The United Arab Emirates hired Colombian mercenaries to fight alongside a notorious Sudanese paramilitary group that has been accused of genocide, United Nations investigators have found.
A confidential report submitted to the Security Council last week and obtained by The New York Times details how an Emirati security company with close ties to the government moved the Colombians into Sudan through territory controlled by Emirati proxies in Libya and Somalia.
The report is the most detailed accounting yet by the United Nations of the Emirati role in Sudan’s civil war, in which the Emirates is accused of supplying drones, weapons and mercenaries to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., fueling a conflict that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The U.N. findings come at a sensitive time for the Emirates. One of its top diplomats, Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, who for years has led Emirati efforts to deny her country’s role in Sudan, is a candidate to become the next secretary general of the United Nations.
Cambridge-educated and of Palestinian heritage, Ms. Nusseibeh, 48, has represented the Emirates at the United Nations for over a decade, returning in 2024 to the Emirates, where she was appointed minister of state for foreign affairs last year.
Since emerging in October as a last-minute candidate in the contest to lead the United Nations, Ms. Nusseibeh has shaken up the race while coming under sharp scrutiny for her role in Sudan. She is accused of trying to deny or downplay evidence that the Emirates, in violation of a U.N. arms embargo, has backed the R.S.F., a group accused of countless atrocities.
Critics also say Ms. Nusseibeh has sought to silence, sometimes successfully, the work of U.N. bodies investigating Emirati policy in several Arab countries, where it has been accused of backing warlords and breaking international arms embargoes.
“Lana Nusseibeh has spent over a decade in roles acting for the U.A.E. government and repeatedly whitewashing their abusive role in Yemen and Sudan, presenting Abu Dhabi as a humanitarian actor while dismissing or obscuring mounting evidence of its role in fueling abuses,” Bruno Stagno Ugarte of Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
Ms. Nusseibeh’s candidacy raised questions about whether she would be willing “to defend the independence and integrity of the U.N. and its investigative mechanisms, including those exposing U.A.E. abuses,” Mr. Ugarte said.
A spokesman for the Emirates denied the country supported any side in Sudan’s war or sought to undermine U.N. investigations. The Emirates separately told the U.N. that the security company named in the confidential report had not deployed mercenaries to Sudan or broken any Emirati law.
In an email, Ms. Nusseibeh said that ending the “terrible conflict” in Sudan would be her priority as secretary general. She pledged that if U.N. investigators identified a foreign power fueling the conflict, she would “act on it and engage that State.”
“Sudan will be a litmus test for the next Secretary-General,” she added.
Ms. Nusseibeh has been on the front lines of Emirati diplomacy on Sudan since the country fell into civil war in 2023.
Within months, the Emirates began supplying weapons, drones and military aid to the R.S.F., hoping to help the paramilitary group defeat Sudan’s military and assure Emirati interests in a country with deep gold deposits and a strategic position on the Red Sea. In 2024, The Times revealed that the Emirates was flying powerful Chinese drones from a base in Chad, under the cover of a Red Cross operation.
Other countries and companies have fueled Sudan’s war as well, including Russia, Iran, Turkey and Ukraine, mostly by sending or selling weapons to Sudan’s military. But none have been as pivotal as the Emirates, which has used its vast resources and close alliances with countries like Ethiopia and Chad in support of the R.S.F.
In interviews, Ms. Nusseibeh has repeatedly said that her country is not backing the R.S.F. “Those allegations are categorically untrue,” she told CNN in 2024, adding that the Emirates sends only humanitarian aid to Sudan.
Behind closed doors, Ms. Nusseibeh has quietly pressed foreign allies to support the Emirati position of professed neutrality on Sudan, according to several former U.S. officials.
But even in private, she has refused to speak candidly about her country’s role in Sudan, complicating efforts to bring the conflict to a negotiated end, the officials added.
In 2024, Emirati leaders, angered that Britain had not defended them from attacks during a Security Council meeting on Sudan, canceled planned meetings with senior British ministers in retaliation, said a senior former U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations.
More recently, scrutiny of the Emirati role in Sudan has focused on the so-called Desert Wolves, a group of Colombian mercenaries hired to fight alongside the R.S.F. Several news outlets and rights groups have documented how the Colombians flew drones, trained fighters and provided artillery support as the R.S.F. carried out its punishing siege of the Sudanese city of El Fasher last year, one of the most notorious episodes of the war.
While the Emirates has often brushed past negative news reports, it appeared defensive earlier this year when the United Nations also accused the Emirates of providing Colombian mercenaries in Sudan.
In July, a panel of United Nations investigators monitoring an arms embargo on Darfur sent a detailed report to the Security Council that contained a blunt assertion: “The U.A.E. supported the R.S.F. by providing mercenaries,” it wrote.
Colombian mercenaries had been trained at two military bases in Abu Dhabi before being deployed to Sudan, it said. Emirati officials mounted a fierce pushback, and before the report could be made public it was blocked at the Security Council over objections from Bahrain, which currently holds a nonpermanent seat.
A senior U.N. official and a regional diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters said Bahrain had been acting at the behest of the Emirates.
The Emirates “rejects as unfounded the allegation it is influencing any Security Council member,” its spokesman said. Bahrain’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The investigators’ latest report, sent to the Security Council on Friday, said the mercenaries were hired by Global Security Services Group, an Abu Dhabi-based private security company with strong political, business and familial ties to senior figures in the Emirati ruling family.
The company was founded by a senior official in the Emirati presidency, records showed, and on its website it is described as “a preferred security provider” for the Emirati Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Presidential Affairs.
Analysts say the growing scrutiny of Ms. Nusseibeh’s record on Sudan may be hurting her campaign for secretary general. A recent straw poll of eight candidates placed her in the middle of the field.
Cameron Hudson, a former C.I.A. analyst and director for African affairs at the National Security Council, said the continued Emirati denials of support to the R.S.F. “make a mockery” of the investigative mechanisms that Ms. Nusseibah now seeks to lead.
“She played a significant role in obfuscating her government’s contribution to atrocities in Sudan,” he said. “That ought to disqualify her from any further consideration.”
Under Ms. Nusseibah, the Emirates has sought to quell U.N. scrutiny of its actions in other countries, too.
In 2011, the Emirates, alongside Saudi Arabia, successfully lobbied to close down a panel of U.N. investigators reporting on rights violations and other abuses in Yemen, where Emirati troops were deployed.
In 2016, Ms. Nusseibah corresponded with other Emirati officials over U.N. accusations that their country was arming the warlord Khalifa Hifter in Libya. “The fact of the matter is that the U.A.E. violated the Security Council resolution on Libya and continues to do so,” one Emirati official wrote to Ms. Nusseibah in a chain of emails that were accidentally sent to the U.N.
The U.N. published several of the emails but redacted the name of the official. The Times obtained an unredacted copy of that correspondence this week, identifying the official as Ahmed al Qasimi, a diplomat who worked for Ms. Nusseibeh at the U.N. mission in New York.
In November 2025, Ms. Nusseibeh led a concerted Emirati effort to influence members of the European Parliament over a pending resolution condemning atrocities in Sudan, Politico reported. The Parliament passed the resolution without mentioning the Emirates.
The post U.A.E. Sent ‘Desert Wolves’ to Help Sudanese Militia Accused of Genocide appeared first on New York Times.
