Sudans shadow war: Drone strikes reveal escalating tensions between UAE and Turkey
Recent drone strikes in Sudan have revealed an escalating rivalry between the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, which are backing opposing sides in a war that has been raging since April 2023.
Officials in Sudan’s army-backed government have been watching the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) flying military cargo planes in and out of Nyala airport in South Darfur for months.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) targeted the airport on multiple occasions, suspecting that the UAE, through its network of air bases in the region, including one in Uganda and one in Somalia’s autonomous Puntland, was using it to supply the RSF with sophisticated weapons, armed drones and ammunition.
Those suspicions had been confirmed by external monitors, including Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which said that Chinese-made drones “consistent with FH-95s” bought by the UAE had been flown into Nyala.
Last week, Amnesty International found that the UAE was sending Chinese-made weaponry, including GB50A guided bombs and 155mm AH-4 howitzers, into Darfur despite an ongoing UN arms embargo.
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The Emiratis have continued to deny their involvement, with a spokesperson saying: "The UAE reaffirms its consistent and clear position: it is not providing arms or military support to any of the warring parties in Sudan."
Earlier this year, the SAF turned the tide of the war in its favour, retaking the capital Khartoum, breaking the siege on the strategic city of el-Obeid and seizing other parts of central and southern Sudan with the help of TB2 Bayraktars, Turkish armed drones delivered to Sudan last year.
On 3 May, these drones, operated by Turks fighting alongside the Sudanese army in Port Sudan, struck a military cargo plane at Nyala airport. The plane was suspected of carrying “suicide” drones, ammunition and military radar systems.
As Sudanese officials and army officers celebrated the strike, they did not know it had also triggered an escalation between Turkey and the UAE not seen since 2021.
Local Sudanese sources familiar with the incident told Middle East Eye that the Nyala strike killed or wounded many RSF personnel, as well as foreign citizens such as Emiratis, who were brought to the city's Turkish hospital.
A local report said the attack killed at least 70 RSF fighters who were on their way to receive treatment outside Sudan, as well as 18 foreigners, including European, African and Arab troops. A Kenyan and a South Sudanese pilot were also reportedly dead, according to respective local media reports.
Mercenaries who fight for the RSF are now, regional security sources told MEE, flown in and out of Africa through Bosaso, a port in Somalia’s Puntland.
Strikes on Port Sudan
A response to the Nyala strike arrived a day later.
For three days, a series of precision strikes hit Port Sudan, where the government has been based since fighting enveloped Khartoum in 2023. The attacks continued after that initial flurry, only abating on Wednesday morning, 10 days after they began.
Sudan’s only international airport was damaged, as was a military airbase, the southern terminal of the port - the main gateway for humanitarian aid into Sudan - and a hotel hosting Saudi and Egyptian diplomats.
Fires that began after the drones struck fuel depots in the city raged for days, with the sky above Port Sudan turning black with smoke. The city suffered a blackout after a major power station was hit. Schools, bakeries and other local services closed.
“Damage to key civilian infrastructure such as non-military airports and power stations disrupt our volunteers' efforts to help our stricken communities, and creates even more barriers to providing food, clean water and healthcare,” Aida Elsayed Abdallah, secretary general of the Sudanese Red Crescent Society, told MEE.
Sudanese and European diplomatic sources said the response was planned and executed by the UAE, not the leadership of the RSF, though Abu Dhabi condemned the raids in the strongest possible terms.
Two sources familiar with the attacks told MEE that they wounded several members of the Turkish technical support team that had been on the ground aiding Sudanese army drone operations.
On Sunday, not long after the first strikes hit Port Sudan, Turkey dispatched an air ambulance to collect the patients.
The RSF did not publicly claim responsibility for the attacks. The UAE swiftly condemned them. But Sudan’s government cut ties with Abu Dhabi in their aftermath.
'Regional war'
Speaking at a meeting in the UK's parliament on Monday, Babikir Elamin, Sudan’s ambassador to the UK, said the RSF “and its external sponsor, the UAE, were stubbornly pursuing their illegitimate and selfish agenda, to the extent of employing extreme brutality and terrorism”.
“Until recently, this conflict could be described as a proxy war. However, it has taken a dangerous turn, verging on a regional war, with the UAE’s barely concealed direct intervention,” Elamin said.
Elamin pointed to the UAE’s supply of “French armoured vehicles, heavy artillery and drones sourced from Serbia, Bulgaria and China”, while also confirming that the Sudanese army was being assisted by outside actors, including Turkey.
'The UAE likely carried out every aspect of the Port Sudan attacks. So I think the UAE is on a very personal rampage now'
- Jalel Harchaoui, Rusi
The drastic response to the Port Sudan attacks has been underpinned by a belief that they were masterminded in Abu Dhabi. Sudanese and western diplomatic sources told MEE that, enraged by the Nyala airport strike - and by Turkey’s perceived involvement in it - the UAE had authorised and directed the assault on Port Sudan.
“The UAE likely carried out every aspect of the Port Sudan attacks,” Jalel Harchaoui, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (Rusi), told MEE. "So I think the UAE is on a very personal rampage now."
There are two main theories as to where the drones were launched from.
Three Sudanese sources told MEE that the "suicide" drones were operated by the UAE and probably launched from Bosaso. Witnesses in Port Sudan said they had seen the drones coming in from the Red Sea.
But a separate Sudanese source and a western military analyst said they believed the drones had come from the RSF-controlled al-Malha region of North Darfur, close to the border with Libya.
Chinese-made Sunflower-200 "suicide" - or "kamikaze" - drones have a 2,000km range, meaning that Bosaso, at about 1,800km, would be at the outer end of their range.
Turkey and UAE tensions
The attack on Port Sudan, currently the country’s de facto capital and previously one of the safest places in Sudan, and the destruction of military hangars that potentially housed Turkish-made drones, has raised tensions between Turkey and the UAE.
Abu Dhabi was already agitated by Turkey’s involvement in the war. Many sources in Ankara believe the large data leak to the Washington Post in March, which exposed the details of a large Turkish armed drone sale to Sudan, was an Emirati hacking operation.
The report was so detailed that it included various messages sent between Turkish company officials based in Sudan and those back in Turkey, including proprietary information such as contract details.
This is not the first time the UAE and Turkey have found themselves at loggerheads.
A Turkish intervention in Libya beginning in 2020 also pitted both countries against each other, as Ankara backed the UN-recognised Libyan government in the west, and the UAE supported Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar’s forces in the east.
Haftar’s forces have been part of the supply lines used by the UAE in its sponsorship of the RSF in Sudan, while the Turkish government was able to fend off an offensive by Haftar thanks to the same Turkish drones operated by Sudan, which are TB2 Bayraktars.
Fidan meets Mohammed bin Zayed
On 5 May, as drones were raining down on Port Sudan, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was in Abu Dhabi, meeting with Mohammed bin Zayed, the ruler of the UAE.
According to sources briefed on the talks, they were designed to lower tensions.
A Turkish source told MEE that Ankara initially tried to stay neutral in the war between the Sudanese army and the RSF, which has killed thousands and resulted in what the UN calls the largest humanitarian catastrophe in the world.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last year even proposed to Sudanese army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan that he broker talks between Sudan and Bin Zayed.
However, the source added, as the UAE began to arm the RSF, Ankara also decided to counterweigh the group by arming the Sudanese army.
Both sides in Sudan’s war have committed atrocities. The US and human rights groups have determined that the RSF has committed genocide in Darfur, where the Masalit community has been subjected to a series of massacres by the paramilitaries.
“For the time being, the UAE is providing more weapons,” the Turkish source said.
“The UAE strongly rejects the suggestion that it is supplying weapons to any party involved in the ongoing conflict in Sudan,” Salem Aljaberi, a spokesperson for the UAE’s foreign ministry, said in a statement on X.
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