September 8, 2026
By Hollie McKay
Key Takeaways:
After three years, Sudan’s war is crossing borders. On 20 August, aircraft and drones chased a convoy more than 100 km into Chad’s Ennedi-Est—the deepest recorded hit on Chadian airspace. Days later the SAF said it downed a third drone in five days coming from Ethiopia into Blue Nile. The author says the aircraft were not built—or mostly not paid for—in Sudan.
Iran once supplied the army (Mohajer-6s for a Red Sea foothold); that track cooled as Tehran fought Israel and Port Sudan eyed U.S. diplomacy. Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan filled the gap, with Saudi money and gold smuggled from army areas into Egypt. That pipeline helped the SAF retake Khartoum, el-Gezira, and North Kordofan—and lengthened the army’s strike reach.
Neighbors are paying. Chad: March Adre strike (13 dead), Mabrouka Iftar strike (at least 16), April Adukong (aid workers wounded); Deby sealed the 1,300 km border, put the army on max alert, and sent armor and jammers. Ethiopia: SAF claims Bahir Dar-linked drones; RSF/SPLM-N used the border to take Kurmuk; an April strike near Kurmuk killed at least eight on the Ethiopian side. Cairo’s gold window and a reported $1.5bn Pakistani drone/vehicle package have no border clause. If Deby hits back, the piece says, this stops being only Sudan’s civil war.
Sudan’s civil war has spent three years burning. That containment ended this summer.
On August 20, Chadian forces watched aircraft and drones pursue and bomb a military convoy more than 100 kilometers inside their own territory, in the remote Ennedi-Est province — one of the deepest incursions yet recorded into Chadian airspace. Days later, on the opposite side of the country, the Sudanese army shot down a third drone in five days, crossing into Blue Nile State from the direction of Ethiopia.
Two borders, two governments, one common denominator: the weapons now doing the damage were not built in Sudan, and increasingly they were not paid for in Sudan either.
For much of the war, Iran covertly kept the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) flying, trading Mohajer-6drones for a foothold on the Red Sea. That relationship, however, has cooled as Tehran’s own conflict with Israel drained its stockpiles and Port Sudan moved to distance itself from Iranian purchases ahead of ceasefire diplomacy with Washington.
Into the gap stepped Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan, funded largely by Saudi Arabia and by goldsmuggled out of army-held Sudanese territory into Egyptian markets. That arms pipeline has done what it was built to do: it helped the SAF retake Khartoum, el-Gezira and North Kordofan. It has also given the army a strike range and tempo that its own neighbors are now absorbing.
Chad has taken the harder hits.
A March strike near the Adre crossing killed 13 people, including Chadian nationals, after Sudanese drones targeted what the army called fuel-smuggling convoys feeding the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Days later, a strike on the border town of Mabrouka killed at least 16 civilians gathered for an Iftar meal, prompting President Mahamat Idriss Deby to order his military to retaliate against any further Sudanese incursions and to seal the 1,300-kilometer frontier.
By April, a fifth strike in weeks had hit the Adukong crossing, wounding dozens of mostly Chadian aid workers. On August 20, Sudanese aircraft went further than they ever had — more than 100 kilometers into Chad’s Ennedi-Est province. N’Djamena put its army on maximum alert and sentroughly 100 armored vehicles and signal-jamming trucks toward the border.
When Washington’s Africa adviser, Massad Boulos, publicly blamed the Sudanese military for the strikes, Khartoum did not deny conducting cross-border operations so much as demand an independent inquiry, while pivoting almost immediately to accuse a second neighbor of doing the same thing to Sudan.
That neighbor is Ethiopia. Since May, the SAF has reported repeatedly intercepting drones crossing into Blue Nile State from Ethiopian territory, including a hostile aircraft downed near Ed Damazinafter Khartoum alleged Addis Ababa had allocated runway space at Bahir Dar airport for strikes on Khartoum, al-Gezira, White Nile and North Kordofan. The RSF and its allied SPLM-N faction have used the porous Ethiopian border to seize Kurmuk and press toward Ed Damazin, prompting the Sudanese army to intensify its own drone campaign against the town — a campaign that itself produced a strike killing at least eight civilians, including an aid worker, on the Ethiopian side of the frontier near Kurmuk in April.
By late August, Sudan’s military said it shot down a third drone in five days. The relationship with Ethiopia was already strained — the Fashaga border dispute has dragged on for decades, and the two countries are still fighting over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
The throughline across both fronts is the same: a war that Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan armed to help Khartoum win inside Sudan is now generating strikes the SAF cannot, or will not, keep inside Sudan’s own lines.
Cairo’s central bank keeps absorbing Sudanese gold that bankrolls the purchases; Riyadh keeps underwriting the hardware, including the reported $1.5 billion Pakistani package of Shahpar drones and Mohafiz vehicles. None of that financing carries a border restriction. Chad, already hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Darfur, and Ethiopia, still recovering from its own Tigray war and locked in a Nile dispute with Khartoum, are now the ones absorbing the consequences of an arms race built to settle a war that was supposed to be someone else’s.
Whether either government answers with force of its own — Deby has already threatened retaliation — will determine whether Sudan’s civil war stays a civil war much longer.
About Hollie McKay
Hollie McKay is a war and humanitarian-focused international correspondent and author of 'Only Cry for the Living: Memos from Inside the ISIS Battlefield,' 'Afghanistan: The End of the US Footprint and Rise of the Taliban Rule,' and 'The Dictator's Wife.'
View all posts by Hollie McKay →
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