Smuggled Gold Fuels War in Sudan, U.N. Says

ADF STAFF

In its ongoing battle for control of Sudan, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rely heavily on gold smuggled out of the country and its close ties to Russia’s Wagner Group, now known as Africa Corps, according to a United Nations analysis.

“Complex financial networks established by RSF before and during the war enabled it to acquire weapons, pay salaries, fund media campaigns, lobby, and buy the support of other political and armed groups,” U.N. experts wrote.

Sudan’s smuggled gold eventually finds its way to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where it enters the global market. Sudan’s gold laid the foundation for the RSF’s relationship with Wagner, for which gold from Sudanese mines has become a crucial revenue source to fund Russia’s war with Ukraine.

In Sudan, gold smuggling via the UAE has made the RSF commander, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, one of Sudan’s richest men and enabled him to finance the RSF’s battle for supremacy against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Hemedti has used his resources to set up at least 50 companies in several industries in and outside Sudan. He has money in banks in the UAE and bases the RSF’s social media propaganda in the country.

Gold has bought Hemedti a reliable ally in the UAE, which, the U.N. reports, has become a pipeline for weapons and other supplies, often under the cover of humanitarian aid shipments.

According to the U.N., a Sudanese gold trader in Dubai associated with the RSF received 50 kilograms of gold in May 2023, a month after fighting broke out between the RSF and SAF.

Soon after, RSF fighters began receiving shipments of heavy weapons, including portable surface-to-air missiles known as MANPADS, through Libya thanks to the Wagner Group and Libyan Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who received backing from the UAE and the RSF in his fight against the internationally recognized government in Tripoli.

The weapons flowing into Sudan have helped the RSF maintain its fight against the more heavily armed SAF. The RSF has killed tens of thousands of civilians across the capital, Khartoum, and the western Darfur region. In a single city — El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur — the U.N. now believes that up to 15,000 civilians have died in fighting since the conflict erupted in April 2023. That’s 25% higher than its original estimate of 12,000 deaths.

U.N. monitors reported that they found credible claims that the UAE has supplied the RSF with materiel several times per week through a UAE-funded field hospital set up in Amdjarass, Chad. Sudanese Gen. Yassir al-Atta, the SAF’s second-in-command, reported in late 2023 that the UAE was sending planes to the RSF.

The UAE continues to deny supplying weapons to either side of the Sudan conflict, despite reports to the contrary.

Analyst Elfadil Ibrahim recently wrote in National Interest magazine that aligning themselves with the RSF could put the UAE’s investments in Sudan at risk. The UAE is set to build the proposed $6 billion Abu Amama port complex on the Red Sea. It also owns 2,800 square kilometers of Sudanese agricultural land, much of it in states still controlled by the SAF.

“For the UAE, betting on the RSF is a losing proposition for multiple reasons,” Ibrahim wrote.