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

By Declan Walsh and Christoph Koettl

Declan Walsh reported from Sudan, Chad and Switzerland. Christoph Koettl analyzed satellite images, flight records and other materials

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 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.
Credit…
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.”
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.
Map shows areas of conflict in Sudan.

SUDAN
CHAD
Detail area
Nile
Amdjarass
U.A.E. hospital
and drone system
Khartoum
Capital and
main focus
of fighting
El Fasher
Under siege
by R.S.F.
Blue
Nile
DARFUR
REGION
White Nile
100 MILES
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.
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.

Civil War in Sudan

Fighting between two military factions has thrown Sudan into chaos.
What to Know: Two generals — one backed by Sudan’s army, the other by a powerful paramilitary group — have been vying for power in the African country in a conflict that began in 2023.
Calls to Protect Civilians: A U.N. fact-finding mission called for an international peacekeeping force to protect civilians in Sudan. The war has caused the world’s largest displacement crisis.
Peace Talks: American-led negotiations at a Swiss ski resort secured famine relief for needy areas but failed to broker a cease-fire, or even to get both sides to the table, after Sudan’s military refused to show up.
A Border Crossing Reopens: Accused of blocking food aid for its starving people, Sudan’s military reopened the main border crossing with Chad, which it had closed for six months to U.N. relief trucks.
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.
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.
‘They Can’t Lie to Us Anymore’
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. — 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 food intended for a camp of 400,000 starving people.
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 halt the war and help its victims. It has 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.
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 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.)
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 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.
Emirates Red Crescent
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.

Aug. 8, 2023
July 15, 2023
May 17, 2024
July 6, 2024
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 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.
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.”
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.
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.
“The process is not finished,” Mr. Della Longa, the Red Cross spokesman, said of the inquiry into the Amdjarass hospital. “We want to get 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 showover 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.
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.
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.”