UAE Could End RSF War in Sudan

For 29 months, the international community stood by as the conflict in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces brought daily devastation to what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. In North Darfur, the situation is very tragic. Over the course of 18 months, the Rapid Support Forces isolated more than 400,000 people who took refuge in the capital, El Fasher, in a brutal siege, while aid trucks seeking entry were regularly attacked by drones.

But at the recent UN General Assembly, no world leader addressed the deadly siege of El Fasher. There is one regime in particular standing in the way of international efforts to end the blockade, and it is the regime that benefits most from the RSF’s control: the United Arab Emirates.

For 29 months, the international community stood by as the conflict in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces brought daily devastation to what the United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. In North Darfur, the situation is very tragic. Over the course of 18 months, the Rapid Support Forces isolated more than 400,000 people who took refuge in the capital, El Fasher, in a brutal siege, while aid trucks seeking entry were regularly attacked by drones.

But at the recent UN General Assembly, no world leader addressed the deadly siege of El Fasher. There is one regime in particular standing in the way of international efforts to end the blockade, and it is the regime that benefits most from the RSF’s control: the United Arab Emirates.

According to one report, the UAE was the only member of the Quartet – a self-proclaimed mediation group – at the United Nations to block an agreement to end the blockade or even condemn the recent RSF attack on a mosque that killed 75 worshipers. The UAE denied this allegation, as well as allegations of providing weapons and military equipment to the Rapid Support Forces. However, evidence to the contrary has been widely documented.

He was there Large numbers of weapons have flowed to the Rapid Support Forces in recent months, which coincides with the escalation of attacks on El Fasher. There is no debate about what the RSF would do if they entered El Fasher: massacre vulnerable non-Arab communities already living in famine conditions. The scale of the casualties is unimaginable, with nearly half a million people still in the city facing starvation and subsisting on animal feed.

One year into the conflict, we at the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights released an independent investigation with leading experts concluding that the Rapid Support Forces are committing genocide against non-Arab communities in Darfur, especially the Masalit tribe.

Our investigation has documented how RSF fighters systematically express their intent to eliminate non-Arab groups using racist and inhumane terms, and targeting victims for killing based on their identity. Among countless examples, one survivor was told: “If you are a Masalit, we have decided that we do not want to leave anyone alive, not even children.”

In 2023, the RSF surrounded and attacked the city of El Geneina in West Darfur, clearly targeting the Masalit community and killing up to 15,000 people. In April this year, on their way towards El Fasher, the RSF stormed the largest camp for displaced people in Sudan, repeated the same atrocities, slaughtered more than 1,500 people, and forcibly displaced more than 400,000. The survivors saw the RSF’s goal as a desire to “exterminate” them.

Now, as the RSF approaches El Fasher, it portrays the entire population as a military target, systematically dehumanizes them and targets and calls for the destruction of non-Arabs, especially the Zaghawa – one of the main groups in the city – even ordering the militia to “eliminate all the Zaghawa, these falangay [slaves]The RSF also targets other non-Arab groups in North Darfur. For example, in a widely circulated video, an RSF field commander executed a civilian after identifying him as belonging to the Berti tribe, another major ethnic group in El Fasher.

Last week, we launched a follow-up legal investigation into the disproportionate impact of war on children, identifying those responsible and complicit in crimes against humanity targeting children.

Since the conflict began, the UN Security Council has remained inactive, passing only two resolutions calling for a temporary ceasefire and an end to the blockade without any concrete enforcement mechanisms to support them.

However the solution is actually very simple. Confront the United Arab Emirates — on which the RSF depends for weapons, funding, and political cover — to prevent its proxy militias from continuing the genocide.

As reports have shown, the UAE acts as a supply line for the Rapid Support Forces through a campaign of cargo flights shipping heavy weapons, artillery, and drones through neighboring countries. (The UAE has faced similar accusations in Yemen, Libya, and Ethiopia.) Although the contents of the flights remain a mystery, the UN Committee of Experts on Sudan – a highly cautious investigative body – confirmed “intensive rotation of cargo aircraft” from the UAE to the RSF, and later reported that the cargo flights formed a “new regional air bridge”.

The UAE has denied the arms smuggling allegations specifically to create plausible deniability of violating the arms embargo on Darfur. It uses tactics typical of any illegal arms smuggling operation to avoid international scrutiny. It has hidden its air base in Chad under the cover of a hospital complex and symbols of the Red Crescent’s humanitarian mission. according to Wall Street Journal In reports, the UAE fabricated aviation documents to hide arms shipments and explicitly refused to release lists of suspicious flights requested by the United Nations, saying it was unable to meet a tight deadline. In Uganda, officials told… Wall Street Journal They received orders to stop inspecting flights flying from the UAE to Chad. Furthermore, a leaked document from a UN panel of experts revealed patterns of UAE flights disappearing from radar mid-flight or having an unrecorded take-off.

Although the United Arab Emirates Claiming that it seeks to confront the resurgence of political Islam in Sudan, it is in fact exploiting the conflict to secure access to Sudan’s valuable resources, including its vast reserves of gold, agriculture, livestock, and Red Sea ports. The UAE is a well-known global destination for gold; Over the course of a decade, $115 billion worth of undeclared gold was imported from Africa to the UAE. The Emirati anti-Islamist narrative does not hold up. In fact, the RSF itself was created by Islamists.

The UAE sheltered the commander of the Rapid Support Forces, Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, and established a direct line between him and the two Emirati leaders, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The Rapid Support Forces’ business empire is based in the United Arab Emirates and is managed by Hemedti’s brothers. A UAE-based company is recruiting foreign mercenaries to fight alongside the Rapid Support Forces. Rapid Support Forces companies, which are used to obtain weapons, buy gold and evade financial sanctions, are based in the United Arab Emirates. To mobilize support for the Rapid Support Forces and hide its atrocities, Mohammed bin Zayed’s advisor company sent Hemedti on a tour on a private plane to meet with African heads of state. According to some US officials, Emirati leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed implicitly acknowledged providing material support to the RSF in a meeting with former US Vice president Kamala Harris, saying they were indebted to the RSF for sending troops to fight alongside the UAE in Yemen.

Without the UAE, the RSF would not be able to continue the siege of El Fasher or commit large-scale atrocities. If the UAE is truly committed to supporting war victims, it should call on the Rapid Support Forces to withdraw. This alone should be a relief to El Fasher, where nearly half a million civilians are suffering from famine and fear that something much worse is imminent.