Thousands are feared dead after the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a Sudanese paramilitary group, seized control of the city of el-Fasher last week.
Video shows RSF fighters conducting mass executions and killings, while satellite images have detected substantial and persistent patches of blood on the ground, in what Nathaniel Raymond at Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab described as a “Rwanda-level mass extermination”.
The massacre is the latest atrocity in the civil war between the RSF and the country’s army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which has displaced an estimated 13m people since fighting began in April 2023.
Throughout, RSF fighters have been accused of atrocities, including massacres, sexual violence and torture. The SAF has likewise been accused of war crimes, including indiscriminate bombing campaigns.
The RSF is not acting alone, but has the support of the UAE, which the Sudanese government accused of complicity in genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in April 2025.
Here, we tell you what you need to know about the UAE and its involvement in the Sudan civil war.
What’s been happening in Sudan?
Sudan, which gained independence from the UK and Egypt in 1956, was ruled for three decades by Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who overthrew the elected government in 1989.
Bashir oversaw mass killing, rape and pillage against civilians in Darfur between 2003-5, for which he was indicted on the charge of genocide by the International Criminal Court. He was deposed in 2019 by the military, amid a popular uprising.
But Sudan’s steps towards long-term democracy ended in October 2021, when military commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan seized control.
RSF leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, was installed as his deputy.
The new military government declared a state of emergency and arrested civilian leaders, cracking down on demonstrations while building ties with the Gulf.
What happened in Sudan in 2023?
We don’t know exactly who fired the first shots in the Sudanese civil war. What we do know is that tension had been building between Hemedti’s RSF and the SAF, Sudan’s army, about integrating the paramilitary force into the national military.
On 15 April 2023, RSF forces advanced towards Burhan’s residence. The ensuing shootout would eventually spiral into an all-out civil war that initially saw the paramilitaries seize control of much of Khartoum, forcing the Sudanese government to flee to Port Sudan.
More than two years later, thousands of Sudanese are dead and nearly 25m people face acute food insecurity, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).
El-Fasher, in North Darfur, was the final stronghold of the Sudanese army in the west. It is estimated that more than one million people were trapped in the city when RSF troops surrounded it in May 2024.
In August 2025, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared famine in the displacement camps outside the city.
The city was besieged for more than 500 days – until it fell to the RSF late last month.
Who are the RSF?
The RSF grew out of the Janjaweed collection of government-backed forces, an Arab grouping mobilised by Bashir in the early 2000s to quell uprisings by Darfuri rebel groups protesting against deprivation and marginalisation.
It was accused of committing war crimes such as extrajudicial killings, torture and rape during a conflict in which an estimated 2.5m people were displaced and 300,000 killed.
The group was restructured into the RSF in 2013, with Hemedti as its commander, in effect becoming another power base for Bashir that could be played off against other security agencies if needed.
Hemedti became a business tycoon, with overseas financial links in the UAE, primarily trading in gold. In 2023, his worth was estimated at $7bn.
While the SAF traditionally has its power base in the east of Sudan, the RSF is stronger in the west.
RSF attacks against the indigenous Masalit in 2023, in the town of el-Geneina in Darfur, included torture, rape and summary execution and triggered accusations of genocide.
In April 2024, an independent inquiry carried out by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre, and echoed by the US government, found that there is “clear and convincing evidence” that the RSF and its allied militias “have committed and are committing genocide against the Masalit”.
What has the UAE done to support the RSF?
Multiple powers from outside the region have become involved in the war in Sudan. Russia, not least through the Wagner Group, has backed both sides. Meanwhile, Turkey has backed the SAF, as has Egypt.
But the UAE is perhaps the most prominent state to intervene. Despite long denying involvement in Sudan’s civil war, there is evidence that it is supporting the RSF militarily, in breach of arms embargoes.
At the beginning of the conflict, the RSF’s reserves numbered 100,000, compared with the Sudanese army’s 200,000.
Many analysts have attributed the RSF’s longevity to its support from external backers.
MEE reported in January 2024 that the UAE was supplying the RSF with weapons through a complex network of supply lines and alliances across neighbouring Libya, Chad, Uganda, and breakaway regions of Somalia.
Emirati passports were discovered in a plane wreckage linked to the RSF, according to UN Security Council documents leaked in July 2024.
And in May 2025, Amnesty International found that the UAE was sending advanced Chinese-made weaponry into Darfur.
The human rights organisation said it had identified guided bombs and howitzers manufactured by the Chinese state-owned Norinco Group. Middle East Eye had previously reported on their use in Sudan.
In October 2025, US intelligence agencies also reported that the UAE has increased its supply of Chinese drones and other weapons systems to the RSF, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The UAE has two bases in Sudan: Nyala in South Darfur and al-Malha, 200km from el-Fasher, which it uses for supplies and intelligence purposes.
In addition, it also uses a base in Bosaso, Somalia, to transit Colombian mercenaries, regular transport flights and cargo.
So why is the UAE involved?
The UAE invested heavily in Sudan towards the end of Bashir’s 30-year rule. From 2015, tens of thousands of Sudanese fought in the Saudi Arabia-UAE coalition in Yemen.
But as Bashir faced a domestic crisis, the UAE pulled its funding and supplies. The Emiratis were reportedly aggrieved by his stance on the Qatar blockade and his government’s links to political Islam.
Today, Sudan offers the UAE an arena from which to project its power across the Red Sea and east Africa.
The UAE holds significant interests in Sudan’s agricultural and mineral resources, many of which are untapped, including gold. The UAE has become a global trading hub in gold, in its attempts to diversify its oil-dependent economy.
RSF networks help facilitate and secure these exports: Hemedti and his family own a gold company that operates on lands seized by the RSF in Darfur in 2017. His youngest brother, Algoney Dagalo, is a businessman based in the UAE.
The UAE also controls several land and farming operations in Sudan, a country it has, for decades, positioned as an agricultural trade partner, amid fears of food insecurity across the Gulf.
International Holding Company, the UAE’s largest listed corporation, and Jenaan Investment Group now farm more than 50,000 hectares in Sudan.
The UAE has also expanded its seaport empire into Sudan, which is strategically positioned on the Red Sea – around a third of global container traffic passes through.
All this has happened while western competitors seek to outpace DP World, the UAE’s state-owned seaport operator.
The Gulf state proposed investing around $8bn in the Abu Amama sea port on Sudan’s Red Sea coast, only for the deal to fall through in November 2024 while the Sudanese civil war continued to rage.
Emirati hostility towards the Sudanese military is also often described as ideological, as Sudan’s army has longstanding links to political Islam dating from the Bashir era.
How has the world reacted to the UAE in Sudan?
The world has been slow to respond since the SAF first publicly accused the UAE of supplying the RSF in November 2023.
Sudan’s ICJ case against the UAE was thrown out in May 2025 by the court, whose judges cited a lack of jurisdiction to rule on the matter, as the UAE had opted out of settling genocide cases at the court when it signed the Genocide Convention in 2005.
The UAE has also pressured allies into giving their support. In April 2024, the Gulf state cancelled meetings with UK ministers after London did not defend the UAE at a UN Security Council meeting on Sudan.
Two months later, UK government officials told African diplomats to avoid speaking about the UAE’s role in Sudan, according to The Guardian.
David Lammy, the then-UK Foreign Secretary, visited the Chad border with Sudan in January 2025, describing the situation as “the biggest humanitarian catastrophe on the planet”.
But he skirted parliamentary questions about the UAE’s involvement in the conflict upon his return.
The British government has also been holding secret talks with the RSF, according to The Guardian, which also reported that British-made military equipment is being used by the RSF.
A major international conference on the Sudan crisis was hosted in April 2025 in London, with the UAE invited to attend. But the Sudanese government, dominated by Burhan and the military, was not invited, to its anger.
The conference was slammed as a “diplomatic flop” after the RSF timed an offensive on el-Fasher to coincide with the summit, then announced the establishment of a parallel government.
The conference also failed in its objective of setting up a contact group for ceasefire talks amid arguments between Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
In September 2025, US President Donald Trump published a peace plan co-authored with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
It proposes a three-month humanitarian truce, followed by a permanent ceasefire and a civilian government.
Israel, meanwhile, has joined the Emiratis in criticising the SAF. On 31 October, days after the RSF’s massacre in el-Fasher, a post on the Israeli state’s official Arabic-language X account compared the SAF to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Source: MEE
