The Financial Times has highlighted the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) involvement in exacerbating civil conflicts to exploit the resources of various nations and advance its own agendas for gaining influence and expanding its reach.
The newspaper cited the ongoing conflict in Sudan, which has displaced 10 million people, left 25 million facing acute hunger, and unleashed horrific human rights violations.
The Financial Times described the conflict in Sudan as a proxy war, noting that various emerging regional powers, including Gulf nations, have been involved since the war erupted in Khartoum in April last year.
According to the report, the covert battles these powers are waging, often entangled in competing mediation efforts, make it difficult to untangle the complex goals of the conflict and hinder its resolution.
A recent report by Amnesty International found that weapons and military equipment provided by the UAE, Turkey, China, and Russia have proliferated on the battlefield, with civilians being the primary victims.
This month, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an independent group of experts, declared famine conditions affecting half a million people in the Zamzam camp in North Darfur.
People have fled there from the besieged city of El Fasher, which was once a refuge but has become the site of relentless bombing in recent months.
Last week, Médecins Sans Frontières reported that a hospital was bombed for the tenth time and that supply trucks carrying food and medical aid were no longer able to reach the area.
Almost all of Sudan’s seven neighboring countries are being used as transit routes for lethal supplies. Amnesty International stated, “This conflict is being fueled by nearly unobstructed arms supplies.”
When hostilities erupted last year between Sudan’s two most powerful generals—former allies in the 2019 ousting of Omar al-Bashir after 30 years in power—there was concern that regional powers would be drawn into the conflict. These fears have been proven accurate.
Despite Sudan’s decades-long turmoil, it possesses resources coveted by other nations: gold, fertile land, a long stretch of the Nile, and, most crucially, 750 kilometers of Red Sea coastline.
While the proxies on each side are not perfectly aligned and routinely deny their involvement, the situation largely breaks down as follows: Egypt and Saudi Arabia back the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and its leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. On the other side, the UAE and Russia support the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group that emerged from the infamous Janjaweed militia, led by former camel trader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti. Other foreign backers are more mixed in their support.
Burhan represents the Sudanese state, though humanitarian workers argue that he has abandoned this claim by blocking food aid to areas controlled by the RSF.
In addition to using starvation as a weapon, Burhan’s forces have been accused by Amnesty International and others of committing severe human rights abuses.
The RSF, however, is even worse. Alex de Waal, a Sudan expert at Tufts University, describes it as a “machine of plunder and looting.”
He warns that if the RSF, which has long collaborated with the Russian mercenary group formerly known as Wagner, were to triumph, Sudan would become “a wholly owned subsidiary of a transnational mercenary corporation.”
The UAE denies supporting the RSF, although many independent experts, including a United Nations panel, have provided satellite and other evidence suggesting otherwise.
Those who claim to understand the UAE’s motives suggest that it suspects Burhan is too close to Islamists. In contrast, despite his genocidal background, Hemedti has managed to present himself as a pro-democracy figure.
This is one conflict where it’s difficult to blame the West for pulling the strings. If anything, the West is guilty of not paying enough attention.
While the wars in Gaza and Ukraine are viewed as existential moral and strategic conflicts, the struggle between Burhan and Hemedti has been more challenging to frame in terms of justice.
Neither side seems capable of achieving a decisive victory. Burhan’s forces have retreated from Khartoum to Port Sudan, while Hemedti’s troops are entrenched around Darfur. Khartoum remains contested, and Sudan, which already lost South Sudan after its 2011 independence, could fracture even further.
So far, competing mediation efforts have resulted in little more than broken ceasefires, amid growing international calls to impose sanctions on the UAE and other nations fueling the conflict in Sudan to end the war and restore peace.
