U.S. Ally Promised to Send Aid to Sudan. It Sent Weapons Instead.

ENTEBBE, Uganda—When a cargo plane landed in Uganda’s busiest airport in early June, its flight documents said it was carrying humanitarian aid sent by the United Arab Emirates for Sudanese refugees.

Instead of the food and medical supplies listed on the aircraft’s manifest, Ugandan officials said they found dozens of green plastic crates in the plane’s cargo hold filled with ammunition, assault rifles and other small arms.

The weapons discovered June 2 at Entebbe airport were part of an effort by the U.A.E., a U.S. ally, to support Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a Sudanese warlord who is battling for control of Africa’s third-largest country, African and Middle Eastern officials said.

The officials said the U.A.E.’s covert arms shipments are fueling a war that has plunged Sudan into a humanitarian catastrophe and killed more than 3,900 people since its start on April 15, according to the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. Arming Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces militia could add to friction between the U.A.E. and the U.S., which has been working to mediate an end to the war.

United Nations agencies and human-rights groups have accused the RSF militia of human-rights abuses in Sudan, including the killing of civilians.

The U.A.E. government, responding to questions from The Wall Street Journal, said it is in favor of a peaceful solution to the conflict in Sudan and “seeks to provide all forms of support to alleviate humanitarian suffering.” It said it has sent around 2,000 metric tons of humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, for people affected by the war and has built a field hospital in neighboring Chad.

An RSF spokesman said the group isn’t getting arms or other military supplies from the U.A.E. and denied that its fighters have participated in rights abuses.

The U.A.E. is likely betting on Dagalo to help protect Emirati interests in Sudan, with its strategic location on the Red Sea, access to the Nile River and vast gold reserves. The U.A.E.’s interests include swaths of Sudanese farmland and a stake in a planned $6 billion port on the Red Sea.

U.N. monitors have previously accused Abu Dhabi of sending arms, including drones, laser-guided bombs and armored vehicles, to Khalifa Haftar,

The fighting between Dagalo’s RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces has driven more than four million people out of their homes, while some 24 million, around half of the country’s population, are now in need of food and other humanitarian aid, according to the U.N. More than 300,000 refugees have fled the RSF stronghold of Darfur across the border into Chad. The manifest for the June 2 flight had listed that cargo as humanitarian aid for those refugees.

In Darfur, RSF fighters and allied local militias have raided towns and villages, raping women and killing several hundred civilians since April, according to local and international rights groups, including Human Rights Watch. Following the discovery of several mass graves in July, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said he was investigating potential new war crimes in Darfur, which was the site of genocide in the early 2000s.

U.S. officials, along with their counterparts from Saudi Arabia, have facilitated peace talks in Jeddah since May, but formal negotiations were suspended in June after the RSF and the military repeatedly violated cease-fire agreements.

“We would be concerned about reports of any outside support to either of the conflict parties,” a spokesman for the State Department said. “We continue to engage and coordinate with the U.A.E. and a number of other partners in efforts to press for a cessation of hostilities and humanitarian access in Sudan.”

People familiar with the Biden administration’s Africa policy said Washington is aware of the U.A.E.’s arms deliveries to the RSF and has made its concerns known to authorities in Abu Dhabi.  

The Ugandan officials who found the arms and ammunition on the June 2 flight said the Emirati plane was allowed to continue its trip to Amdjarass International Airport in eastern Chad. Subsequently, the Ugandan officials said, they received orders from their superiors to stop inspecting flights stopping over from the U.A.E. In recent weeks, there have been dozens more flights.

“We are not allowed to inspect these planes anymore. They are now the responsibility of the defense ministry,” one of the officials said. “We have been warned not to take any pictures.”

A spokesman for Uganda’s Defense Ministry said Entebbe airport handles a large number of cargo flights, but denied knowledge of any planes using the airport to supply weapons to the RSF via Chad.

In one of the latest deliveries, trucks loaded with military supplies from the U.A.E. left Amdjarass airport the final week of July for Sudan’s Al-Zarq area, an RSF stronghold in northern Darfur, the African official and a former U.S. official said.

The U.A.E.’s arms deliveries also raise questions over the allegiances of the government in Chad. The U.S. and France consider Chad’s president, Mahamat Déby, an ally in their fight against jihadist militants and Russian expansion in the region.

Earlier this year, U.S. officials warned Déby that Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin was working with Chadian rebels to destabilize his government and possibly kill him.

The U.A.E.’s arms shipments to Dagalo, however, are supporting one of Wagner’s closest partners in Africa, the people familiar with the Biden administration’s policy said. Aziz Mahamat Saleh, Chad’s information minister, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The U.A.E.’s president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, met Déby on June 14 in Abu Dhabi, where the two leaders signed a raft of valuable military, mining and energy deals. Soon after the meeting, the flights to Chad via Entebbe became more frequent, Ugandan officials say. 

Write to Nicholas Bariyo at [email protected] and Benoit Faucon at [email protected]