> ...the United Arab Emirates (UAE) accused of backing the RSF with supplies and mercenaries...
And also helping to launder Hemedti's gold via Dubai. https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/conflict-resources/ex...
And also helping to launder Hemedti's gold via Dubai. https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/conflict-resources/ex...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_civil_war_(2023%E2%80...
eg: Very British bribery: the whistleblower who exposed the UK’s dodgy arms deals with Saudi Arabia
~ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/07/long-read-brit...
discusses some of that history back to the 1970s. It has gone on far longer than that.
Both the US and UK governments are aware of where their weapons are destined for, both pretend to have no knowledge or control.
It's exactly embracing the notion that five eyes track the volumes of their arms sales and are indiffeent to their arms being used to kill children, civilians, etc. as long as they're not being stockpiled for use against the originating nation in any significant volume.
I'd suggest that Russia is less adept here than the US or the UK if they're being harmed by thir own supply.
If GGP is going to count China as a supplier it's only fair to count the US. Js. Fwiw, both China and the US place sanctions on the RSF and denounce it as a genocide. Neither directly does business with either side.
Russia is involved directly in the conflict however, literally sending in Wagner mercenaries. They used to back the RSF but in early 2024 switched sides and now fully back the SAF. The sad truth is that most major international players don't care about the Sudanese people. They just want to have the support of whichever side comes out on top so they can continue exploiting the gold reserves of the country like they did before the dictator Omar al-Bashir was overthrown by a popular revolution.
The UAE isn’t an arms manufacturing juggernaut.
I think it’s possibly fair to say the U.S. doesn’t want this war to continue and probably doesn’t even want the UAE to supply weapons to it, but that was likely true of Israel’s bombing of Gaza as well and no one batted an eyelid when holding the U.S. responsible there.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/05/sudan-advance...
I haven't found any articles implicating the US, which has export sanctions on Sudan. The only thing I could find was something about small arms from the UK.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/oct/28/u...
This report https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/07/sudan-constan... lists
> Weapons from China, Russia, Serbia, Türkiye, United Arab Emirates and Yemen identified
Although that seems to be mixing it up a bit, since Turkey and Russia are supporting the SAF.
Also some France-made weapons: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sudan-civil-war-amnesty-interna...
More like UK: UK military equipment used by militia accused of genocide found in Sudan, UN told
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/oct/28/u...
When the war initially broke out, some articles in The Economist seemed somewhat agnostic between the two sides, noting that both had serious corruption issues and had committed many abuses. But as the war has progressed, the RSF seems to have revealed itself to be the far more vicious faction, and the red E along with the rest of the Western media now sees their advances as a tragedy. Unfortunately, the one constant here is the general failure of foresight among nearly all countries of the global North (whether aligned with the West or Russia) getting involved in Africa. If the brutality of the RSF had been better anticipated in 2023, the current situation might have been prevented.
- Significantly more than 150,000 total killed
- Estimated 522,000 children dead due to malnutrition
- 8,856,313 internally displaced
- 3,506,383 refugees
Sudanese tensions predate the current mess in Gaza, as well as the Abraham Accords.
At this point I’m surprised we aren’t seeing people conclude that we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq because of Israel.
I'm not sure when UAE ramped up funding and equipping of similar groups in the Sahel and Maghreb, but when Libya collapses in 2011 they decided to do it there and a few years later they rebrand Janjaweed-militias as RSF and expects them to professionalise because they are provided with resources and diplomatic cover.
Unsurprisingly these gangs in Libya, Mali, Sudan and elsewhere don't stop doing racist murder and rape because it is made easier for them to get away with. Also unsurprisingly, the UAE sees the US as the main risk that they'll be stopped and held accountable, because the ICC and ICJ just don't work as a decent person would expect them to.
This is complicated by a lot of the yelling coming from US peace activists, who took advantage of their complete vindication in Iraq (and Vietnam before that) to pretend that there's a through-line and preventing a dictator from bombing dissidents or a naked land-grab-war-of-aggression is identical to starting our own naked-land-grab-war-of-aggression.
The UAE has crafted itself as a new Switzerland. (Qatar is trying to copy, but clumsily.)
They buy American weapons and financial assets, making them influential. They’ve also established themselves as a logistics hub in an important logistics channel to the West and Asia. (They also pitch their balancing effect on Saudi Arabia skillfully.)
And whenever someone is talking fondly about UAE that's all you need to know about that person
I’ve heard that line about Qatar, Uruguay, Singapore, Malta, Cyprus, the Maldives, and countless other small states.
I grew up in Switzerland. Folks like to compare themselves to us, mostly due to complete ignorance of our actual history and culture.
It’s true in part and misses the point in others. Geopolitically, however, the observation is sound. Small states need a powerful protector far away or to balance their position between nearby large states. The latter only works in mountainous hellholes and on peninsulas (provided your larger neighbor(s) can’t blockade you; if they can, you need a foreign guarantor with a blue-water navy, of which historically there have only been one or two at a time).
(You know Switzerland is a weapons exporter, right? To the U.S. But also to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Hungary. One could almost say that folks who conclude intent from a place of ignorance communicate “all you need to know about” themselves.)
They were neutral in WWII like ie Spain was, think a bit what does it actually means. Not participating in conflict in any way. So they accepted both jewish and nazi gold or art, and everybody's else. If you want to understand why some of that was kept around after the war maybe reading about numbered accounts would enlight you. If you actually care to understand history as it happened.
Hitler had plans to conquer Switzerland after dealing with Russia, he was aware that they were 'most free and most armed nation in the world', fiercely independent and taking them would cost him dearly not only due to terrain.
Literally nobody had come out of WWII with properly clean slate, you just need to dig (not even deep) to find abhorable stuff on everybody, to different volume of course. Swiss have no problem acknowledging their mistakes, much more than most other nations.
5% GDP growth in non-oil. More diversified than Saudi. #2 globally for being "easy to do business in and with". Top-10 in Global Soft Power Index since 2023 [0], rose from #18 in 2020. Dubai has become a global influencer capital.
Looks like the US is backing UAE as Saudi wanes, and as a regional counterweight.
If we're talking about Switzerland, yes it's a federal republic with semi-direct democracy, but it also happily supplied mercenaries to mainland Europe for several centuries.
How exactly are they waning? Last I heard everyone there was still as rich as ever due to the oil money.
And in non-oil GDP growth, UAE is currently outpacing Saudi.
As to "everyone there was still as rich as ever due to the oil money", depends on who "everyone" is: 77% of the total workforce in Saudi is migrant workers, many of whom earn < US$5000/yr. They're not citizens.
One might say your own comment tells everyone all they need to know about you.
Where did I say I'm referring to OP? I'm merely adding to his point on what UAE is today
Not calling Dubai the devil but you could make deals with the devil if the devil was known to religiously fulfill his contracts.
There are a lot of places where you don’t know whether their currency or political system could be rocked next year.