Inside Africa: UAE Accused Of Complicity In Genocide As Sudan Enters Its Third Year Of War

AFP

“This is the season for hunting mice”, declared an officer of the Sudanese army in a video he filmed of himself walking through a street strewn with corpses. Presumably, they were the bodies of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), his enemy, though some weren’t wearing any visible uniform. Not long beforehand, they had been attempting an escape from the capital, Khartoum, which their opponent the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has been closing in on over the past weeks.

Though there are few who believe the war will end any time soon, it marks a turning point in Sudan’s civil war, which has now been raging on for almost three years. Estimates claim 150,000 people have died since the start of the conflict, with over 14 million people displaced as a result. What is supposedly the worst humanitarian crisis in the world has also become a major hunger crisis, as food insecurity has crippled the civilians who remained after the war began on April 15th, 2023.

Back then, the RSF militia took control of Khartoum, pushing the SAF to the east of the country. But since October 2024, the SAF has regained ground after capturing the Jebel Moya Mountain Range, a strategic position south of Khartoum. The capital of the country now seems to be almost entirely in their control, as RSF forces fled their holding of the presidential palace last Friday 21st March, which was later taken by SAF troops. Despite the progress however, the outlook remains bleak: General Abdel Fattah Burhan has said he would rather fight than talk.

A Feud Between Two Generals

Sudan, once the largest country of the African continent, has long been a region of internal conflict between the wealthier and more developed north, which is mostly Arab and Muslim, and the poorer south, which is more Christian. After years of civil war, a referendum eventually led the south to secede from the north and form the new country South Sudan, leaving Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s dictator since 1989, to run his Islamic regime under sharia law, in the northern territory.

Yet it would only last until 2019. Years of morality police suppression and the persecution of religious minorities led the people of Sudan to a decade of frustrations and protests, until in April 2019, al-Bashir was deposed by his own army, the SAF, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who was assisted by the militia called the Rapid Support Forces, led by Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo. 

Al-Bashir had initially created the armed group, previously known under the name Janjaweed militia and used them, among other violent uses, to persecute ethnic minorities in a western region of Sudan called Darfur. Already in 2003, al-Bashir had brutally persecuted the Fur, Zaghawa, or Masalit peoples, and as many as 300,000 were murdered in the Darfur War, which has also been called a genocide.

When the RSF joined forces with the SAF in 2019, the alliance put the SAF’s General al-Burhan at the head of the junta, with Dagalo as his deputy. They formed a Transitional Sovereignty Council after the coup, which appointed the Sudanese statesman Abdalla Hamdock as prime minister, and aimed to bring democratic elections to Sudan.

But governance of Sudan stalled from there, with Hamdock deposed, then reinstated towards the end of 2021. He finally resigned in January 2022, leaving the leadership of Sudan in the hands of both al-Burhan and Dagalo. In the following year, continued negotiations failed as the two tried to devise a transitional leadership plan, and integrate the RSF militia into the Sudanese Armed Forces. 

Tensions between al-Burhan and Dagalo rose during this time as both vied for more power. In early April 2023, SAF forces were deployed across Khartoum under the command of al-Burhan, which led the RSF to mobilize its own forces. On April 15th, fighting erupted after a series of gunfire assaults and explosions. Both sides accused the other of attacking their troops headquartered in different parts of the capital.

The two Generals, once allied for the cause of democracy in Sudan, have since been engaged in Africa’s biggest ongoing war, sharing the responsibility for what has also been called “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history” by the UN’s chief for Humanitarian and Emergency relief. Both sides have been accused of numerous acts of crimes against humanity, including sexual violence, war crimes and genocide.

On March 6th, 2025, the SAF accused the United Arab Emirates of complicity in the RSF’s war crimes through the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Sudan, an Arab speaking and mostly Muslim country, has always been a land of interest for states of the Arab peninsula because of its strategic placement and resource rich territory (notably Gold and natural Gas). In parts of Sudan, there is also agricultural potential for countries like the Emirates, a country almost entirely made of desert.  

Already before the war, the RSF was tied to the UAE during the Yemeni civil war in 2015. Al-Bashir sent his military to assist Saudi Arabia’s forces in the conflict, and the RSF banded with the UAE. Though both fought on the same side, their paths diverged ideologically — the UAE opposes and outlaws the Muslim Brotherhood political movement, which back then, Al-Bashir favored.

In Sudan’s current conflict, the UAE has been accused of supporting the RSF by funnelling military equipment across the border with Chad. Their goal, experts suggest, is political influence in Sudan, both for their own economic interests, as well as the political undermining of Saudi Arabia’s ideological influence across the Arab world. Throughout the land between Libya and Somalia, “we see a pattern of the UAE working with paramilitaries”, said Hamid Khalafallah, a researcher on Sudan. 

The SAF’s specific accusations are of complicity in genocide. In Darfur, a territory which is held by the RSF, violence against minorities resumed after the conflict broke out in 2023. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, in early November, more than 800 were killed in Ardamata, in a rampage conducted by the RSF and allied militias. The UN has claimed that in 2023, between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in West Darfur.  

The UAE denies the accusations, calling the filing with the ICJ a “publicity stunt”. The RSF has recently made gains towards establishing the upper hand in Sudan’s future, holding meetings with allies in Nairobi last February to discuss a plan of post-war governance. Seeking trial in an international court of law may indeed be an attempt from the SAF to also gain traction outside the battlefield.

Yet, according to experts, the Emirates are known to be a destabilizing actor in the region. In 2022, Swissaid estimated that 66.5% of the UAE’s gold imports from Africa were smuggled. How much came from Sudan was unclear. Nonetheless, Sudan’s placement as a strategic hub for resource extraction, agriculture, and trade opportunities for Emirati companies turns a feud between two generals into an opportunity for the UAE to gain influence on the continent. It’s the story of too many African nations.