Recent weeks events have dramatically cast the Sudanese civil war back into the international spotlight, drawing renewed scrutiny to the role of external actors, particularly the United Arab Emirates.
This shift has been driven by Sudan's accusations at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the UAE concerning violations of the Genocide Convention, alongside drone strikes on Port Sudan that Khartoum vociferously attributes to direct Emirati participation. Concurrently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly reaffirmed the UAE's deep entanglement in the conflict at a Senate hearing last week.
From Washington, another significant and sudden development also surfaced last week: the imposition of U.S. sanctions on the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for alleged chemical weapons use. This dramatic accusation was met by an immediate denial from Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which vehemently dismissed the claims as "unfounded" and criticized the U.S. for bypassing the proper international mechanisms, specifically the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, despite Sudan's active membership on its Executive Council.
Despite the gravity of such an accusation, corroboration for the use of chemical agents in Sudan’s war remains conspicuously absent from public debate or reporting, save for a January 2025 New York Times article citing unnamed U.S. officials. That report itself contained a curious disclaimer: "Officials briefed on the intelligence said the information did not come from the United Arab Emirates, an American ally that is also a staunch supporter of the R.S.F."
For its part, the UAE, heavily implicated by media reports and conflict investigators in backing the RSF, has mounted a vigorous defense. On May 5, the ICJ dismissed Sudan’s genocide case against the UAE. While the dismissal was on jurisdictional grounds — the court determined it "manifestly lacks jurisdiction" to entertain the application due to a reservation in the UAE’s accession to the Genocide Convention — the UAE immediately reframed this procedural ruling as an absolution.
As the ICJ delivered its decision, Port Sudan, Sudan’s wartime capital, was enduring the second day of a relentless six-day drone barrage. This assault, marking the first time the strategic city had been targeted, brought Sudan's deeply ingrained, if reluctant, reliance on the UAE to a dramatic breaking point. Despite Khartoum's prior investment in maintaining some semblance of ties with Abu Dhabi for sanction avoidance and gold exports, its patience — after explicitly accusing the UAE of orchestrating these precision strikes — snapped.
On May 6, this culminated in Khartoum severing diplomatic relations with the UAE, explicitly branding it an “aggressor state.”
Speaking at the United Nations after a Security Council session on May 20, Sudan’s ambassador to the U.N., Al-Harith Idris, doubled down on the accusation that the attacks on Port Sudan were launched from a “UAE military base strategically located along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden." Idris characterized these strikes as "reprisal" for an SAF attack on a cargo plane in Nyala a day earlier, which had allegedly been delivering military hardware to the RSF.
Multiple reports indicate that several Emirati military officers were present and possibly killed in the bombing; Kenyan and South Sudanese news outlets also detailed the deaths of their citizens in the incident.
Despite the mounting scrutiny, the Trump administration’s engagement with the UAE has been overwhelmingly warm. President Trump's recent Gulf tour, which included Abu Dhabi as a stop, was touted as a success, highlighted by over $200 billion in announced deals, with a strong focus on AI technology. These agreements built upon a previously revealed $1.4 trillion commitment from the UAE to invest in the U.S. economy over the next decade, a pledge made months earlier during a visit by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE's national security adviser.
The intense concentration on high-stakes economic diplomacy seemingly overshadowed the growing instability in Sudan and Abu Dhabi’s role in fueling it. As President Trump himself told UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in a move that signals “teflon status” for those who deliver on deals: "we're going to treat you, as you should be — magnificently, and you're a magnificent man."
Rubio, during his Senate hearing last week, however painted a different picture, when he explicitly identified the war in Sudan and the UAE’s role in fueling it, stating that "we have expressed, not just to the UAE, but to other countries that they are turning it [Sudan’s civil war] into a proxy war.. that it's destabilizing the region."
While external peace efforts are significantly handicapped, the conflict's internal dynamics ensure its continuation. Capitalizing on intense public animosity toward the RSF, the SAF has framed the war as an existential struggle for "dignity" and sovereignty. This narrative, in addition to helping mobilize volunteer fighters, makes overt negotiation with the RSF — determined by the Biden administration in 2023 to have committed genocide and ethnic cleansing — politically untenable. For its part, the RSF is intent on securing a political future for itself and is pressing on with the formation of a parallel government, while characterizing the SAF as an illegitimate, Islamist-controlled army and regime.
The deeply entrenched fighting positions of the warring parties, coupled with the lack of a coherent U.S. strategy and diplomatic infrastructure, including an understaffed Africa Bureau and an unappointed special envoy, leaves Washington poorly positioned to coordinate the external pressure needed to break the conflict's stalemate.
Though Sudan’s military-led government has explicitly reserved its right to self-defense, a conventional military attack on the UAE is practically impossible; Sudan’s army, embroiled in its internal war against the RSF, lacks the necessary power projection capabilities for such a feat. Moreover, a direct assault on the UAE would invite swift, punishing retaliation from the well-connected petroleum exporting giant.
Beyond its devastating humanitarian toll, the civil war’s continuation increasingly imperils regional security, pushing Sudan and its neighbors into dangerous corners where miscalculation could spark international conflict. Indeed, a more immediate risk than a direct Sudan-UAE military clash is Khartoum acting on an explicit threat to strike Chad or South Sudan, accusing them both of complicity with the RSF and of facilitating Abu Dhabi's alleged weapon flows into Darfur — threats both nations have condemned and vowed to meet with force.
Though, for now, no conventional front will open between Sudan and the UAE. The battle will continue to unfold in the halls of multilateral institutions, where Sudan's accusations will test, but likely not break, Abu Dhabi's entrenched influence.
