How the UAE continued supporting Sudan's RSF through Haftar and Libya
Sudanese, Egyptian and Libyan sources have revealed the shifting nature of the United Arab Emirates’ support for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) through Libya, as a new investigation has uncovered the presence of military camps training RSF fighters there.
Despite the pressure brought on Abu Dhabi by the war on Iran and an Egyptian bombing campaign targeting RSF weapons convoys that originate in Libya, the UAE and Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) are still supporting the Sudanese paramilitary group, which has been widely accused of genocide.
Fighters from the RSF are also being trained to use weapons supplied by the UAE at military camps across Libya, a joint investigation from Lighthouse Reports, Sudan War Monitor and Evident revealed on Monday.
Defectors from the RSF and sources from the LAAF said that the five camps identified by investigators were also used to provide the Sudanese paramilitary with logistical support, including fuel and pickup trucks.
An RSF defector, identified as Ahmed, said the weapons and other supplies were “all Emirati”.
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“Emirates is the one supporting the RSF. They would bring it from their country by a plane to here and from here we would receive them and deliver them to Sudan,” he said.
Ahmed was one of seven RSF defectors in Libya who participated in training camps or smuggling operations.
Middle East Eye has reported extensively on collaboration between the LAAF – particularly its Subul al-Salam brigade - and the RSF, and on the supply of weapons through the border triangle region that straddles Chad, Libya and Sudan.
Since the war in Sudan between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) began in April 2023, the RSF has collaborated with Haftar’s forces, which are supported and supplied by the UAE.
Both the UAE and the LAAF have denied any involvement in the war in Sudan. In a statement, the Emirati foreign ministry said: “The UAE has not provided and is not providing military or financial support to any warring party in Sudan.”
The RSF also denies being supported by the UAE.
RSF fighters training in Libya
The four new camps identified by the investigation are at Seweidiya, near al-Kufra; Sabha; al-Jufra and Camp 17, near Benghazi, in eastern Libya.
Ahmed said he was taken to the triangle region, “from where we travelled to Kufra”, a key LAAF base in the remote desert southeast of Libya.
'If the RSF lost UAE support, if UAE stopped supporting them, the RSF won't be able to fight'
- Ahmed, Rapid Support Forces' defector
“Then from Kufra they moved us to Benghazi,” the RSF defector said. “From Benghazi they transported us to a camp, that is Camp 17. That camp has the supplies, and everything sent to support the war is dropped there.”
Ahmed said he had witnessed how the UAE brought in weapons and military vehicles by plane for the RSF.
“If the RSF lost UAE support, if UAE stopped supporting them, the RSF won't be able to fight in the field anymore, it will break apart,” he told investigators.
Ahmed said most ammunition boxes, weapons, and vehicles did not have branding to indicate that they were from the UAE, but that one armoured car did.
“You could see ‘Made in Emirates’,” he said.
Part of the training at the camps includes instruction in the use of heavy weaponry and heavy machinery, including the DShk heavy machine gun, RPGs and rocket launchers.
Investigators also identified Colombian mercenaries at the camps in Libya. According to a Human Rights Watch report from May, they are contracted by Global Security Services Group, a UAE-based company with links to the Emirati government.
Middle East Eye recently revealed the existence of an RSF training camp in Ethiopia.
The UAE and the Sudan war
Despite persistent denials, the UAE has been the primary foreign actor in Sudan’s war. Abu Dhabi’s relationship with RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who is better known as Hemedti, goes back many years to when he was a key part of the Sudanese state.
Gold from Dagalo family mines in Darfur, western Sudan, is exported to the markets of Dubai, while RSF mercenaries – who were then also part of the Sudanese state - fought for the Saudi- and UAE-backed coalition in Yemen.
'Far from receding, Emirati interference is returning with full force: the UAE is aggressively re-escalating its support for the RSF via eastern Libya'
- Jalel Harchaoui, analyst
As allies of the Emiratis, the Haftars have also assisted the RSF in Sudan, though this has brought them into direct conflict with Egypt, which – along with Turkey and now Saudi Arabia - supports the Sudanese army.
Last November, Egyptian and Turkish forces began bombing RSF convoys running from Libyan territory controlled by the LAAF.
This, according to Egyptian, Sudanese, and Libyan official and intelligence sources who spoke to MEE, led to the temporary closure of al-Kufra air base and to a change in tactics from the UAE.
A senior Egyptian military source said that rather than ending its operations in the wake of Egyptian pressure, Abu Dhabi rerouted flights to eastern Chad, relying on Amdjarass airport, a facility it had already used alongside Kufra to move weapons and foreign fighters to the RSF.
Flight tracking data supports this theory, showing an uptick in flights from the UAE and Libya to Amdjarass.
“The flights didn’t stop,” the Egyptian military source said. “They were simply redirected - from Libya to Chad, and specifically to Amdjarass.”
"Since April 2023, the UAE has been pouring military resources into eastern Libya, with the active assistance of the Haftar family, for onward transfer to Hemedti's Rapid Support Forces," Jalel Harchaoui, an analyst focusing on Libya and political economy, told MEE.
"Several recent developments might have suggested that this Emirati policy was being constrained and would gradually taper off.
"Since November 2025, Turkish and Egyptian forces have been striking RSF convoys as they move from southeastern Libya into northern Darfur. Saudi Arabia has intensified its diplomatic engagement with Saddam Haftar," he said, referring to one of Khalifa's sons, who is the LAAF's deputy commander.
"Yet data from the past few days points to a major comeback by Abu Dhabi in Libya," Harchaoui said. "Far from receding, Emirati interference is returning with full force: the UAE is aggressively re-escalating its support for the RSF via eastern Libya."
Emirati operations in Chad
The Egyptian military source said the UAE had long maintained air routes linking Libya and Chad, moving military support and mercenaries - including fighters from Colombia and Chad - to the RSF.
The UAE also has, according to the senior Egyptian army sources, a military operations room inside Amdjarass airport to coordinate with the RSF.
'Emirati companies carried out extensive construction and expansion work at Amdjarass airport'
- Egyptian commander
Emirati companies carried out extensive construction and expansion work at the airport that wasn’t limited or symbolic development
“There is a fully equipped Emirati operations room inside the airport,” one of the sources, an Egyptian commander, said. “From there, operations linked to the RSF are managed using advanced technology.”
Meanwhile, according to this commander, Egypt has documented the ongoing changes through imagery gathered by multiple security agencies amid a growing Emirati military footprint inside the airport.
“Emirati companies carried out extensive construction and expansion work at the airport that wasn’t limited or symbolic development,” he told MEE. “What happened was large-scale expansion and the construction of new facilities.”
“We tracked significant expansion inside an Emirati base at Amdjarass, including hangars for drones and infrastructure capable of receiving Ilyushin cargo aircraft - among the largest military transport planes in the world,” the source explained.
The UAE has insisted throughout much of the war that its activities at Amdjarass are humanitarian.
Egypt supports the Sudanese army.
MEE’s sources also detailed a new weapons corridor that runs through Gate 17 on the Libya-Chad border, and then deep into the Chadian interior before it gets to Abeche in central-eastern Chad.
From there it runs to Adre, the Chadian border town with Sudan that hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the war, and into Darfur, the vast region of western Sudan controlled by the RSF.
At least 200,000 people are believed to have been killed during the war in Sudan, which is regarded as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
The UAE’s support for the RSF has gone largely unchallenged by western powers, including the UK and US.
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