Deadly Airstrikes on Gold Mine Highlight Insecurity Along Egypt-Sudan Border

Deadly airstrikes on gold miners in Sudan expose escalating border lawlessness and regional instability.

An alleged airstrike on a gold mining site in northern Sudan has killed at least 72 workers, according to a human rights group, highlighting the severe security vacuum along the country's unregulated border with Egypt.

The Khartoum-based legal group Emergency Lawyers has accused the Egyptian military of targeting civilian miners in the northern region of Wadi Jabal al-Aqidat, a mountainous border region between Sudan and Egypt.

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The end of the list of Egypt has not commented on this incident.

Images allegedly taken from the site and shared by rights monitors show chaotic scenes with bodies wrapped in funeral shrouds.

The border region between Sudan and Egypt has a long history of tension that continues to this day.

In 1899, the British and Egyptian governments mapped the 22nd parallel north as the border between Sudan and Egypt.

But the lack of physical boundaries along this line, along with the region's gold wealth, has exposed the region to conflict and lawlessness.

Abdul Karim El Alamein Ahmed, an expert on Egypt-Sudan border affairs, said that Sudan's territorial borders have long been historically neglected, which still continues.

The presence of Egyptian border guard forces in the vicinity, he told Al Jazeera, has made the Sudanese extremely vulnerable to Egyptian aggression and encroachment, amid the complete absence of a Sudanese military or administrative presence.

What is now being asked of the Sudanese government - if there is one - is to escalate this matter to the United Nations as a violation of Sudanese territory. This should be done by immediately determining the border points in this area and along the entire border strip, in addition to establishing border watch posts along the entire borders.

In June, another artisanal gold mine in the Jabal al-Aqidat area was targeted by drones and artillery, killing several. The Egyptian army announced that it carried out an operation "inside Egyptian territory" and detained 223 people.

Egyptian security forces continue to clear the borders to combat what they described as illegal immigration, drug trafficking and illegal mining.

Egypt and Sudan have a long history of border tensions dating back to the colonial period that extends beyond the Jabal al-Aqidat region.

The Halib Triangle, an area of 20,580 square kilometers on the African shores of the Red Sea, has been a turning point between Egypt and Sudan for more than a century.

This difference stems from the conflicting maps of the colonial era. The 1899 treaty between Britain and Egypt regarding the Sudan and parts of Libya placed the triangle within Egypt's political boundaries. But a British administrative decree in 1902 gave control to Khartoum because this area was closer to the Sudanese capital.

This triangle, home to the Bisharin tribe, is famous for its fertile lands and rich mineral deposits, including uranium, granite, copper, and gold.

Following clashes between the two armies on the border in the 1990s, Sudanese forces withdrew from the area in 2000, and Cairo has effectively controlled the area ever since.

The latest unrest follows the start of a civil war in Sudan in April 2023, pitting the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), allegedly backed by Egypt, against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

This conflict has devastated the country and destroyed the economy. Extreme poverty has forced many to resort to dangerous methods of gold extraction, including illegal mining on the border. The collapse of central power in Sudan has also allowed lawlessness to flourish in the borderlands.

Sudanese gold has been a key source of financing for both sides, but there is no indication that the revenue from gold mining in the border region reaches either side of the war.

Osama Ahmed Eidros, professor of strategic and security studies, told Al Jazeera that foreign powers have prolonged the conflict between the two sides.

"What is happening in Sudan is not a civil war, despite the presence of Rapid Support Forces as one of the fighting parties in this war, this war is a war of foreign aggression in a large regional project," Aidros said.

Everything that is happening in Sudan right now, in terms of the effects on the Sudanese citizen, the weakness of the central government and the difficulty of controlling the borders, all of this is due to this ongoing war in Sudan.

He added: "Miners do not pose any threat to neighboring countries like Egypt and do not participate in war."

He said: We are talking about the miners who work in the gold mine and we have not heard that there was an armed conflict or they were carrying weapons or fighting with the government of Egypt or the government of Sudan.

They are Sudanese miners who were suddenly attacked by Egyptian aviation and attacked for the second time, killing 85 of them.