Inside the secret network fueling Sudan’s war

The shadowy role of the United Arab Emirates in fueling the war in Sudan – once a well kept secret – is now acknowledged as a key driver of Sudan’s disastrous, yearslong civil war.

Still, little is known about how the UAE co-opts regional governments to achieve its aims in Sudan.

Lighthouse Reports, Evident and Sudan War Monitor travelled to eastern Libya to reveal how the UAE network works on the ground. Through a combination of open source and on-the-ground reporting, the investigation sheds new light on one of the UAE’s most entrenched operations in their vast network of support to the RSF.

As the international community has failed to intervene in Emirati meddling, the UAE has meanwhile built a sprawling network of complex logistics, military bases, financing, and weapons trafficking routes to prop up the Rapid Support Forces and fuel their war efforts in Sudan.

METHODS

The investigations drew on a long term analysis of activity across TikTok, Facebook and Telegram. We reviewed thousands of posts and built an archive of more than 500 relevant clips showing convoy movements between Libya and Sudan, activity at key desert checkpoints and camps, and developments in the border triangle. We verified and connected this material through geolocation, analysis of uniforms, vehicles and other identifying symbols, and social-network analysis of accounts linked to the RSF, the Libyan National Army, and associated networks.

We complimented these efforts with analysis of high resolution commercial satellite imagery of specific sites. Using a custom processing workflow with publicly available Sentinel-2 data., we tracked changes in vehicle routes across remote stretches of the Sahara, helping us understand how smuggling and asset transfers developed in response to changing conditions on the ground. These findings informed reporting trips and interviews.

We worked with ⁨Conflict Insights Group, a public benefit research firm, that conducted analysis of telephones located at Camp 17. CIG used publicly available adtech data, which is information from cookies that users agree to sell to third party vendors when they visit a website or use a mobile application. The information includes movement data, language settings, and other details that users consent to selling to a third party vendor, which CIG purchased. CIG found evidence of at least two South American mercenaries at the site in the summer of 2025. One device located at Camp 17 was set to Colombian Spanish and visited the site from 11-12 June 2025. Another device was set to Argentinian Spanish, and used a military grade phone on 13 aug 2025.

This investigation received kind support from Maltego and IRBIS OSINT-platform.

STORYLINES

Our reporting, including interviews with LNA officers, RSF defectors, and Sudanese military sources, unveiled four previously unidentified RSF camps in Libya, contrary to claims by the RSF that they do not conduct troop training outside of Sudan and contrary to LNA insiders’ claims that the RSF operations in Libya were largely wound down by late 2025.

In Kufra, we embedded with the Libyan National Army in the border triangle area where we had been tracking RSF training and transit sites via social media analysis and heat maps of tracks from suspected RSF resupply convoys throughout the desert for months.

Keen to show us that they were combatting trafficking and had shut down any alleged flow of weapons into Sudan, Lieutenant Enheish Fattah of the LNA’s Subul Al Salaam brigade flatly denied that the LNA facilitated RSF activities in Libya.

“No, that’s all rumors. People are trying to create conflict between the Libyan and Sudanese armies,” Lieutenant Fattah said when questioned on 2025 clashes between the Sudanese Army and the LNA in the border region, in response to increasing frustration of the Sudanese Army and its backers in Egypt about LNA support for the RSF.

Interviews with eight RSF defectors still living in Libya, revealed the full scale of their operations there, which extend from small-scale training activity and transit points in Benghazi to more robust sites in the desert in the border triangle region. These sites include staging sites to prep weapons and modify vehicles for war, training sites where RSF soldiers say they trained alongside the LNA and UAE-contracted Colombian mercenaries, and convoys of trucks carrying fuel and alleged weapons from Libya back into Sudan.

Defectors told us that they were expected to return to Sudan to train their fellow RSF soldiers based on the training they received in Libya.

One defector who agreed to speak on camera to Evident, revealed the location of a previously unknown training camp located approximately 20 kilometers outside of Benghazi.

He described arriving in Libya and being sent to Benghazi through Kufra. Others, he said, were sent to a military camp in Jufra for training. Of his own time at the camp known to him and others in RSF as Camp 17, he told us “there are many here in Camp 17. They are in charge of cars, supplies, and ammo and oversee delivery of them.”

He said the RSF would bring “around 40 or 50, maybe up to 70 or 80” soldiers at a time to train in Camp 17. They would receive their training from LNA soldiers and Colombian contractors.

“RSF is mainly supported by the Emirates,” he told us, adding “but no one can speak up or ask.”

Libyan authorities failed to meaningfully engage with us on the reality of what is happening inside Libya or on their collaboration with the UAE to support the RSF. We traveled to Nairobi, Kenya to interview a spokesman for the RSF government, Tassis, who denied the claims revealed in our reporting.

While the scale of Sudan’s war is almost impossible to account for due to the lack of humanitarian access and the level of violence across the country, recent estimates put the death toll at nearly 400,000 people. Regional analysts insist that the level of support from the Emirates for the RSF has allowed violence, particularly in the Darfur region, to spiral out of control. We interviewed survivors from Khartoum and Darfur in Kufra and in Benghazi to understand the true impact of Emirati meddling on Sudanese civilians. They arrived in Libya after arduous journeys from Sudan – some traveling through Chad – often harassed by RSF soldiers and human smugglers throughout their journey.

“When we reached Libya, we had nothing left,” Fatima, a mother of four living in Kufra told us. “I have nothing left but my children and my honor.”

CO-PUBLICATIONS

• Evident & Lighthouse Reports: Inside the Secret Network Fueling Sudan's War
• Sudan War Monitor: Inside the RSF's Libya Supply Network