UAE uses Wagner fighters to smuggle weapons into Sudan – DNyuz

The United Arab Emirates has used the notorious Russian mercenary group Wagner to supply weapons to rebels during Sudan’s civil war, according to experts and a paramilitary group.

The Kremlin-funded military contractor used the neighboring Central African Republic (CAR) to smuggle weapons to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which were fighting the Sudanese army.

Rebels fighting the government of the Central African Republic said after investigation by SourceMaterial that they had seized weapons shipments under Wagner escort that had been delivered by the UAE and were destined for the RSF.

The rebels said deliveries would continue until at least April 2024. Diplomatic sources said deliveries have since slowed as Moscow increasingly turns its back on the RSF and focuses more on the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

More than 150,000 people have been killed and more than 10 million have been displaced in Sudan since a simmering rivalry between the army and RSF erupted into war last year.

Both sides are accused of atrocities. The conflict has created one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet and led to the first official declaration of famine in seven years.

United Nations investigators this week accused the RSF of “horrific” ethnically motivated attacks on non-Arab Sudanese in the Darfur region.

The UAE, traditionally one of Britain’s closest allies in the Gulf, has long maintained contacts with the RSF and has been repeatedly accused of supplying them with weapons. The UAE strongly denies any involvement, although UN experts have called previous allegations “credible”.

The Emirati government declined to comment on the latest allegations.

Russia has also emerged as a major player as the war has become a complex global battlefield fought by competing opportunistic powers. Moscow has played both sides of the bloodshed, analysts say, hoping to be rewarded with access to gold mines and a strategic Red Sea port.

Wagner mercenaries are heavily involved in neighboring CAR, where they bolster the government against opposition rebels and have used the country as a conduit for weapons destined for the RSF.

A rebel leader said Wagner’s forces – now known as the Africa Corps after Yevgeny Prighozin’s failed uprising – were transporting weapons through the Um Dafog border crossing into South Darfur.

Abdu Buda, a spokesman for the Coalition of Patriots for Change, said the paramilitary group had intercepted two shipments, most recently in April, and had also captured Russian Wagner mercenaries. He said two were dead and two were still being held.

He said: “These shipments were transported by Wagner mercenaries who are fighting our forces, controlling the gold and diamond mining areas and supporting the government in Bangui.”

“We arrested fighters from the Russian mercenaries of Wagner during the fighting between us and the government forces of the Central African Republic… We arrested together with them weapons that came from the UAE to the Central African Republic via Uganda.”

“During the investigation into the Wagner prisoners, they told us that they are working with the government of the UAE and the Central African Republic to send the weapons to RSF.”

Wagner’s smuggling route runs through the capital Bangui to Birao, near the border with Sudan, said Nathalia Dukhan, a Central Africa specialist at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

“Local sources reported that planes arrived in Bangui at night with military equipment, which they believe were Emirati,” she said.

“Wagner collected the shipments, transported them via helicopters and military aircraft to Birao and then transferred them to the RSF in Sudan.”

Diplomatic sources said deliveries to the RSF appeared to have slowed earlier this year after relations between the Kremlin and the Sudanese military improved.

Wagner and the UAE have already worked closely together elsewhere in Africa, notably in Libya.

‘Strategic alignment of interests’

Andreas Krieg, an academic from King’s College London who studies the conflict, said: “The story of Wagner on the African continent starts in the UAE. They gave them the initial funding to establish their base in Libya.

“There is a strategic balancing of interests between Russia and the UAE, as they oppose political Islam and civil society in general.”

According to the Sudanese military, the CAR shipments are just part of an arsenal of weapons from the UAE being transferred to the RSF.

“The rebel militia has committed violations and atrocities with the unstinted support of the UAE,” said a leaked 78-page dossier of allegations compiled by Al-Harith Idriss al-Harith Mohamed, Sudan’s permanent representative to the UN.

His letter to the Security Council, dated March 28, lists 43 flights from the UAE and to an airport in Chad on the border with Sudan between July 2023 and March 2024. Many of the flights are said to be carrying shipments of weapons.

The letter contains photographs believed to have been taken at Amdjarass airport in Chad, one of which shows a crate of Kalashnikovs being unloaded from a plane from the UAE.

Mohamed Abushahab, the UAE ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council this week that Sudan’s claims that it was supplying the RSF were “a cynical attempt to distract from the shortcomings of the Sudanese armed forces”.

Russia, like the UAE, was deeply involved in Sudan long before the current war.

In 2017, Omar al-Bashir, the then president of Sudan, signed agreements in Moscow agreeing to Russia establishing a naval base in Port Sudan and granting gold mining concessions to Wagner front companies.

Jonas Horner, former senior analyst for the Horn of Africa at Crisis Group, said: “By Wagner/Africa Corps maintaining ties with the RSF and the Kremlin providing support to the SAF, Russia has been able to distort this parallel support.

“Since Sudan has no international friends, neither warring party felt able to alienate Moscow by cutting ties.”

Although the RSF has gained ground in much of the country, the army appears difficult to dislodge from the northeastern coast, but it remains crucial to Moscow’s dream of a naval base.

Mr Horner said: “I suspect the equation for Russia has become that the SAF on the Red Sea looks quite comfortable in their defence of the north-eastern corner of the country, aided by the supply of Iranian weapons.

“That could become the sovereign corner of Sudan as we know it under a SAF-controlled government, regardless of their control over the rest of the country, making close ties with the SAF the shortest route for Moscow to acquire a base on the Red Sea.”

The story UAE uses Wagner fighters to smuggle weapons into Sudan first appeared on The Telegraph.