Tag Archives: sexual violence Sudan

Why and How Dubai Conquered Sudan

Leave a reply

U.S. intelligence agencies say the United Arab Emirates sent increasing supplies of weapons including sophisticated Chinese drones to a major Sudanese militia in 2025 bolstering a group that has been accused of genocide and pouring fuel on a conflict that has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises…It is the latest example of how the wealthy Gulf state is quietly projecting power to influence the course of conflicts and assert its interests in a region dominated by much larger power brokers, from Saudi Arabia to Turkey and Iran.

A key U.S. partner, the U.A.E. has shipped arms into Sudan to shore up the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of Sudan after a string of setbacks that culminated with the militia losing control of the capital, Khartoum, in March 2025. Rearmed, the militia survived that potential turning point in the war and launched a renewed offensive against the government that triggered some of the worst destruction of the two-year war. The RSF’s campaign included an expanded assault on North Darfur state, where the militia tightened an 18-month siege of the regional capital of El Fasher, cutting off tens of thousands of people from adequate food and medicine…“The war would be over if not for the U.A.E.,” said Cameron Hudson, a former chief of staff to successive U.S. presidential special envoys for Sudan. “The only thing that is keeping them in this war is the overwhelming amount of military support that they’re receiving from the U.A.E.,” he said of the RSF…The U.A.E. is betting on the RSF to help protect Emirati interests in Sudan. The country is strategically located on the Red Sea, where the Sudanese government canceled a $6 billion Emirati port deal in 2024, and has vast resources of gold, much of which has historically been exported to Dubai. The U.A.E. has invested billions of dollars in the country.

Excerpt from Jared Malsin at al., How U.A.E. Arms Bolstered a Sudanese Militia Accused of Genocide, WSJ, Oct. 28, 2025

Why Arab Men Rape Black Women in Darfur

Leave a reply

Sudan’s civil war is taking a jarring turn in Darfur, where an Arab-led militia is now using state-of-the-art drones and execution squads to dominate the region’s Black population. Rights researchers already are warning that the killings have the potential to surpass the genocide that played out in Rwanda just over 30 years ago. The group behind the violence, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has previously been accused by the U.S. of pursuing a genocide of Darfur’s Black population. Two decades ago, its predecessor was involved in the killing of more than 200,000 people in Darfur.

This time, the killings are the work of a closely-drilled and well-armed rebel force that already has established a parallel government to run Darfur, an expanse of western Sudan roughly the size of Spain. RSF fighters are armed with bomb-carrying Wing Loong II and FeiHong-95 drones, made in China, and supplied by the United Arab Emirates to help expand its own interests in the region.

The RSF have been conducting door-to-door searches, picking out non-Arab men and boys before executing them… Witnesses and residents say militia members swept through the city, raping Black women, detaining aid workers and forcing the last remaining residents to leave… Black women with long hair are systematically separated and raped, according to interviews with multiple aid workers and victims.

According to Eric Reeves, a fellow with the Nairobi-based Rift Valley Institute: “The fierce ethnic animus of the RSF toward non-Arab civilians is equal to that of the Hutus toward the Tutsis in Rwanda. The obscene violence is clearly comparable.”

Excerpt from Nicholas Bariyo, Sudan Militia, Armed With Drones, Hunts Down Black Population of Darfur, WSJ, Oct. 31, 2025

How the Drug War has Fueled Sudan’s Conflict

Leave a reply

The war in Sudan between the country’s military and the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has turned in 2024 into a battleground for more foreign powers, drawing in fighters and weapons from as far as Latin America and Europe. Several regional governments are vying to assert their influence as the fighting escalates, led by the United Arab Emirates on one side and Egypt on the other—with devastating consequences for Sudan’s 48 million people, some of whom are now in the grip of famine. At stake is control of Red Sea shipping lanes, some of Africa’s largest gold reserves and the contested waters of the Nile.

The Colombian fighters seized in November 2024 in Darfur were hired earlier this year by an Abu Dhabi-based company called Global Security Services Group (GSSC)…The company describes itself as the only armed private security provider to the Emirati government and lists as its clients the Gulf state’s ministries of presidential affairs, interior and foreign affairs.  In Uganda, where GSSG has trained local troops in counterterrorism operations and VIP protection, the company presented itself as acting on behalf of the Emirati government, an army spokesman said. 

With its large stock of drug-war veterans trained on American weapons, Colombia has long been a target for recruiters from overseas security and mercenary groups. A decade ago, the U.A.E., through military contractors, sent Colombians to fight in the civil war in Yemen. In September 2024, a Bogotá, Colombia-registered recruitment company called International Services Agency, or A4SI, began posting ads on its website looking for drone operators, cybersecurity specialists and bodyguards to deploy in Africa…

By some estimates, as many as 150,000 people have been killed in Sudan. About 25 million, more than half of the population, are suffering crisis levels of hunger and one in four Sudanese have been forced from their homes. Famine has been declared in a Darfur camp hosting between 500,000 and a million displaced people.

Excerpts from Benoit Faucon and Gabriele Stein, The Global War Machine Supplying Colombian Mercenaries to Fight in Sudan, WSJ, Dec. 11, 2024

What Happens When 48 Women are Raped Every Hour?

Leave a reply

Congo is considered the rape capital of the world. On average, 48 women are raped every hour. Gang rapes, genital mutilation, and sexual violence are committed by armed groups, gangs, and government and police forces. Many of the victims are children and babies. Rape victims and children born of rape are often rejected by their families. HIV is rampant, and cases often go untested and untreated. Rapists almost always go unpunished.

Chewing Gum and the Civil War in Sudan

Leave a reply

Around 80% of the world’s gum arabic is harvested from Sudan’s acacia trees, which grow in the desert belt that stretches from Sudan’s western border with Chad to its eastern border with Ethiopia, covering an area of roughly 200,000 square miles. Gum arabic is a tasteless and odorless dried sap used as a stabilizer, thickening agent or emulsifier for many foods, drinks, cosmetics and medicines…The sap has become a key source of funding for both sides in the war, according to Sudanese traders. In addition to the RSF (Rapid Support Forces), a paramilitary group, collecting money through its control of most major agricultural routes, the Sudanese military—which runs the country’s de facto government—levies taxes and other tariffs on the gum arabic trade.

The U.S. has accused both sides in the conflict of committing war crimes. In September, 2023 the State Department slapped sanctions on two senior RSF commanders for their alleged involvement in ethnic killings, sexual violence and the looting and burning of communities, among other abuses. . Around 8.5 million Sudanese have been forced from their homes since the start of the war in April 2023. “Proceeds from the gum arabic exports are directly financing this fighting,” says Rabie Abdelaty, a Sudanese academic who has researched the gum arabic industry.

Despite these concerns, few companies have taken steps to make sure they are avoiding Sudanese gum arabic, based on interviews with manufacturers, suppliers and end-users. 

Excerpts from Alexandra Wexler, How Soda, Chocolate and Chewing Gum Are Funding War in Sudan, WSJ, May 23, 2024

Darfur Forever: when a country is not a country

Leave a reply

Iran unsuccessfully pressed Sudan to let it build a permanent naval base on the African country’s Red Sea coast, something that would have allowed Tehran to monitor maritime traffic to and from the Suez Canal and Israel, according to a senior Sudanese intelligence official. Iran has supplied Sudan’s military with explosive drones to use in its fight with a rebel warlord and offered to provide a helicopter-carrying warship if Sudan had granted permission for the base…

Sudan had close ties with Iran and its Palestinian ally Hamas under longtime strongman Omar al-Bashir. After Bashir’s ouster in a 2019 coup, the leader of the country’s military junta, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, initiated a rapprochement with the U.S. in an effort to end international sanctions. He also moved to normalize relations with Israel. Iran’s request to build a base highlights how regional powers are seeking to take advantage of Sudan’s 10-month-old civil war to gain a foothold in the country, a strategic crossroads between the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa with a 400-mile Red Sea coastline.  Sudan’s military has been fighting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Burhan’s former second-in-command, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, since mid-April 2023. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises The Biden administration has accused both the Sudanese military and the RSF of committing war crimes. The U.S. alleges the RSF also has committed crimes against humanity, including murder, rape and ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region in western Sudan.  U.N. officials have criticized Sudan for aerial bombing of civilian neighborhoods and depriving Sudanese civilians of desperately needed humanitarian aid. U.N. agencies have also accused the RSF of atrocities, including ethnically motivated attacks in Darfur…

The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2023 that Egypt has supplied drones to the Sudanese military and trained Sudanese troops in how to use them. The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, has been sending weapons to the RSF, the Journal reported in August 2023…Dubai is the biggest importer of Sudanese gold and in 2022 a U.A.E.-based consortium signed a $6 billion deal to build a new port facility on Sudan’s Red Sea coast.

Excerpts from Nicholas Bariyo, Iran Tried to Persuade Sudan to Allow Naval Base on Its Red Sea Coast, WSJ, Mar. 3, 2024

When the State is the Gang

Leave a reply

In South Sudan “There is a confirmed pattern of how combatants attack villages, plunder homes, take women as sexual slaves and then set homes alight often with people in them,” commented Commission Chairperson Yasmin Sooka.  “Rapes, gang rapes, sexual mutilation, abductions and sexual slavery, as well as killings, have become commonplace in South Sudan. There is no doubt that these crimes are persistent because impunity is so entrenched that every kind of norm is broken,” she added.

UNICEF reports that 25 per cent of those targeted by sexual violence are children, including the rapes of girls as young as 7. Elderly and pregnant women have also been raped. The Commission also received reports of male victims of sexual violence. Sexual and gender-based violence against men and boys is even more underreported than that against women and girls as there is a greater level of stigma. There are even reports of raping and killing of the young and the elderly.

The Commission has also looked at the allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). From January 2018 to 2019, seven such cases involving 18 alleged UNMISS perpetrators were registered in the UN Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Database. 

The oil producing areas of the country have become increasingly militarized by Government forces, including by the National Security Services, which have expanded their involvement in the oil sector. The state-owned Nilepet oil company’s operations have been characterized by a total lack of transparency and independent oversight, allegedly diverting oil revenues into the coffers of elites in the government. Furthermore, oil revenues, and income from other natural resources such as illegal teak logging, have continued to fund the war, enabling its continuation and the resulting human rights violations. 

Outraged by renewed fighting and continuing human rights violations in South Sudan, UN Human Rights Experts urge all parties to stop conflict, end impunity and respect provisions of the revitalized peace agreement, UN Human Rights Council, Press Release, Feb. 20, 2019