ADF STAFF
When the Sudanese Armed Forces retook a key neighborhood in the city of Omdurman from the Rapid Support Forces in March, soldiers discovered four passports belonging to residents of the United Arab Emirates, the RSF’s silent partner in its war for control of Sudan.
According to a United Nations report, the four passports belonged to men ages 29 to 49 who are thought to be UAE intelligence officers. They are the first indication that, despite its denials, the UAE quietly has placed operatives on the ground in Sudan, expanding its ongoing, secret support for RSF fighters.
“This makes a mockery of the UAE’s insistence it has nothing to do with militarily supporting the RSF,” Sudanese political analyst Kholood Khair, founding director of Confluence Advisory, told The Guardian.
The UAE has a long-running relationship with the RSF and its leader, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, who has become wealthy by smuggling gold from Darfur through the UAE. Former dictator Omar al-Bashir awarded Hemedti a gold mine after Hemedti’s fighters, then known as the Janjaweed, put down a rebellion in Darfur in the early 2000s. The attacks on non-Arab residents of Darfur later were declared a genocide.
The RSF renewed its assaults on non-Arab communities across Darfur as part of its war with the SAF for control of Sudan. The RSF’s side of the conflict has been financed largely through Hemedti’s gold smuggling connections to the UAE, analysts say.
The most recent data available shows that the UAE imported 39 tons of gold worth more than $2 billion from Sudan in 2022. Another 60 tons came into the UAE from Sudan’s neighbors, leading experts to suspect that some of Sudan’s gold is moving through Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Uganda on its way to be laundered in the UAE.
In addition to gold smuggling, Hemedti and his family control companies registered in the UAE, and the RSF has an account at First Abu Dhabi Bank. Injured RSF fighters are sent to the UAE to recover.
Since war broke out between the SAF and RSF in April 2023, international investigations have accused the UAE of backing the RSF with weapons shipments through some of those same neighboring countries. The U.N. has reported that the UAE smuggled weapons and fuel into RSF-held territory in Darfur through the Central African Republic and Chad disguised as humanitarian aid for displaced persons.
“As the RSF perpetrates genocidal attacks on civilians in Darfur and other regions, Abu Dhabi is delivering arms to the militia,” John Prendergast and Anthony Lake wrote recently for Foreign Affairs.
If not for the UAE’s support of the RSF, some experts believe, the Sudan conflict would have ended long ago.
SAF leader Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto leader of Sudan, has publicly accused the UAE of aiding the RSF, including a tense exchange at the U.N. Security Council earlier this year. Al-Burhan confronted UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed about his country’s actions on behalf of the RSF during a phone call in July, according to the Sudan Tribune.
According to the U.N. report, at the same time the SAF soldiers discovered UAE passports, they also turned up a quadcopter drone equipped to drop 120-millimeter mortar bombs likely supplied by the UAE. Boxes carried markings indicating that they contained thermobaric bombs that had been shipped from a Serbian arms maker to the UAE military.
UAE leaders continue to deny supporting the RSF. The Emirati U.N. representatives have called claims by the SAF and other authorities “lies, disinformation and propaganda disseminated by some Sudanese representatives.”
However, U.N. experts continue to say the reports of the UAE’s military support of the RSF are credible. The passports and weapons discovered in Omdurman strongly contradict the UAE’s claims, according to Khair.
“It’s a smoking gun when corroborated with other evidence,” she told The Guardian. “The Emirates are giving a lot of hands-on immediate support to the RSF, something they have been denying because there hasn’t been this direct on-the-ground link.”