Why the UAE’s Unchecked Impunity Demands Sanctions

By: Amgad Fareid Eltayeb

Since the outbreak of the civil war in Sudan, there have been allegations that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been providing support and weapons to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia.
The RSF has been accused of perpetrating a multitude of atrocities and crimes against the Sudanese population during this ongoing conflict. The details of this support were disclosed in a report by the UN panel of experts on Darfur. However, the UAE’s actions on the global stage were not limited to this single wrongdoing.
The UAE made use of its non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, which it held from January 2022 to December 2023, in a way that sought to divert attention from its violations of UN resolutions and to retaliate against the investigators and journalists who played a part in exposing such infractions.
It went so far as to undermine the work of these committees and panels.
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Diverting attention
For instance, in July 2022, Dubai Airport officials detained Dinesh Mahtani, a British national, and questioned him for several hours before stopping him from continuing his trip, citing security concerns. Later, British authorities confirmed there were no police reports or crimes regarding Mahtani. It became obvious that the matter was related to Mahtani’s participation in the UN panel of experts to monitor sanctions on the al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Shabaab group in 2013-2014.
He and his team discovered 161 commercial coal shipments from Somalia, most headed for Port Rashid in the UAE. These activities funded the Al-Shabaab, including unloading 1.6 million bags of coal in the UAE.
This action goes against the Security Council Resolution 2036 (2012) that prohibits the import of Somali charcoal because it funds the activities of Al-Shabaab. The charcoal ban remains in force and was renewed in resolution 2662 in November 2022. A 2022 UN panel of experts report revealed that these activities are still ongoing.
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Furthermore, on 11 March 2024, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed new sanctions on entities and personnel for funding Al-Shabaab. Sanctions included the Dubai-based Haleel Group which is a key financial enabler of Al-Shabaab and UAE-based Qemat Al Najah General Trading, which functions as a significant node for money laundering for Al-Shabaab, facilitating the management and transmission of funds for the terrorist group.
Other UAE-based individuals and businesses were identified and designated as part of this extensive financial support network, providing Al-Shabaab with a net value of more than $100m per year.
This conduct not only revealed the UAE’s disregard for the framework of international legitimacy, but also disproved its claims concerning its position against political Islam.
Gagging whistleblowers
The UAE is using similar claims to justify supporting the RSF militia in Sudan’s war, despite providing support to the Al-Shabaab terrorist group.
The Emirates has a history of denying entry to human rights campaigners, especially those advocating for workers’ rights.
In 2015, James Lynch, an expert from Amnesty International, was denied entry to Emirates at the airport without any explanation, similar to what happened to Mahtani.
But such actions were not the sole act of bullying in the UAE’s track record.
In 2022, the UAE blocked investigative journalist Maggie Michael, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her work in Yemen and current Reuters correspondent in Cairo, from being selected as a regional expert in a UN committee focusing on Yemen. This was in retaliation for her previous work that exposed the UAE for operating secret detention centres in Yemen where detainees endure torture and sexual assaults.
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More recently, Michael shared disturbing information about the atrocities committed against civilians in Darfur by the UAE-backed RSF militia.
In November 2022, the UAE blocked the appointment of Canadian researcher Shawn Blore – known for his extensive research on the illicit gold trade in the UAE – from serving as a UN expert on a committee examining mineral exploitation in the DRC.
Blore contributed to writing ‘Dubai’s Role in Facilitating Corruption and Illicit Global Financial Flows‘, published in 2020 by the Carnegie Center for International Peace. Blore exposed the UAE’s involvement in smuggling gold from Sudan, Congo, the Central Africa Republic and the Sahel region.
International impunity
With all those infractions, the UAE seems to enjoy a certain impunity in international affairs. On 23 February, the UAE was removed from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) ‘Jurisdictions Under Increased Monitoring’ list, popularly known as the grey list.
The UAE was added to the list on 4 March 2022 over the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, amid reports that it helps Russia and Iran avoid economic sanctions and embargoes.
The Emirates has leveraged considerable political and economic power to get its name removed from the list, sparking fierce disagreement within the FATF’s inner circles. This became especially relevant when considering why the FATF decided to delist the UAE based on data given by the UAE without independent verification.
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In a letter sent before the delisting decision to FATF President Raja Kumar, Transparency International urged FATF not to remove the UAE from the grey list, contending that there is little evidence that the country has implemented the announced reforms to combat money laundering and other financial crimes.
According to Transparency International, there is evidence that the UAE has failed to address several known cases involving sanctioned entities and individuals. The US Department of the Treasury’s recent decision validates these allegations by Transparency International.
The delisting of the UAE conveyed the wrong signal to those implicated in financial crimes, namely that one can elude accountability so long as one has the right friends.
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UAE championing the Abrahamic Accords to normalise relations with Israel and its efforts to force many countries in the Arab region to join it was also a tool to ensure strengthening this diplomatic relevance and enhancing its impunity.
However, the enforcement and blackmailing tactics adopted for that end, which ignored the realistic cultural and social burden that needed to be accounted for, led to the explosion of Gaza in the worst possible scenario and killed any prospects for peace in the coming extended period.
Gaslighting guises
Presently, the UAE manages the most extensive commercial enterprise globally, disregarding all domestic, regional and international legal frameworks. Positions such as opposing political Islam or terrorism, for instance, serve as gaslighting guises that can be easily abandoned for the sake of financial gain.
By utilising its accrued political and economic influence, the UAE ensures that neither it nor its allies are held accountable, and their impunity is maintained. Its operations in the Middle East and globally resemble those of the Mafia’s Godfather in that it delegated direct nefarious tasks to agents, such as the RSF in Sudan or the Hafter government in Libya. Atrocities in Yemen, Libya or Sudan are being overlooked for that sake.
The time has come for the world to awaken to a truth long forgotten: law cannot reign nor achieve its lofty goals of justice without universal application. Punishing mere tools of crime, endlessly recycled by perpetrators, yields no fruit but rather deepens the mire.
It is time to confront the UAE as a rogue state, a prime instigator of global instability, and compel its compliance with international law through targeted sanctions. To continue accepting the UAE’s impunity is to sow the seeds of an epoch laden with instability, war, financial crimes, and their attendant human suffering, displacement and irregular migration.
A dismal period in human history is unfolding in the 21st century, particularly due to the collapse of unipolar world order systems and the rise of international competition via direct and proxy disputes and wars. However, it is only in the dark shades of courage that we can break this curse.
Posted on April 1, 2024 08:40