Ethiopia has ordered six Sudanese diplomats to leave the country within 48 hours and closed Sudan's consulate in the border town of Asosa. The move, reported by Reuters and the Associated Press citing unnamed officials, follows Sudan lodging formal complaints with both the UN Security Council and the African Union accusing Ethiopia of allowing the RSF paramilitary group to launch drone strikes on Sudanese civilian infrastructure from Ethiopian territory. Addis Ababa denies the charges. This is not an isolated incident. It is the third diplomatic expulsion by Ethiopia in roughly two months. In October, Ethiopia expelled ten Eritrean diplomats and closed its embassy in Eritrea; Eritrea responded by severing ties entirely. Last month, Ethiopia expelled an Egyptian diplomat amid long-running tensions over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile. The pattern is unmistakable: Addis Ababa is systematically cutting diplomatic channels with every neighbor it accuses of supporting Tigrayan rebels who launched an offensive against government forces in September. The mutual accusations form a textbook proxy-war feedback loop. Sudan accuses Ethiopia of hosting RSF drone operations. Ethiopia accuses Sudan, Egypt, and Eritrea of backing Tigrayan insurgents. Both sides deny everything. Meanwhile, on Sunday, drone strikes knocked out power in the northern Sudanese towns of Al-Dabbah and Abu Hamad, disrupting electricity and water supplies and threatening essential medical services. Sudan's government and the rights group Emergency Lawyers blamed the RSF. Sudan's civil war, which erupted in 2023, has already killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 14 million, creating what the UN calls one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. A direct military confrontation with Ethiopia would severely strain an already exhausted Sudanese military apparatus still fighting the RSF in the country's southeast. Amjad Farid, political and foreign affairs adviser for Sudan's Transitional Sovereign Council, stated that Sudan "remains committed to its right to defend its territory" but is "making every possible effort to avoid an open war with Ethiopia." The structural danger here is the evaporation of every diplomatic circuit breaker in the Horn of Africa simultaneously. When Ethiopia expels diplomats from Sudan, Eritrea, and Egypt in rapid succession, it doesn't just signal displeasure — it removes the physical infrastructure through which de-escalation conversations happen. Consulates are not symbolic decorations; they are the actual rooms in which backchannels operate. Closing the Asosa consulate, located directly on the border where cross-border incidents are most likely, eliminates the closest point of diplomatic contact precisely where it is needed most. The AU and the UN Security Council are now the only remaining institutional channels, and both are notoriously slow-moving when it comes to intra-African conflicts. If the Tigrayan offensive, the Sudanese civil war, and the Ethiopia-Eritrea rupture continue to cross-pollinate, the Horn of Africa faces the prospect of a regional conflict system where no bilateral diplomatic mechanism exists to contain escalation. The 48-hour timeline for the expulsion underscores the urgency and the deliberateness. This is not a negotiating posture; it is a fait accompli. The question now is whether Sudan retaliates symmetrically — expelling Ethiopian diplomats — or whether Khartoum, already militarily overstretched, absorbs the provocation and escalates through the multilateral route instead.
