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How a U.S. Ally Uses Aid as a Cover in War

The United Arab Emirates is expanding a covert campaign to back a winner in Sudan’s civil war. Waving the banner of the Red Crescent, it is also smuggling weapons and deploying drones.

How a U.S. Ally Uses Aid as a Cover in War
The United Arab Emirates is expanding a covert campaign to back a winner in Sudanʼs
civil war. Waving the banner of the Red Crescent, it is also smuggling weapons and
deploying drones.
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How a U.S. Ally Uses Aid as a Cover in War – The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/21/world/africa/uae-sudan…
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Satellite image by Airbus DS, 2024 • By The New York Times
Covert drone airbase
30 miles from Sudan
Drone hangars and
control system
Red Crescent
hospital
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By Declan Walsh and Christoph Koettl
Declan Walsh reported from Sudan, Chad and Switzerland. Christoph Koettl analyzed satellite images, flight records
and other materials.
Published Sept. 21, 2024 Updated Sept. 25, 2024
The drones soar over the vast deserts along the Sudanese border, guiding weapons
convoys that smuggle illicit arms to fighters accused of widespread atrocities and ethnic
cleansing.
They hover over a besieged city at the center of Sudan’s terrible famine, supporting a
ruthless paramilitary force that has bombed hospitals, looted food shipments and torched
thousands of homes, aid groups say.
Yet the drones are flying out of a base where the United Arab Emirates says it is running
a humanitarian effort for the Sudanese people — part of what it calls its “urgent priority”
to save innocent lives and stave off starvation in Africa’s largest war.
The Emirates is playing a deadly double game in Sudan, a country shredded by one of the
world’s most catastrophic civil wars.
Eager to cement its role as a regional kingmaker, the wealthy Persian Gulf petrostate is
expanding its covert campaign to back a winner in Sudan, funneling money, weapons and,
now, powerful drones to fighters rampaging across the country, according to officials,
internal diplomatic memos and satellite images analyzed by The New York Times.
All the while, the Emirates is presenting itself as a champion of peace, diplomacy and
international aid. It is even using one of the world’s most famous relief symbols — the
Red Crescent, the counterpart of the Red Cross — as a cover for its secret operation to fly
drones into Sudan and smuggle weapons to fighters, satellite images show and American
officials say.
The war in Sudan, a sprawling gold-rich nation with nearly 500 miles of Red Sea
coastline, has been fueled by a plethora of foreign nations, like Iran and Russia. They are
supplying arms to the warring sides, hoping to tilt the scales for profit or their own
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strategic gain — while the people of Sudan are caught in the crossfire.
But the Emirates is playing the largest and most consequential role of all, officials say,
publicly pledging to ease Sudan’s suffering even as it secretly inflames it.
Recently arrived Sudanese refugees from the Darfur region, in line to receive food on the outskirts of Adré, a
town in eastern Chad, in July. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
Starvation haunts Sudan. Famine was officially declared last month after nearly 18
months of fighting, which has killed tens of thousands and scattered at least 10 million
people in the world’s worst displacement crisis, the United Nations says. Aid groups call it
a calamity of “historic proportions.”
The Emirates says it has made “absolutely clear” that it is not arming or supporting “any
of the warring parties” in Sudan. To the contrary, it says, it is “alarmed by the rapidly
accelerating humanitarian catastrophe” and pushing for an “immediate cease-fire.”
At a major meeting on Sudan at the United Nations on Wednesday, where one speaker
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after another decried a “man-made” catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions, the Emirates
emphasized its aid to the war’s victims.
But for more than a year, the Emirates has been secretly bolstering the Rapid Support
Forces, or R.S.F., the paramilitary group fighting Sudan’s military for control of Africa’s
third-largest country.
By The New York Times
A Times investigation last year detailing the Emirati weapons smuggling operation was
confirmed by U.N. investigators in January, when they cited “credible” evidence that the
Emirates was breaking a two-decade U.N. arms embargo in Sudan.
Now, the Emiratis are amplifying their covert campaign. Powerful Chinese-made drones,
by far the largest deployed in Sudan’s war, are being flown from an airport across the
border in Chad that the Emirates has expanded into a well-equipped, military-style
airfield.
Hangars have been built and a drone control station installed, satellite images show.
Many of the cargo planes that have landed at the airport during the war previously
transported weapons for the Emirates to other conflict zones, like Libya, where the
Emiratis have also been accused of breaching an arms embargo, a Times analysis of flight
tracking data found.
Detail
area
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American officials say the Emiratis are now using the airport to fly advanced military
drones to provide the R.S.F. with battlefield intelligence, and to escort weapons shipments
to fighters in Sudan — to keep an eye out for ambushes.
Through an analysis of satellite images, The Times identified the type of drone being
used: the Wing Loong 2, a Chinese model often compared to the MQ-9 Reaper of the U.S.
Air Force.
The images show an apparent munitions bunker at the airport and a Wing Loong ground
control station beside the runway — only about 750 yards from an Emirati-run hospital
that has treated wounded R.S.F. fighters.
The Wing Loong can fly for 32 hours, has a range of 1,000 miles and can carry up to a
dozen missiles or bombs. So far, the drones do not seem to be conducting airstrikes of
their own in Sudan, officials say, but are providing surveillance and identifying targets on
chaotic battlefields.
That makes them “a significant force multiplier,” said J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at
the Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
After taking off from the base, the drones may in fact be piloted remotely from Emirati
soil, experts and officials say. Recently, they have been detected patrolling the skies
above the embattled Sudanese city of El Fasher, where people are starving and
surrounded by the R.S.F. The city is home to nearly two million people, and fears are
rising that the war is on the precipice of even more atrocities.
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Chinese-made Wing Loong drones on display at an air show in Dubai in 2019. Karim Sahib/Agence France-
Presse — Getty Images
American officials have been pressuring all the war’s combatants to stop the carnage.
Vice President Kamala Harris confronted the leader of the Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed
bin Zayed, over his country’s support of the R.S.F. when the two met in December,
according to officials briefed on the exchange. President Biden called this week for an end
to the “senseless war,” warning that the R.S.F.’s brutal, monthslong siege on El Fasher
“has become a full-on assault.”
The crisis is expected to come up again when he and Ms. Harris host the Emirati leader
at the White House for the first time on Monday.
“It’s got to stop,” John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said of the siege.
ʻThey Canʼt Lie to Us Anymoreʼ
Both sides in Sudan’s civil war have been accused of war crimes, including brutal assaults
filmed by the fighters themselves.
The war erupted in 2023, when a power struggle between Sudan’s military and the R.S.F.
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— a fighting force it helped create — erupted into gunfire on the streets of the capital and
quickly enveloped the nation.
Sudanese military planes have bombed civilians, while rights groups accuse the R.S.F. of
ethnic cleansing and indiscriminate shelling that has destroyed hospitals, homes and aid
warehouses.
In El Fasher, Doctors Without Borders has accused the military of bombing a children’s
hospital, and R.S.F. troops of plundering a hospital and blocking food intended for a camp
of 400,000 starving people.
In Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, shells fired by the Rapid Support Forces blasted a hole in the Aliaa Specialist
Hospital last April. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
Aid workers are hoping to airdrop food into the city, which Toby Harward, the top U.N.
official for Darfur, likened to “hell on earth.”
The Emirates insists it is simply trying to halt the war and help its victims. It has
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provided $230 million in aid and delivered 10,000 tons of relief supplies, and it played a
prominent role in recent American-led peace talks in Switzerland.
“The U.A.E. remains committed to supporting the people of Sudan in restoring peace,”
Lana Nusseibeh, an Emirati minister for foreign affairs, said afterward.
Senior American officials have privately tried to coax the Emirates to drop its covert
operations, bluntly confronting it with American intelligence on what the Gulf state is
doing inside Sudan, said five American officials with knowledge of the conversations.
After Vice President Harris raised American objections to the arms smuggling with
Sheikh Mohammed in December, the Emirati leader offered what some officials
considered a tacit acknowledgment.
Vice President Kamala Harris and the leader of the Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, in Dubai in
December. She confronted him over his country’s support of the R.S.F. during the meeting, officials said. UAE
Presidential Court/EPA, via Shutterstock
While not admitting direct support to the R.S.F., Sheikh Mohammed said he owed the
paramilitary group’s leader, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, for sending troops to fight
alongside the Emirates in the war in Yemen, according to two American officials briefed
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on the exchange.
Sheikh Mohammed also said he viewed the R.S.F. as a bulwark against Islamist political
movements in the region, which the Emirati royal family has long considered a threat to
its authority, the officials said. (The Emirati government did not respond to questions
about the conversation.)
“They can’t lie to us anymore, because they know that we know,” said one American
official who, like others, was not authorized to speak publicly about the intelligence.
Relief organizations are particularly incensed with the Emirates, accusing it of running “a
Potemkin aid operation” to disguise its support to the R.S.F., according to Jeremy
Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and a former Obama and Biden
administration official.
“They want it both ways,” he said of the Emiratis. “They want to act like a rogue,
supporting their militia client and turning a blind eye to whatever they do with their
weapons. And they want to appear like a constructive, rules-abiding member of the
international system.”
Sudan’s civil war has turned the country, perched strategically on the Red Sea, into a
global free-for-all. Iran has supplied armed drones to the Sudanese military, which has
fought alongside Ukrainian special forces in the capital, Khartoum. Egypt has also sided
with the military.
Russia has played both sides. Wagner mercenaries initially supplied missiles to the R.S.F.,
United Nations inspectors found. More recently, officials say, the Kremlin has tilted to the
military, offering it weapons in exchange for naval access to Sudan’s Red Sea coast.
The Houthis of Yemen sent shiploads of weapons to Sudan’s military, at Iran’s behest, and
gas-rich Qatar sent six Chinese warplanes, American officials say. (Qatar and the Houthis
denied sending military aid.)
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Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, the leader of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries, at Sudan’s military
headquarters in 2019. He is also widely known as Hemeti. Declan Walsh/The New York Times
The Emirates has sent an array of weapons as well, officials have concluded.
“The delivery of drones, howitzers, multiple rocket launchers and MANPADS to the
R.S.F. by the U.A.E. has helped it neutralize the air superiority” of Sudan’s military, the
European Union ambassador to Sudan, Aidan O’Hara, wrote in February in a confidential
memo obtained by The Times. (A MANPAD, or Man-Portable Air Defense System, is a
type of antiaircraft missile.)
The memo contained other startling assertions: that Saudi Arabia has given money to
Sudan’s military, which used it to buy Iranian drones; that as many as 200,000 foreign
mercenaries were fighting alongside the R.S.F.; and that Wagner mercenaries had
trained the R.S.F. to use the antiaircraft missiles supplied by the Emirates.
The Emirati role appears to be part of a broader push into Africa. Last year, it announced
$45 billion in investments across the continent, analysts say, nearly twice as much as
China. Recently, it has expanded into a new business: war.
It turned the tide of Ethiopia’s civil war in 2021 by supplying armed drones to the prime
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minister at a crucial point in the fight, ultimately helping him emerge victorious. Now it
appears to be trying to repeat the same feat in Sudan with the R.S.F.
The Arms Pipeline
Last year, when cargo planes began to land at the airport in Amdjarass, 600 miles east of
the Chadian capital, Ndjamena, the Emirates said it had come to establish a field hospital
for Sudanese refugees.
But within months, American officials discovered that the $20 million hospital quietly
treated R.S.F. fighters, and that the cargo planes also carried weapons that were later
smuggled to fighters inside Sudan.
The Times analysis of satellite images and flight records showed that the Emiratis set up
the drone system at the same time they were promoting their humanitarian operation.
During a lengthy phone call in early May with his Emirati counterpart, President Biden’s
national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, cited American intelligence that had been
declassified so that it could be shared with a foreign official. The evidence documented
Emirati military support to the R.S.F., two American officials briefed on the exchange
said.
But the American candor appears to have had little impact. The Emirates has only
doubled down on its support to the R.S.F. in recent months, American officials and
witnesses in Chad say.
Fewer cargo flights now land at Amdjarass airport, where they can be easily detected, but
a greater proportion of supplies arrives by truck, often along routes that bypass major
cities and towns, officials say.
The New York Times has been following the arrival of aircraft, including Emirati cargo
planes, at the airfield in Amdjarass, Chad, for a year.
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Source: BlackSky; Planet Labs • By The New York Times
Traces of Emirati-supplied weapons are also being found on the battlefield. Human Rights
Watch recently identified Serbian-made missiles, fired from an unidentified drone, that it
said were originally sold to the Emirates.
“It’s very clear: The U.A.E. is sending money, the U.A.E. is sending weapons,” said Succès
Masra, a former prime minister of Chad.
After complaints from Western officials, he said, he told his nation’s president, Mahamat
Aug. 8, 2023July 15, 2023
May 17, 2024 July 6, 2024
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Idriss Déby, that allowing the Emirates to funnel weapons through Chad was a “huge
mistake.”
Nothing changed. The Emirates promised Mr. Déby a $1.5 billion loan, nearly as big as
Chad’s $1.8 billion national budget a year earlier.
The Emirates supports the R.S.F. in other ways, too. Earlier this year, an Emirati private
jet carried the paramilitary force’s leader, General Hamdan, on a tour of six African
countries, where he was treated like a head of state.
Dubai, one of the seven emirates that make up the nation, is the hub of the R.S.F.’s
business empire, which is anchored in gold trading. The U.S. Treasury has imposed
sanctions on what it calls an R.S.F. “front company” and recently listed seven Emirati
companies under investigation on suspicion of being linked to the paramilitary group.
General Hamdan’s 34-year-old brother, Algoney Hamdan, has lived in Dubai since 2014
and was singled out by American sanctions. Yet he is now an interlocutor for stuttering
peace efforts. Speaking in Switzerland during last month’s talks, Mr. Hamdan brushed off
the U.S. measures against him.
“If it brings peace to Sudan, they can sanction as many companies as they want,” he said.
Mr. Hamdan conceded that some R.S.F. troops had committed abuses, but insisted the
Emirates was not backing the R.S.F.
“There is no proof of anything,” he said. “It’s just false propaganda.”
A Cherished Symbol of Aid
The Emirati operation in Chad has deeply worried the Federation of the Red Cross and
Red Crescent, one of the world’s oldest and most venerable aid movements.
It learned only from news reports that the Emirates Red Crescent had established a
hospital in Amdjarass, said Tommaso Della Longa, a Red Cross spokesman. The Emirates
Red Crescent, which is funded by the Emirati government, did not inform the
international federation, as it should have, he added.
The Emiratis eagerly touted their largess. The government’s publicity showed workers
unloading cargo pallets and treating patients under the Red Crescent logo — an emblem
dating back to the 1870s that is legally protected under the Geneva Conventions. Misuse
of that symbol is a potential war crime.
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A photograph released by Emirati state media showing aid after two Emirati aircraft have arrived in
Amdjarass, Chad, in November. Emirates News Agency
Worried that its reputation for neutrality was at risk, the Red Cross sent fact-finding
missions to Chad in 2023 and 2024, “to better understand” what the Emiratis were doing
under the Red Crescent banner in Amdjarass, Mr. Della Longa said.
They found few answers.
When the officials arrived, they were turned away from the Emirati field hospital for
unspecified “security reasons,” Mr. Della Longa said. The officials eventually left Chad
without setting foot in the hospital.
The Emirates Red Crescent did not respond to questions.
Mr. Konyndyk, the Refugees International official, said it was “unheard-of” for an aid
organization to bar its own officials from visiting a hospital that supposedly treats
refugees.
“The Emirates seems to be instrumentalizing the Red Crescent as cover for well-
documented arms shipments to a militia that is actively committing atrocities in Darfur.”
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In June, Emirati officials said they had treated nearly 30,000 patients, and were looking to
expand the hospital, but people in Amdjarass say the hospital opens for just four hours a
day.
The Emirates opened a second field hospital in Chad, in the city of Abéché in April. When
The Times visited the 80-bed facility in July, doctors readily offered a tour of its well-
equipped wards, which the hospital’s director, Dr. Khalid Mohammed, said received as
many as 250 patients every day.
Patients wait to be seen at a field hospital in the Chadian city of Abéché, built by the Emirates at a cost of $20
million, which opened in April. Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
A private Emirati company ran the hospital, and it had no connection with the Red Cross
or Crescent, he said. But the hospital closed at 4 p.m. each day, limiting the medical
services it could provide.
The Red Cross says it is still trying to figure out what the Emiratis are up to.
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“The process is not finished,” Mr. Della Longa, the Red Cross spokesman, said of the
inquiry into the Amdjarass hospital. “We want to get to the bottom of it.”
Counterbalancing Iran
As Sudan plunges deeper into what many experts called the world’s biggest humanitarian
crisis, American officials say they are more sharply focused on the conflict than ever.
Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, organized last month’s peace talks in
Switzerland despite their low chance of halting the fighting.
And Mr. Sullivan, the national security adviser, intervened directly with officials from
Saudi Arabia when they appeared to be obstructing talks, said three people with
knowledge of the interactions.
But the Biden administration is divided on a fundamental question: How hard should it
push the Emirates?
When the U.S. envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello, suggested on a podcast on Sept. 4 that he
supported a boycott of the Emirates by the rapper Macklemore, who recently canceled a
Dubai show over the Emirates’ role in Sudan, it provoked a furious private reaction from
Emirati officials, several officials said.
“I sure didn’t have Macklemore as hero for Sudan on my bingo card,” Mr. Perriello said on
the podcast.
Some senior White House and State Department officials felt Mr. Perriello had gone too
far, while others cringed at the idea of cowing to the Emiratis for the sake of good
relations.
The dispute reflected the limits of challenging the Emirates, a country the United States
relies on for many global priorities. The Emirates is a staunch American ally against Iran,
a signatory of the Abraham Accords to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, a
potential player in postwar Gaza, and it has even facilitated prisoner swaps between
Ukraine and Russia.
The Gulf state has shrugged off international censure before, notably over its role in
Yemen, but it appears to be sensitive to growing criticism over Sudan.
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An empty street in the heavily destroyed Al-Shaabi market in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in April. Ivor
Prickett for The New York Times
When European diplomats considered last February whether the nation “would have any
qualms about the slaughter and devastation” caused by its actions in Sudan, the
confidential E.U. memo said, the diplomats concluded that the Emiratis “would be more
concerned about any damage to their reputation rather than any sense of moral
culpability.”
But whether the Emiratis would be willing to cede Sudan to one of the many rival powers
piling into the war, especially Iran, is another matter entirely.
The prospect of Iran gaining a foothold on the Western shores of the Red Sea has clearly
unnerved the Emirates and several other Arab countries involved in Sudan, officials say.
That sense of alarm is driving a proxy war and prompting rival powers to pour ever more
weapons into Sudan, pushing the tottering state toward complete collapse.
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The Emiratis say Sudanese refugees are grateful for the Emirati help. But the anger
among others is growing.
Last week, when Ms. Nusseibeh, the Emirati minister who took part in peace talks in
Switzerland, visited one of the hospitals in Chad to showcase her country’s good works,
she was confronted by an infuriated Sudanese refugee.
“You know very well that you ignited this war!” yelled a man during a public meeting, in
an exchange that quickly spread on social media. “We don’t want anything from you,
except that you stop it.”
Speaking by phone, the man, who asked to be identified as Suliman out of fear of
reprisals, said he hadn’t been able to contain himself.
R.S.F. brutality had forced him to flee Sudan a year earlier, joining 800,000 refugees now
in Chad, he said. So when the Emirati minister sat before him, he said, he saw “the reason
my house was destroyed.”
“I lost everything,” he said. “I had to get up and say what was in my heart.”
Julian Barnes and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Shuaib Almosawa from Bangalore,
India. Videos and graphics by Alexander Cardia and Josh Holder.
Declan Walsh is the chief Africa correspondent for The Times based in Nairobi, Kenya. He previously reported
from Cairo, covering the Middle East, and Islamabad, Pakistan. More about Declan Walsh
Christoph Koettl is a Times reporter on the Visual Investigations team. More about Christoph Koettl
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Sneaking Weapons Under
Humanitarian Cloak
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