UAE and Haftar behind RSF capture of Sudan's triangle border region

In June, the Rapid Support Forces captured Sudan's wild border frontier with Libya and Egypt. This is how they did it

Rapid Support Forces fighters pictured in 2019 in the Sudan-Libya border region (AFP)

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On 10 June, Ismail Hassan, an artisanal gold miner and trader in the triangle border region that straddles Sudan, Egypt and Libya, watched as more than 250 fully equipped military vehicles entered his local market, al-Katma.

The vehicles carried fighters from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the Sudanese paramilitary group that has been at war with Sudan’s army since April 2023, alongside a host of Libyan mercenary groups connected to the eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar.

“The RSF and Libyan forces entered the area and advanced into the market, declaring control of the region,” Hassan told Middle East Eye, referring to the Sudanese part of the triangle.

The Libyans then moved out, Hassan said, leaving the RSF to loot the area’s markets, making off with gold, money, cars, mobile phones and much more.

Hassan was one of many miners who fled the area following the attack, before speaking exclusively about it to MEE over the phone.

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their allied Joint Forces militia were forced to leave in the wake of the RSF-led attack.

Two days later, on 12 June, the RSF announced that it successfully taken “control of the strategic Almuthallath ‘triangle’ area, which constitutes a pivotal junction between Sudan, Libya and Egypt".

As the army has taken Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and made inroads in other parts of central Sudan, the takeover of the Sudanese part of the border triangle region has cemented the RSF’s hold on western Sudan, where it holds almost all of Darfur.

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According to satellite imagery, flight tracking data seen by MEE, and interviews with gold miners and other eyewitnesses, this success in the wild, lawless border regions would not have been possible without Haftar’s Libyan forces and the patronage of the United Arab Emirates and Russia.

The involvement of the UAE has brought Abu Dhabi into further conflict with Egypt, which has tried – and so far failed – to mediate better relations between Haftar and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces.

At the beginning of July, MEE revealed a secret meeting hosted by Egypt between the Sudanese general and the Libyan commander, both of whom are its allies. The meeting did not go well.

RSF attack

Key to the RSF’s capture of the Sudanese part of the triangle region was Subul al-Salam, a Libyan militia affiliated with Haftar’s forces.

A cousin of Hassan, who works with him as a gold miner and trader, told MEE that forces from Subul al-Salam “helped the RSF until it reached the market and controlled the entire area”.

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He said that the group, alongside RSF fighters, carried out ethnically motivated killings. Another miner, Abu Zar, said there were Libyan fighters inside the main market at al-Katma.

He told MEE that an armed group called the Tariq Ben Zeyad brigade, which is believed to be controlled by Saddam Haftar, Khalifa’s son, was also part of the attack on the triangle border region.

“We heard that Saddam Haftar, the strong son of the Libyan commander, was closely monitoring the military operation before he ordered the forces to withdraw back to Libyan territory,” another miner, who asked for anonymity, said.

The RSF then advanced into Sudan’s northern state, seizing Karb al-Toum, an oasis near the Jebel Arkenu mountain range, as well as a host of other small villages.

The Joint Forces – Darfur rebels fighting alongside the Sudanese army – were forced to withdraw from areas in the northern desert, while some of them had to retreat through Egypt alongside army soldiers.

It was reported that RSF fighters also crossed the border into Egypt but that they were ordered by senior commanders to withdraw.

The UAE's project

Libyan sources, Sudanese officials and a former US diplomat all told MEE that Haftar’s forces and the RSF had been given the green light and logistical support from the UAE to take control of the triangle border region.

Though it denies it, the UAE has been the RSF’s main patron throughout the war in Sudan.

An unpublished study seen by MEE reported that two Emirati planes landed at southeastern Libya’s al-Kufra airport on 10 July, unloading weapons and supplies that were then transported to the RSF in Darfur through the Chadian-Libyan border.

'This has been the UAE’s plan, not just in Libya, but in Chad, CAR and South Sudan. Control of borders gives them free access to weapons, to recruit fighters and to smuggle out gold'

- Cameron Hudson, former US diplomat

The report revealed that the UAE ordered Haftar to move his Libyan National Army (LNA) forces from Camp 87 in Benghazi to support the RSF “with hundreds of vehicles in its attack on the SAF and Darfur rebels in the desert”.

This movement of Haftar’s forces comes partly in response to resistance in Chad to the continued supply of the RSF through the country’s desert regions.

A Libyan source close to the issue, who did not want to be named, said the “recent interference by Hafter through its allied militia Subul al-Salam” had changed the balance of power in the triangle region, which has a Sudanese, Libyan and Egyptian component.

Egypt, the source said, was “looking suspiciously at the UAE and Haftar”, with the region vital to Cairo’s national security.

“Subul al-Salam matters, but this is an Emirati project,” Jalel Harchaoui, an analyst focusing on Libya, told MEE.

“The big event is the fact that the RSF now controls the Sudanese part of the triangle… Subul al-Salam was instrumental because the Libyan part of the triangle was very permissive until mid-May. The SAF, the Joint Forces and civilians from Egypt were all able to access it.”

“What was necessary, as preliminary step, was for Subul al-Salam to shut all of that down – and this is how the RSF was able to use that platform to carry out that incursion and take over the Sudanese part of the triangle,” Harchaoui said.

Former US diplomat and CIA expert Cameron Hudson believes the UAE is still working to ensure the victory of the RSF in Sudan’s war.

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“The RSF's control of its border areas will worsen and extend Sudan's war, making it even more difficult to resolve. This has been the UAE’s plan, not just in Libya, but in Chad, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. Control of borders gives them free access to weapons, to recruit fighters and to smuggle out gold,” Hudson, who is also a senior associate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies Africa programme, told MEE.

“It is no coincidence that the UAE maintains bases in all these countries near the border with Sudan to help facilitate that military and economic trade,” he said.

Libyan researcher and political analyst Islam Alhaj said that the UAE was exploiting the security vacuum in southern Libya to send the weapons to the RSF and support other illegal activities, including gold smuggling, in the region.

Russia continues to back both sides

Satellite imagery reported by Nova Italian news agency disclosed that two Russian cargo planes were recently tracked flying from al-Kufra airport to RSF areas in Sudan.

According to previous reporting by MEE and the imagery provided by the Copernicus programme, the Russian IL-76 plane is typically used for transporting military personnel and equipment, as well as for medium-range logistical operations.

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The shipment was part of a flow of arms shipments from southeastern Libya to the RSF that has been in operation since May, a month before the paramilitary’s capture of the Sudanese part of the border triangle.

Harchaoui told MEE that the “brand new phenomenon” was the act of flying supplies from UAE bases outside Libya directly in al-Kufra, rather than transporting them overland or by air from within other parts of Libya.

The airport at al-Kufra plays a key operational role, serving as a logistical base to facilitate the flow of supplies to RSF forces through remote and lightly monitored corridors.

Russia, as MEE has reported before, is playing both sides in Sudan’s war, with the government in Moscow building ties with the Burhan-led Sudanese government in Port Sudan, while it appears to continue helping the RSF through the UAE and its own mercenary groups.

Regional power plays

With Turkey recently stepping up its help for the Sudanese army and other regional powers, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, aligned with Burhan, external actors continue to struggle for control and profit in Sudan, which still contains vast untapped natural resources and an expansive and strategically positioned coastline.

The RSF has declared a parallel government in Nyala, South Darfur. This self-declared entity would border five countries, including South Sudan, Central African Republic, Chad, and now – following the capture of Sudan’s triangle border area - Libya and Egypt.

“The new government will face many challenges to carry any civilian duties including the good governance, protecting the civilians and oversight the finance and this will lead to big failure which will threat the other neighbouring countries,” Suliman Baldo, the executive director of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker, told MEE.

“I don’t think it will be able to stop the smuggling of gold and crops from Sudan and maintain the other supplies coming from neighbouring countries towards Sudan as its big investments for the RSF commanders,” he said.

Additional reporting by Oscar Rickett.

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