Smoking gun’ evidence points to UAE involvement in Sudan Civil War
The Guardian
Passports recovered from battlefields in Sudan suggest the United Arab Emirates is covertly putting boots on the ground in the country’s devastating civil war, according to leaked documents.
A 41-page document, sent to the UN security council and seen by the Guardian, contains images of Emirati passports allegedly found in Sudan and linked to soldiers of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the African nation’s notorious paramilitary.
The UAE has previously denied all accusations of supplying arms to the RSF, which is holding the city of El Fasher under siege in a wider campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.
However, the suggestion that the Emirates has deployed personnel to assist the fighting in Sudan would be an escalation, further inflaming the geopolitical complexities of the 15-month long civil war between the RSF and Sudanese military.
The passports are claimed to have been recovered from Omdurman, the city across the Nile from the capital, Khartoum, in an area that was held by the RSF but recently reclaimed by the Sudanese army.
Analysts described the discovery as a “smoking gun” that challenged UAE denials and raised questions over what the US and UK know about the level of the Gulf state’s involvement in Sudan and whether the west has done enough to rein in backing of a militia accused of genocide.
The former Sudan adviser to the US government, Cameron Hudson, said the west would be obliged to act. “This will force Washington to acknowledge what it knows about this, and will force them to respond,” he said.
Some experts believe that, without the UAE’s alleged involvement, the conflict driving the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crisis would already be over.
The document, sent last month to the UN security council, also indicates that the Emirates has supplied the RSF with drones modified to drop controversial thermobaric bombs. These are more devastating than conventional explosives of similar size, and there have been calls to ban them.
What caused the civil war in Sudan and how has it become one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises?
The papers include photographs of pages of four passports apparently belonging to UAE male nationals, two born in Dubai, one in the city of Al Ain and another Ajman, the fifth-largest city in the UAE. All are aged between 29 and 49.
A source familiar with the discovery said the passports were recovered from the wreckage of a vehicle found in Omdurman in February. “The assessment is that they belong to UAE intelligence officers,” they added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Two passports belonging to Yemeni nationals were found in the same location, with one, a 38-year-old, born in Dubai, and a 31-year-old from Dhale, south-west Yemen. The RSF has previously sent thousands of its fighters to Yemen to fight against the Houthis, and the apparent recovery of Yemeni passports in Sudan suggest such help may have been reciprocated.
However the UAE dismissed the claims saying that the four Emerati individuals featured on the images of passports had, in fact, travelled to Sudan “well before the conflict” on a humanitarian trip that had taken place 11 months before war broke out in April 2023.
A statement from the UAE ambassador to the UN said that five of the six passports belonged to a May 2022 delegation from a UAE-based humanitarian group called International Charity Organization that visited Sudan.
“No photographs of the other parts of the six passports are provided to substantiate the allegations that these passports were seized from an armored vehicle in a road accident… and are in the possession of the SAF [Sudanese Armed Forces], added the statement.
The UAE has repeatedly refuted allegations it is has sent military support to any of Sudan’s warring parties. Last month, the Emirati mission to the UN said claims suggesting otherwise were “lies, disinformation and propaganda disseminated by some Sudanese representatives”.