It’s easy to tell when the United States has grown tired of a friendly government pretending that it isn’t secretly backing a proxy in a brutal and destabilizing war.
In March, the Trump administration sanctioned the entire Rwandan military and several of its top officers, barring U.S. companies and individuals from transacting with them. Rwanda had continued covertly supporting a notoriously abusive militia across the Congolese border, even as the administration was promoting an aspirational ceasefire agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In Sudan, though, the Trump administration seems unlikely to mete out such treatment to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for its comparable backing of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a faction in Sudan’s brutal conflict that the U.S. government accused of genocide and war crimes even before RSF forces sacked the city of El Fasher in October. The latest example of this deference is Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit this week to the UAE in a swing through three Gulf countries to assuage concerns over the U.S.-Iran agreement aimed at ending the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran; Rubio addressed Sudan in generic terms that are unlikely to prompt any substantial change.
Since the outbreak of the Sudan war in 2023, both the Biden and Trump administrations have considered the Emirates too powerful and important to other interests to impose even a fraction of the necessary pressure and scrutiny on its actions in Sudan. Instead, the United States has opted for an indirect and largely symbolic attempt to shift the UAE’s behavior, e.g., sanctioning companies controlled by RSF leaders that are based in the UAE.
Even the symbolism seems misguided, though. The United States and other governments have recently used financial sanctions to focus some pressure and scrutiny on a network of Colombian mercenaries deployed to fight alongside the RSF. But even these sanctions have turned into a show of hesitance, stopping short of addressing or even acknowledging the government-linked Emirati businessman whose company reportedly is providing those mercenaries, as further corroborated by a new Human Rights Watch report.
This avoidance is more than just being respectful of the UAE’s sensitivities or helping the country save face. It is enabling the brutality of their proxy. Changing the UAE’s actions will require applying reputational pressure. Civil society and some legislators are working hard to do so; governments and the private sector should find the courage to act as well.
Nothing to See Here
Emirati authorities have repeatedly and strenuously denied providing support to the RSF, even joining the United States and others in multilateral calls for an end to external support to the combatants. But reporting by journalists, United Nations investigators, and NGOs has offered evidence, apparently validated by U.S. intelligence agencies, that the UAE has been helping arm and supply the RSF.
In its final weeks, the Biden administration appeared to backhandedly acknowledge to a U.S. senator that the UAE had been arming the RSF, though its statement relayed an assurance from the Emirates that no such support would be provided in the future. Even that assurance was rapidly called into question by a U.S. intelligence briefing just weeks later.
The Emirates are not the only covert outside backer of a Sudanese faction, as Turkey and Iran have reportedly helped arm Sudan’s national army, which is fighting the RSF. But the RSF has been especially brutal, attracting a genocide charge from the Biden and Trump administrations and congressional calls to have the group designated as a foreign terrorist organization. One of the group’s most notorious perpetrators proudly filmed and posted his atrocities in El Fasher online and faced only a brief, sham arrest after his acts drew media attention.
In one significant line of reporting, a string of media and NGO reports such as the one from Human Rights Watch have indicated that Colombian mercenaries have been provided to support the RSF and train its soldiers and recruits. Some of those being trained and presumably sent into hostilities are reportedly children under the age of 18, in violation of applicable international law. Some were even below the age of 15, which is the relevant threshold for the war crime of using child soldiers under the Rome Statute that governs the International Criminal Court’s ongoing investigation in Darfur, including the events in El Fasher.
In turn, an Emirati businessman with close ties to top officials, Mohamed Hamdan Alzaabi, appears to own the Emirati company that has contracted for “hundreds” of Colombian mercenaries to serve in Sudan, according to the investigative reporting organization The Sentry. The Colombian media outlet La Silla Vacia estimates the number of Colombian mercenaries involved at about 300. One recent investigation by Conflict Insights Group used commercially available cell phone data, as well as flight-tracking information, satellite imagery, and other open-source data to show that some of these mercenaries passed through a UAE military training facility or an Emirati-funded base in Somalia on their way to El Fasher in North Darfur.
The mercenary pipeline is just one of many strands of alleged Emirati support to the RSF. Perhaps because that strand involves nationals from other countries, though, several states have taken tangible action against it in recent months. The United States (here and here) and U.K. governments have placed financial sanctions and travel bans on several involved Colombian individuals and companies, as well as one company from Panama. The U.N. Security Council’s members unanimously agreed to sanction three of the individuals as well.
But all have stopped short of sanctioning or even calling out Alzaabi, his company, or other Emiratis who may be involved in providing the mercenaries. Rather than applying pressure for change, this approach seems to affirm that powerful states simply refuse to name the Emirati role, even when they are ostensibly trying to address it.
Living in Truth
The Emirati denials work by making it a hostile act for other governments to notice and describe the UAE’s actions. Indeed, Emirati officials reportedly canceled meetings with U.K. counterparts in 2024 after being dissatisfied that a British representative did not proactively defend the Emirates in a U.N. Security Council session in which Sudan had accused them of backing the RSF.
In turn, the resulting silence or ambiguity from governments feeds a false uncertainty about the situation, making it harder to mobilize pressure. If the UAE’s support to the RSF can be dismissed as a matter of dispute, third parties that might have influence over the Emirates — from governments to the UAE’s business partners in international sports — will find it easier to fend off requests to use that influence, and less necessary to worry about reputational risk that might come from having close ties with the country.
Governments could do much to help change that dynamic, including cutting off arms sales to the UAE itself. Short of that, they should impose sanctions that put a spotlight on more powerful actors rather than allowing them to stay in the dark.
Lawmakers can help, too. U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, recently wrote a letter urging the National Basketball Association to reconsider its high-profile partnership with the UAE. That offers a rare but encouraging bipartisan model. Their outreach supports and builds on ongoing civil society campaigns, including one focused on the NBA’s recent playoff finals, to raise the reputational cost to the Emirates by confronting their “sportswashing” practices.
The bipartisan leaders of Congress’s foreign affairs or banking committees should also invoke a trigger in U.S. sanctions law to require the Trump administration to assess and report whether specific Emirati officials, companies, or businessmen are sufficiently linked to abuses like the RSF’s use of child soldiers to be sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act. More than just asking the question, members of Congress should also make their own views clear.
There must be real costs for those who continue to aid and abet war crimes in Sudan. For that to happen, politicians and diplomats will need to put a higher priority on stopping the grave harms resulting from outside support than on treading lightly around it in public.
