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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.
Covert drone airbase
30 miles from Sudan
Red Crescent hospital
Drone hangars and
control system
Covert drone airbase
30 miles from Sudan
Drone hangars and
control system
Covert drone airbase
30 miles from Sudan
Drone hangars and
control system
Covert drone airbase
30 miles from Sudan
Drone hangars and
control system
Covert drone airbase
30 miles from Sudan
Drone hangars and
control system
By Declan Walsh and Christoph Koettl
Declan Walsh reported from Sudan, Chad and Switzerland. Christoph Koettl analyzed satellite images, flight records and other materials.
Sept. 21, 2024, 6:54 a.m. ET
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 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.
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.
White Nile
100 miles
150 miles
Sudan
Chad
Nile
Amdjarass
U.A.E.
hospital and
drone system
Khartoum
Capital and
main focus
of fighting
El Fasher
Under siege
by R.S.F.
South Sudan
Aug. 8, 2023
July 15, 2023
May 17, 2024
July 6, 2024
Aug. 8, 2023
July 15, 2023
May 17, 2024
July 6, 2024