How We Know the UAE Continues to Supply the RSF, November 9, 2025
Thinking about how likely it is the RSF will uphold any agreed-to cease-fire, it’s critical to ask if this would extend to accelerating flows of UAE-military equipment to the militia. Scores of very recent OPSINT (open-source intelligence reports), satellite photography, reports from the ground make clear nothing has changed in the Emiratis extraordinarily extensive supply of arms, ammunition, transport vehicles, drones, heavy weapons (e.g., high-tech artillery, sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons). This is in addition to monetary payments to RSF leaders, bribes paid to those on various transport routes, and the public relations platform that Mohamed bin Zayed and his lackeys have afforded the RSF leadership.
The most obvious conclusion to be drawn from past RSF bad faith, the triumphalism that prevails in the wake of seizing El Fasher, and the bottomless pockets of the UAE was put bluntly by UN human rights chief Volker Turk [November 7]: “there is no sign of de-escalation in the war.” On the contrary,
“The United Nations has warned of ‘intensified hostilities’ ahead in Sudan, despite paramilitary forces endorsing a truce proposal from mediators after more than two years of war with the regular army.”
One has only to look east of El Fasher to the Kordofans to see what Turk is talking about, or the drone attack on Khartoum the day after the RSF agreed to a cease-fire: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y4j155g49o.amp
But even if the RSF should partially cease military activities, it will certainly continue to expand its military capacity. For example, an extremely large convoy from Libya has been reportedly destroyed by the SAF in a series of strikes over the past couple of days near the RSF base at Al Zurq base in the northwestern corner of North Darfur—and very close to Libya. But this loss is merely an inconvenience for the UAE—there are too many ways to move military equipment with sufficient wealth.
I have gathered some of the satellite and OSINT findings, appended below—a small sampling of what is available to every intelligence service in every country around the world. It gives us all too clear a clear picture of how the RSF sees its military future, courtesy of Mohamed bin Zayed.
