Ethiopia Orders Six Sudanese Diplomats Out and Shuts Asosa Consulate

That much is clear from the account reported by Al Jazeera, citing Ethiopian and Sudanese officials. The harder and more dangerous part sits underneath it: both governments are tying the diplomatic move to security accusations the other side denies.

Sudan has been accusing Ethiopia of allowing the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary force fighting Sudan’s military in the country’s civil war, to use Ethiopian territory to launch drone attacks on civilian infrastructure inside Sudan. Al Jazeera reported that Sudan lodged complaints with the UN Security Council and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council accusing Ethiopia of allowing that activity. Ethiopia denies supporting the RSF.

Amjad Farid, political and foreign affairs adviser for Sudan’s Transitional Sovereign Council, said the Sudanese government remained committed to defending its territory while making “every possible effort to avoid an open war with Ethiopia,” according to the report. That is the sort of sentence governments use when they want to sound restrained without sounding passive.

Ethiopia, meanwhile, accuses the Sudanese military of backing rebels linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front in northern Ethiopia. Khartoum denies that allegation too.

So the verifiable event here is not proof of either security claim. It is the diplomatic fact: six envoys told to go, one border consulate closed. And Asosa is not an incidental address. A consulate in a border town is part bureaucracy, part pressure valve. It handles documents and state contact in places where national tension is lived locally, not just argued over in capitals. Closing it strips away one of the ordinary mechanisms that make hostile neighbors slightly more manageable.

Al Jazeera also noted that a direct military confrontation with Ethiopia would put severe strain on Sudan’s military, which is already deeply engaged in fighting the RSF. That matters because escalation is not just a matter of rhetoric or prestige here; Sudan is making these accusations while already trapped in a war that has chewed through civilian life and state capacity.

The expulsions come as Ethiopia is already handling other regional disputes, including earlier expulsions involving Eritrean and Egyptian diplomats, according to the report. That does not tell you where this confrontation ends. It does suggest a region in which diplomatic space is getting narrower while mutual suspicion gets easier to formalize.