Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, the leader of a notorious paramilitary force fighting
for supremacy in Sudan’s civil war, is not the president of his country. Yet on a
recent whirlwind tour of six African nations, he was treated just like one.
Some of the continent’s most powerful leaders rolled out the red carpet for
General Hamdan after he arrived on a luxury jet for meetings in late December
and early January, having swapped his military fatigues for business suits. In
Kenya, traditional dancers waited at the plane steps. In South Africa, he sank into
an armchair beside a smiling President Cyril Ramaphosa.
And in Rwanda, General Hamdan posed solemnly at a memorial to victims of the
1994 genocide — even though his own troops have faced accusations of genocide
in Sudan’s Darfur region.
The surprise tour was a remarkable comeback for a commander often rumored
dead or wounded since Sudan plunged into war in April. General Hamdan’s Rapid
Support Forces are steamrolling across Sudan, beating the country’s regular
army into retreat — in large part thanks to military backing from the United Arab
Emirates, a Persian Gulf petrostate that is emerging as a kingmaker in the Horn
of Africa region, according to a new report by United Nations investigators.
The as-yet unpublished report, obtained by The New York Times, offers new
detail about how the Emirates has been smuggling powerful weapons to General
Hamdan’s forces, known as the R.S.F., through Chad since last summer — armed
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drones, howitzers and antiaircraft missiles, sent via secretive cargo flights and
desert smuggling routes. The supplies have boosted his forces to a succession of
victories that in recent months have altered the course of the war.
“This new R.S.F. firepower had a massive impact on the balance of forces, both in
Darfur and other regions of Sudan,” the report says.
War has brought utter catastrophe to Sudan, killing at least 12,000 people since
April and displacing another 7.4 million from their homes, the United Nations
estimates. Fighting has laid waste to large parts of the capital, Khartoum, and 25
million of Sudan’s 45 million people need relief aid to survive.
Experts say the Emirates is using its vast wealth and sophisticated weapons to
steer the course of a turbulent region of Africa dogged by conflict but endowed
with vast natural wealth and a lengthy Red Sea coastline.
Its motivations are ambiguous; experts point to the Emirates’ desire for port
deals and agricultural land in a part of Africa that it increasingly sees as its
strategic back yard, and its longstanding hostility to Islamist forces.
But the latest U.N. report, compiled by experts monitoring a 2005 arms embargo
on Darfur, highlights the cost of those ambitions. It documents widespread
violence against civilians that has accompanied the advance of Gen. Hamdan’s
A photograph posted on General Hamdan’s X account on Jan. 7, 2024 shows him visiting
the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda. His own forces have been accused of genocide
in Sudan’s Darfur region.
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forces — massacres, bombings and reports of hundreds of rapes that echo the
genocide in Darfur of two decades ago.
That pattern of atrocities prompted the U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken,
to formally accuse the R.S.F. on Dec. 6 of war crimes, crimes against humanity
and ethnic cleansing. (Mr. Blinken said the other side in the war — the Sudanese
military — had also committed war crimes through indiscriminate bombings.)
Weeks later General Hamdan, also known as Hemeti, boarded a Boeing provided
by Royal Jet, a company run by an adviser to the president of the United Arab
Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
In a statement, the Emirates said it was “not supplying arms and ammunition to
any of the warring parties” and denied it had breached the arms embargo. It said
that its priority was to protect civilians and, through diplomacy with American,
Arab and African partners, to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict.
Those denials are meeting increasingly vocal skepticism from American officials,
however, who fear that Sudan is sliding toward famine, genocide or a new round
of brutal, autocratic rule if the Rapid Support Forces win the war.
The R.S.F. did not respond to questions for this article.
In early December, the Biden administration made it known that Vice President
Kamala Harris had raised the war in Sudan directly with Sheikh Mohamed on the
sidelines of a U.N. climate summit. Over Christmas, Jake Sullivan, the national
security adviser, raised it more forcefully during a call to his Emirati counterpart,
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, according to a senior American official with
knowledge of the call who spoke anonymously to discuss private conversations.
Yet many American lawmakers — and privately, even some senior Biden
administration officials — say the effort is still too timid, faulting the State
Department for failing to come up with a plan to end the war despite months of
diplomatic effort, alongside Saudi Arabia.
The C.I.A. recently circulated to President Biden and other senior officials its
assessment of an outright R.S.F. victory in Sudan, saying it would spread abuses
and impede the spread of democracy in the region, American officials said. The
United States is also concerned about General Hamdan’s ties to Russia’s Wagner
mercenaries, who supplied him with antiaircraft missiles in the early months of
the war.
Those concerns parallel growing outside calls for a more urgent American
intervention in Sudan, including a stronger stance toward Emirati meddling that
critics call disastrous.
“In pursuit of influence and security, the U.A.E. may end up tipping the entire
region into chaos,” Michelle Gavin, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations,
wrote recently.
General Hamdan, a one-time camel trader, rose to prominence in the late 2000s
as a commander of the brutal militia known as the janjaweed in Darfur. He
amassed a war chest by building a business empire — at first by controlling gold
mines, then as an ally of the Emirates.
From about 2016, General Hamdan sent fighters to Yemen, on the Emirati
payroll, and later invested those profits in a network of about 50 businesses,
headquartered in Dubai, in the Emirates, that are still funding his war machine,
U.N. investigators found.
Last July, the Emirates doubled down on General Hamdan. A new, Emirati-built
hospital appeared in Amdjarass, a remote town in eastern Chad, offering medical
treatment to Sudanese refugees. But Western intelligence services soon realized
Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan,
president of the United Arab Emirates, at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai last
month, in a photo posted by the Emirati government. Ryan Carter/UAE Presidential Court,
via Reuters
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that cargo planes landing on a nearby airstrip were in fact carrying arms
destined for the R.S.F.
In its statement, the Emirates called the field hospital “a critical lifeline for
civilians in need of medical care” and said it had invited U.N. inspectors to visit it.
Yet many American lawmakers — and privately, even some senior Biden
administration officials — say the effort is still too timid, faulting the State
Department for failing to come up with a plan to end the war despite months of
diplomatic effort, alongside Saudi Arabia.
The C.I.A. recently circulated to President Biden and other senior officials its
assessment of an outright R.S.F. victory in Sudan, saying it would spread abuses
and impede the spread of democracy in the region, American officials said. The
United States is also concerned about General Hamdan’s ties to Russia’s Wagner
mercenaries, who supplied him with antiaircraft missiles in the early months of
the war.
Those concerns parallel growing outside calls for a more urgent American
intervention in Sudan, including a stronger stance toward Emirati meddling that
critics call disastrous.
“In pursuit of influence and security, the U.A.E. may end up tipping the entire
region into chaos,” Michelle Gavin, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations,
wrote recently.
General Hamdan, a one-time camel trader, rose to prominence in the late 2000s
as a commander of the brutal militia known as the janjaweed in Darfur. He
amassed a war chest by building a business empire — at first by controlling gold
mines, then as an ally of the Emirates.
From about 2016, General Hamdan sent fighters to Yemen, on the Emirati
payroll, and later invested those profits in a network of about 50 businesses,
headquartered in Dubai, in the Emirates, that are still funding his war machine,
U.N. investigators found.
Last July, the Emirates doubled down on General Hamdan. A new, Emirati-built
hospital appeared in Amdjarass, a remote town in eastern Chad, offering medical
treatment to Sudanese refugees. But Western intelligence services soon realized
Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan,
president of the United Arab Emirates, at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai last
month, in a photo posted by the Emirati government. Ryan Carter/UAE Presidential Court,
via Reuters
19/01/2024, 9:38 pm
Page 4 of 7
that cargo planes landing on a nearby airstrip were in fact carrying arms
destined for the R.S.F.
In its statement, the Emirates called the field hospital “a critical lifeline for
civilians in need of medical care” and said it had invited U.N. inspectors to visit it.
Within weeks, General Hamdan’s soldiers began to sweep across Darfur,
eventually seizing four of five regional capitals. But it was the capture of Wad
Madani, a city in the breadbasket of central Sudan, on Dec. 15, that caused the
war’s greatest upset.
The sudden rout dealt a humiliating blow to Sudan’s military in its political
heartland, drawing calls for its leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, to resign. It
also stoked fears that General Hamdan could capture the entire country.
In recent weeks, ethnic militias have formed across eastern Sudan, to fend off
possible R.S.F. advances, Sudanese media reported. And Islamist hard-liners,
largely absent from public view in recent years, have re-emerged to become a
loud voice in Sudanese politics.
The Emirati operation to support General Hamdan has been a source of alarm at
the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, a global
network that prides itself on neutrality. Red Cross officials are concerned about
A photograph from Emirates state media purporting to show a scene from an Emirati
field hospital in Amdjarass, a remote town in Chad, in August. Intelligence sources say an
airfield in the town is being used to send weapons to the Sudanese Rapid Support
Forces. Emirati News Agency
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Emirati news releases featuring the Red Crescent logo, on aid operations in
Amdjarass that are said to be run by the Emirates Red Crescent.
In response to questions, the International Federation, which oversees 191
national societies, said it had sent a “fact-finding mission” to Chad in October, and
will send another one next month. “If any allegation is substantiated, I.F.R.C. will
launch an investigation,” a spokesman, Tommaso Della Longa, said in an email.
Several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the
sensitivity of the matter said the Biden administration has tapped Tom Perriello,
a former diplomat and Democratic Party congressman, as a special envoy for
Sudan. But the appointment has been delayed over a dispute about who Mr.
Perriello would report to and how much authority he would wield — especially
when dealing with the Emirates, one of the officials said.
General Hamdan continued his diplomatic offensive on Thursday, meeting in
Uganda with Ramtane Lamamra, the new U.N. envoy to Sudan. To Sudanese
critics, the smart suits and smooth talk are just a tactic as General Hamdan
prepares for the next round of battle, pointing to his New Year’s Day speech as
evidence his bad faith.
In a videotaped address, General Hamdan wished a happy Christmas to Sudan’s
Christians, days before his troops burned a church. Then he railed against
“killings based on race” despite the massacres in Darfur.
A photograph released by U.A.E. state media shows pallets of relief supplies at an airfield
in Amdjarass, Chad, in November. Emirates News Agency
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But the commander did hit one note that many Sudanese could relate to. “One
question is pressing in the minds of the Sudanese people,” General Hamdan said.
“Where are we heading?”
Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting from Washington. Declan Walsh is the chief Africa correspondent for The Times. He was previously based in Egypt, covering the Middle East, and in Pakistan. He previously worked at The Guardian and is the author of “The Nine Lives of Pakistan.” More about Declan Walsh
