During recent years, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been intervening in different parts of the Middle East, primarily through the backing of rebel militias against legitimate and recognised governments. In some high-profile cases, the UAE has been complicit in conflicts such as in Gaza, Yemen, and Sudan; leveraging humanitarian aid to advance its interests and violating international laws. Its real end goals have been exposed behind the façade of humanitarian support.
In Sudan, the UAE has provided financial and military support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)militia, including a recent supply of foreign combatants. This assistance has substantially expanded since the conflict began. The UAE maintains significant economic and political stakes in Sudan that it anticipates will be protected if its RSF allies gain control. These interests encompass the exploitation of gold and agricultural assets, control of strategically important Red Sea ports, and blocking the return to power of Islamist groups, which the UAE have traditionally opposed.
The impact of UAE funding to the RSF militia has been devastating; it enabled the militia to wage its war in Sudan and commit numerous massacres and genocides in the Darfur region. According to UN experts, it is estimated that the militia killed 15,000 members of the Massalit tribe based on their ethnicity. In other parts of Darfur, women were raped and abducted, and children were piled up and shot to death. For months, El-Fashir city, the main refugee area in Darfur, has been besieged by the militia.
In a serious escalation, the UAE resorted to humanitarian aid as a new and powerful tool to back the RSF militia through abusing it to provide military and political support and to whitewash its reckless intervention in Sudan.
At the outset of the war, the UAE built in eastern Chad what was supposed to be a hospital to treat injured Sudanese refugees. An independent investigation revealed that this was in fact a military base used to smuggle arms and fly drones to the battlefield in Darfur. Humanitarian air shipments from the UAE to Chad were found to be carrying arms. Moreover, in March 2025, the UAE opened a hospital in South Sudan, located near the border with Sudan. Diplomats suspect this is nothing but another military logistics center to support the RSF militia. According to a recent report, these humanitarian organisations that deliver arms are owned and managed by top UAE leaders who are in direct contact with the militia leader. South Sudan has recently been exposed as a point where injured RSF soldiers receive medical treatment.
READ: Somalia cancels UAE security, defense deals linked to key ports over sovereignty concerns
The UAE’s weaponisation of humanitarian aid drew harsh criticism from International organisations and rights groups that called for an investigation into this issue. Indeed, the International Humanitarian Law requests the respect of the distinction principle and prohibits perfidy; the UAE has evidently infringed these two articles during the ongoing war. This is also a serious breach of the arms embargo on Darfur, which was renewed in September 2025. A leaked UN investigation report by the panel tasked with monitoring the arms embargo revealed that the UAE was not honest about the data of the humanitarian shipment flights between the UAE and Chad.
In the aftermath of the defeat of the RSF militia in Khartoum and central Sudan, and with the advancement of the national army toward the west of the country, the UAE proposed a humanitarian truce, while branded as crucial to protect the life of millions in the region, it was merely a tactical move to save the fall of the RSF’s last bastion in Darfur.
A global outcry followed the genocide in El-Fashir, and the UAE worked to absorb this anger by launching a public relations campaign pledging millions of dollars in support of its humanitarian response for Sudan and neighbouring countries. Indeed, this attempt never persuaded many, especially among the refugees. A viral video shared on social media showed a Sudanese refugee rejecting receiving packed aid from the UAE, citing its support of the militia.
In Yemen, the UAE was found to be using its Red Crescent mission facility to deliver arms to its allied Southern Transitional Council which calls for the separation of the south of the country. The goal of the UAE behind this step was to work around the rules and agreements that all weapons and arms to the country should be delivered through the agreed channels and approved by the coalition led by Saudi Arabia.
During the last war in Gaza, a report revealed that forty members of a UAE aid convoy that was sent there were, in fact, intelligence agents tasked with collecting information about Hamas and its infrastructure.
The UAE’s reckless interference demands more than rhetorical condemnation; it requires a decisive and coordinated international response. The weaponisation of humanitarian aid in particular must be urgently investigated, and the UAE must be held accountable for its role in undermining humanitarian principles and international law. Indeed, future humanitarian aid by the UAE should be fully scrutinised and monitored.
OPINION: Why Britain must designate the RSF a terrorist entity
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
About the Author
