and alliance building and all that is really key to understanding some of what's going on right now.

That's answer. And there are so many dynamics at play when roles and your commanders at that level are defecting from one group to the other. As you mentioned, there's a very important tribal element that's happening here. So in my piece last week, I highlighted the issue around Musa Hilal.

So for anyone who's unfamiliar with Hilal, used to be the leader of the militia, the group from which the RSF leader became, the group into which the RSF leader became and Hemeti Mohammed Hamdan de Galo, who you will call Hemeti, his nickname, who is the leader of the RSF, have had personality clashes, leadership wrangles, basically, whatever you want to

Call them, they've not seen eye to eye for a really long time because when you have two alphas in the same pen, they don't really get along well together.

So attack by the RSF on the territory of Hilal, which according to the sources I read was a very big contributing factor for the defection of two of the generals to the generals that left the RSF. So there are various things that are interplaying within this just to make this situation almost to track.

So I want to go back to one other thing you mentioned, the idea that Burhan is embracing them. By them, I mean the generals who are leaving the RSF. So there's a part I want to quote, and I know it's a bit gauche to quote myself, but it works.

In this instance, quoting myself, there is an enduring image from November last year of Al Burhan embracing a displaced woman at the Alafhad camp in Northern State, which had become a refuge for people fleeing from Al Quba's violence.

The fact that in less than a year we have gone from that to Burhan embracing Al Quba, who's one of the generals thus defected, is one of the greatest tragedies of this war. So the fact that Al Burhan is embracing these soldiers who committed atrocities, Al Quba was in charge of the assault on El Fasher.

Impressing them with such open arms and there's probably going to be no justice for the victims, is again, a very major tragedy in this war. And one of the saddest things that we've seen so has been trying to stem this flow of. They recently declared a military emergency within the Darfur region to help limit the number of generals who are defecting.

Liam, do you think that will be effective in doing that or do you see a situation where those who want to defect will find a way?

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Ultimately, it has been one of the criticisms of the RSF that it is just a gang of militias, basically, that it is still the Janjaweed with a fancy new label thrown on it that had been, you know, kind of brought into some state structures over the last decade plus.

And so I do think that, you know, if commanders want to defect, I don't think there's going to be stopping them. I think that what will be key is it's just a political thing, so making sure that patronage networks are able to be taken care of, making sure that certain communities are being included in decision making and stuff like that.

I can't remember where I read it in a Crisis Group piece. They do really good work.

But I believe Crisis Groups had something to the effect that things will probably continue because the nature of the RSF war machine has been again on this, you know, a gang of militias.

It's an extractive kind of framework of, you know, you take over, you capture, you plunder, and then that creates the, that undergirds the whole patronage system of certain commanders, certain fighters getting their goods, getting their rewards and then staying in line, so on and so forth. The RSF lost Khartoum.

That obviously cuts off a big kind of resource area. And then just as the war drags on, there's less and less stuff now to, you know, to plunder really, there's less resources there. What has been what, what was like available even in Darfur, especially since the fall of Al Basher and other stuff.

There's basically very little room to kind of fuel the war machine the way that the RSF operates on kind of that plunder patronage model.

And so it might be something where these defections continue and the RSF kind of collapses on itself looking like, you know, long term and there's always going to be kind of the Darfuri core and stuff like that, but just that it could be a very long term problem for the RSF as this war drags on and as it kind of becomes more stalemated, which could be a

Reason that we would see a major RSF counter-attack or roll up the dice to kind of push back towards Khartoum in the future or stuff like that is to kind of broaden that, that resource base and be able to, you know, for example, Meeting Title: Due South Liam Karr, Critical Threats Episode.mp3 Meeting created at: 29th May, 2026 - 4:36 PM 15 / 22

Lack of a better kind of raise or something, to be able to feed those mouths that it needs to need to keep its structure intact.

The idea that there isn't really much left to plunder because they have taken basically whatever they can take. And that will explain why, as part of their strategy to attract RSF commanders to their side, the SAF has proven very willing to give certain concessions to, you know, those defecting commanders.

The Sudan Tribune reported, for example, that Al Quba got back a multi-story property in Khartoum's upscale Kafuri district and had his bank accounts unfrozen as part of his defection deal. And he also apparently, I believe this was from Al Jazeera, either Al Jazeera or Al Arabia, I'm not sure for the life of me.

He apparently got Al Burhan's personal vehicle as a gift, welcoming him back into the fold.

So again, SAF has proven very effective, as you said earlier, at utilizing whatever they have to do in order to get people to cross the lines, to cross the battle lines and join up with them. About RSF has been responding to these defections other than, you know, declaring the emergency within their, within the area of their control.

They've also been really violent against the ethnic groups. It's come from. And you know, that is a pattern that emerged very early on with one of the first defectors. Right. A gentleman. A gentleman, sorry, a gentleman by the name, Forgive me, I'm trying to remember Abu Akla Kekal who had his own militia group called the Shield Forces.

Kekal used to be a member of the SAF, retired, built up his own militia.

The Shield Forces initially supported the SAF, jumped ship to the RSF, was very instrumental in a lot of battles state and you know, the River Nile states. He was just a very instrumental figure. And then he switched back to the SAF once conditions within the RSF no longer suited him.

And in response to his defections, they brutally attacked the community that he came from. I'm not sure of the name off the top of my head, forgive me, but that is a pattern that the RSF has established. They immediately pay the price. It's basically communal punishment to try and keep people in line.

So of defections with them losing manpower and basically an effective fighting force.

There was a report from Reuters about, I have the exact date for this one, on 18 May, saying that the RSF had quietly released a gentleman by the name of Abu Lulu who's the most brutal field commanders that the militia has.

Do you think the release of Abu Lulu is part of the RSF's attempt at stemming or dealing with the defections and you know, the loss in fighting ability.

Yeah, I, I, I, I definitely think it's probably partially tied to that. I think it also could be an appeal to the base as, as well as it kind of, you know, loses.

You know, I'm not the all the nitty gritty of the internal RSF kind of coalition dynamics, but just off the top of my head, like we mentioned earlier, the issues with Noosa Hilal caused some problems.

People to defect.

And so on the flip side of the coin here, if holding this commander off the battle lines due to, you know, optics reasons from the international community, if that was angering certain people in his tribe, there also could be political reasons to basically put him back on the front as well and make sure that no further defections happen amongst people linked

With that commander also.

So I'm sure that it is tied to the defections issue. How much is it to kind of fill leadership gaps that have been opened? How much is it to prevent any further defections from happening? There's several, you know, options or paths that you could take, but, but it would be hard to see it is not linked given the, the timing of everything going on.

In my estimation, if it was seen as a decision made out of convenience and you bring up several really good points about political motives and you are trying to appeal to the base to show them, hey, we're listening. Don't defect – things will be okay. So let's. From the direct war in Sudan to how the war is impacting one of Sudan's neighbours, Chad.

So a couple of weeks ago, there was a report in the Associated Press that because of the large influx of refugees from Sudan to Chad, there was a water war, basically a community fighting over scant resources, scant water resources. And this was the, about the second, third time that this was happening in the past few months because of the war.

So Liam, how likely do you see this, you know, becoming a bigger issue?

I definitely think that in country to keep an eye on. There's been a lot of really good work put out from the Crisis Group. I think Cameron Hudson as well, for people familiar with him, wrote something recently on Chad.

But people are starting to sound the alarm basically that Chad is starting to really show the signs of, you know, having a war in a neighbouring country going on now for, for three years. It's starting to manifest and to really show both on the ground – as you said, as refugees come and Chad is already a fairly poor country.

And so you have the battle for resources going on there and resources that are increasingly stretched amongst more and more people. But then there's also those same kind of ethnic dynamics going on even at the elite level, where Chad's President Deby, he. The, the.

The kind of regime is more linked with the Sara ethnic group, which is one of the, you know, it's one of the ethnic groups and it's spread across into Sudan also. It's, it. They're. They're concentrated really on the border of Chad and Sudan and so on. Arab ethnic groups that have been heavily targeted by the RRF.

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And the RSF is you know, attacking them, trying to kind of pop that bubble. But that's caused a lot of cross-border clashes where the fighting will spill over into Chad and, and Chadian soldiers have died in some of this fighting.

So there's all kinds of tensions both on you know, the local resource level, the local military level and then on the elites, you know, the top levels too.

And any of these things when we talk about dominoes or if we want to use the kind of Jenga tower as analogy, any one of those issues could be the thing that kind of brings the tower toppling down and really, you know, puts you know, some tangible heat onto Debbie. Be it coup risk, be it some in amongst Chadian forces, any of those options.

But it's definitely something to be watching and I think to be worried about at the moment.

In the interest of time, we're going to have to move away from Chad and Sudan. Again, this is a really interesting conversation but Liam has another engagement at nine at the top of the hour. It's currently around 8:40 for him so we only have him for about Liam, 10 more minutes or so. Am I right?

I can have 15 is fine too. We can. I'm. This is, this is a good combo and I don't want to cut it off too early.

And again Liam, if you'd be interested, I would love to have your game here next week because we have so much to discuss.

Talk about. You and I.

Happily.

Awesome. Schedule something for next weekend. So let's move really quickly on to Congo and talk about what is happening there. Just to give the audience a bit of an idea of what's happening. There are back audiences that for listeners who might not be old enough to remember what that was like when it initially happened.

Ebola is a really infectious disease and Congo is basically one of the hotspots for it. I believe Congo and Uganda and at the moment from when Ebola first emerged as a major world crisis is the US has actively taken a step back from being involved in such issues, from helping manage such issues. Aid cuts have been really real.

They really impacted the ability of local communities to fight such diseases, to help prevent such diseases.

And for you, Liam, are we seeing the Ebola crisis have an impact on the broader in the country?

I think as far as the broader war, it's something where I from what right now there hasn't been a ton of impacts yet. What I do think will be interesting though and something to track is obviously the breakout is an eastern DRC. It's primarily in Aturi, which is kind of north of where M23, the main Rwandan-backed rebel group is.

There are some other armed groups active in Aturi Province, which includes a group called Kadeco that's linked to Uganda because this is on the Ugandan border more. And then there's also Islamic State's Central Africa Province, which is also locally called the Allied Democratic Forces. They're also active in that area.

So those are the two armed groups who would be most impacted by this breakout.

But the breakout is spreading to the areas where M23 is active and controls territory as well as even into neighbouring countries. Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi.

What could happen here is the fact that there are areas near this outbreaker that are now starting to have Ebola cases that are controlled by these rebel groups that could really impact the international response because they would have to coordinate with these rebel groups.

The main airstrip in the kind of provincial capitals in both north and South Kivu, which are the two provinces where the two rebel-controlled provincial capitals, those airstrips have been closed since the rebels captured them. And it's kind of become a little bit of a political football.

And so not too as far as again flying in medical aid, trying to contain the outbreak.

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Coordinating between international health APE groups and the rebels could be really complicated. And then seeing how Rwanda tries to react and contain that also given its ties with the rebels and if Rwanda can serve as some sort of intermediary, you know, to this and maybe rebels to open more to aid groups and stuff like that.

But then also, you know, then you get into rebel groups, certain rebel leaders and now even the Rwandan army are under US sanctions. So then could that impact, you know, certain legal issues? And then you also probably have the Congolese government who would not want international aid groups to recognise the rebels in any kind of way.

But the rebels might demand that they, the aid groups, work through its Office of Health or Office of Humanitarian Affairs.

And so there are all kinds of really political issues that could hinder the aid and health to everything going on and could, you know, basically make the outbreak more likely to spread into these areas, even though it didn't necessarily begin in.

These areas are away from Ebola. Again, another really interesting topic, but time being what it is, I want to see what is happening in Rubaya. So Rubaya is a town where coltan is mined. Coltan is one of the most important minerals for basically every single electronic we use. It's in everything.

So whatever you're using to listen to this podcast on, whether it's your phone, whether it's your laptop, whether you're one of the three people who watches this on their TV, I don't know why you're watching an audio podcast on TV, but hey, whatever works best for you guys. One of the most important minerals.

There's been renewed fighting around Rubaya with local sources telling Uganda Radio Network, a Ugandan news outlet, that a drone strike hit Rubaya in the early hours of Sunday targeting a guest house, one where it is believed that M23 forces are occupying. So what do you make of what is happening in Rubaya?

And do you see a situation where if the Congolese forces, the Congolese government's forces rather retake Rubaya, M23 would be weakened because again, this is a source of coltan and one of the most important minerals in the world? Or has M23 built up enough of a war economy that's resilient enough to survive Rubaya being taken?

And this will be our final question until next week when you and I will speak again.

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But all that said, you never know if they did retake it. I do think it would really harm M23's ability to be self-sufficient. I think one of the factors of the current M23 iteration compared to 2012 is there's been a big push to make M23 both on the Rwandan side of things and M23 internally.

There's been a bigger push to have M23 be self-sufficient and independent. We've seen administrative structures pop up, taxation systems pop up so that Rwanda doesn't have to, so that M23 isn't basically purely a Rwandan proxy, so that M23 can stand on its own two feet, basically.

And that's not to say that Rwanda is not involved in major operations and major offensives, but it means that Rwanda isn't necessarily bankrolling everything that M23 does and is responsible for all military actions and stuff like that.

And so I think that the latest UN figures that Reuters reported out earlier this year was that M23 makes something like $800,000 per month on the coltan production, trade, taxation that goes on at Rubai. So if that goes away, that's certainly a big blow. It's not like the group would fall apart.

But that really would diminish its ability to be self-sufficient using some of that revenue. And it would probably mean that, you know, would be a ding to the budget. Would also maybe mean that Rwanda would have to bankroll more stuff if, you know, they didn't want that budget deficit to have a huge impact on everything going on.

So I don't think that it would cause a group to collapse, but it would certainly be a really big blow. $800,000 per month is enough to finance a war machine pretty well.

And so it would definitely make a huge difference. And I do think, though, last thing that I'll say on this thing that I think that the Congolese government is very aware of, that's why we've seen those drone strikes, it's why we've seen pro-Congolese militias probing that, trying to disrupt, degrade that chain.

But we've also seen in the negotiations that the DRC has had with the US on critical minerals, the DRC goes out of its way to include in those talks one because it's on Congress territory and coltan is a really big revenue generator. So naturally it would be.

But also that creates incentive basically for the DRC to turn to the United States and be like, hey, can you help us get this back? Can you pressure M23? Can you pressure. Do you know, do other things to help us get this back.

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That from Liam, folks from Bayer is a critical term for both sides, but Liam doesn't think they could be able to take it right now. And on that, we're going to have to put a pause in this until next week when Liam and I can pick this conversation back up again.

Liam, I just want to let you know you'll be the very first guest that I've had on this show in its very short, admittedly lifespan. Come back twice. And for me, that's really cool because again, I've been a really big fan of your work and what critical threats does for a really long time.

Thank you.

You're welcome. From me, from Liam, thank you so much. Catch us again next week as we go back. We'll pick right back off at Rubaier and again, we'll discuss the entire continent next time. So, yeah, Liam, absolute pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much for coming on.

We're going to folks, appreciate it. Excited to talk next week.