The UAE is buying the West's silence over its 'race war' in Sudan, says top generalLieutenant General Yasser al-Atta, a member of Sudan’s governing Sovereignty Council and the military’s second in command, told journalists that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed has launched a race war against the Sudanese people.
“They entered people’s houses in Khartoum and other cities. They loot and destroy everything: hospitals, electricity, water supply, everything that keeps people alive,” he said.
But Atta said the “world has been silent regarding all the RSF has done in Sudan” despite “social media and technological tools” which enabled the paramilitaries’ crimes to be seen and understood.
The reason, stated Atta, is that “this silence was bought by the power of the UAE’s money”.
“As a result of the world not watching, mercenaries were imported to our country and the UAE were allowed to do it,” he said.
MEE has previously detailed how the UAE has transported Colombian mercenaries to the RSF through an air base in Somalia.
Atta said the paramilitaries have hired fighters from as far afield as Ukraine, too, as well as African countries such as Niger, Mali, Chad and South Sudan.
Before the war, there was ample evidence that the RSF had close ties with Russia’s Wagner Group.
According to Atta, the collapse of the Wagner Group following the death of its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in an air crash two years ago has opened up new recruitment options for the RSF.
Most recently, he stated, the RSF has brought in recruits from Somaliland.
>Somalia and the UAEFor years, the United Arab Emirates has provided financial assistance to Mogadishu and trained Somali soldiers to combat armed groups such as al-Shabab.
But this relationship has darkened significantly in recent years, as the UAE has aided and abetted regional administrations like Puntland and Somaliland, which have designs on splitting away from Somalia.
Mogadishu maintains control over Somali airspace and authorises all flights into the country, but it has no authority over Bosaso’s port and airport.
Despite the uneasy relationship that exists between Hassan Sheikh, Somalia’s president, and the UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed, the government in Mogadishu has not openly confronted Abu Dhabi over its military activities in Puntland.
“Mogadishu is unable to object, given that it is unprepared to counter the UAE’s expanding influence,” said Abdirashid Muse, a regional analyst and critic of the UAE’s activities in the Horn of Africa.
Puntland’s state president, Said Abdullahi Deni, is widely regarded as a close ally of the UAE, largely due to the financial support that could strengthen both his administration and his political ambitions.
>A history of violenceIn recent weeks, greater global scrutiny has been placed on the RSF and the UAE’s backing of it after the paramilitaries stormed el-Fasher on 26 October and launched a killing spree.
But Atta was keen to stress that the RSF has committed numerous atrocities beyond the slaughter in el-Fasher, drawing attention to rampages in al-Jazira state south of Khartoum.
“There are many small villages in al-Jazira and in those villages hundreds were being killed,” he said.
An attack on al-Seriha village in October 2024 is reported to have killed around 100 people.
Sudanese in al-Tekeina, another village in al-Jazira, told MEE that the RSF killed more than 50 of its residents as they successfully fought off the paramilitaries.
The RSF, Atta said, “are killing more and more people just to make sure they do not exist”.
He told MEE that the number of civilians massacred in el-Fasher has now risen to 32,000, with more killed every day “according to ethnicity and race”.
Last week, Darfur Governor Minnie Minnawi told MEE that the number had reached 27,000.
The Rapid Support Forces grew out of militias known as the Janjaweed that the Sudanese military and government under former president Omar al-Bashir used to fight rebel movements in Darfur 20 years ago.
Those rebels were rising up against the central government in protest at the marginalisation and discrimination of Black Sudanese. The mostly Arab Janjaweed targeted Black communities as they rampaged across Darfur in a conflict that has been described as the 21st century’s first genocide.
Janjaweed fighters, drawn principally from traditionally nomadic Arab tribesmen, also used the conflict as an opportunity to drive Sudanese - most often from Black African ethnicities - from their land.
“If you are from a non-Arab or SAF-supporting tribe they will shoot you and kill you directly,” Atta said.
“Those people who try to escape, the RSF will follow them and kill them on the road.”
An Emirati 'project'At the start of the dinner, which was facilitated by the Al Arabiya production company, Atta, a veteran of four decades in the Sudanese army with a background in intelligence work, told journalists: “I am going to be very honest and direct. I am a straightforward person.”
Answering through a translator, he accused the Abu Dhabi ruler Mohammed bin Zayed of planning to drive African tribes out of Sudan.
He said that a source in Dubai warned him a year before the war started that Mohammed bin Zayed often referred to the RSF leader Mohammed Hamdan Daglo - popularly known as Hemedti - as the “prince of Sudan”.
Atta claimed that the UAE president had personally approved a strategic plan to rid Sudan of its African tribes.
He told journalists that the “project” entails a massive programme of relocation and ethnic cleansing, with northern Sudanese people and Nubian tribes pushed into Egypt.
The project, according to the general, also envisages the expulsion of southern Nuba tribes and others from South Kordofan and Blue Nile states to South Sudan.
Atta said that, according to Sudanese intelligence, the UAE has established a chain of command in Abu Dhabi to manage logistics, media and the supply of armaments to the RSF in Sudan.
Before the meeting with Atta, the Sudanese army took journalists to a military base that had become a graveyard of destroyed RSF armoured vehicles. Some, officers said, had been supplied by the UAE.
The military equipment, said Sudanese officers, was either flown in from Chad or Somalia or came overland through Libya.
These vehicles, they claimed, were often hidden inside mosques or public buildings to avoid destruction by the Sudanese air force.
Atta told reporters that one explanation for the Emirati intervention might be that “UAE wants gold, or land for agriculture or land for minerals”.
But he said Sudan has always been “open to investment”.
“No, we think what the UAE really wants is a race decision. The Sudan they see is an Arab land without non-Arabs,” he said.
“The RSF is just a tool in the hands of the Emirates,” he added, highlighting the many Emirati interventions in countries across the Middle East and North Africa.
“The United Arab Emirates is an enemy. They have damaged or destroyed the Arab world and the entire region we are living in. The UAE is behind the problems in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and other countries.”
Some of those countries, Atta said, were “exchanging information” with the Sudanese military about Emirati activities.
Since the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, the UAE has sought to project its power across the region by bolstering friendly autocratic governments and combating champions of democracy and political Islam.
Much like in Sudan, it has also backed secessionists and militias in states like Libya, Somalia and Yemen, leading to huge upheaval and instability.
The Sudanese conflict erupted over plans to fold the RSF into the regular military, which would have significantly weakened Hemedti and the influence of the UAE.
In a rare light moment, the general mocked the narrative spread by RSF supporters that “Burhan is Muslim Brotherhood and Atta is a communist”.
“They tell the Turks we are communists and Qataris we are extremists. We don’t know who we are at the moment: communist or Brotherhood,” he joked.
>A new basis for negotiationsAssessing the current military situation, Atta claimed that the number of RSF fighters had been reduced from 100,000 to 23,000 since the war began.
But, he warned, “they have the direct support of the UAE”.
“We believe in peace. We are not warmongers. We want a solution based on justice and fairness,” he said - insisting, however, that “we will not accept any peace that will make room for the Emirates”.
Significantly, he also ruled out any involvement in negotiations of US senior advisor for Arab and African affairs, Massad Boulos.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae-buying-wests-silence-over-its-race-war-sudan-says-top-general