---
title: "Due South: Julia Steers of LightHouse on Sudan & UAE"
description: "ladies and gentlemen good morning good evening good afternoon whenever and wherever you're listening to us from this is the do you south podcast with me wilfred minor africa correspondent for fronts.co war fronts and all our other associated media properties and today i am joined by julia steers from lighthouse reports and we'll be talking sudan sudan sudan julia talk to the people thanks for having me so i'm julia steers as you said i work for lighthouse reports and i have been based in nairobi for the last 10 years covering the region and with a heavy focus on sudan and we have our latest documentary out as a collaboration between lighthouse reports sudan war monitor and evident media and we investigated the role of the uae in terms of fueling one side of the war in sudan particularly through libya so thank you so much julia for agreeing to come onto the podcast so for our listeners in case you're not familiar with the sudan war monitor it's one of the leading outlets especially for us when it comes to understanding what is happening in sudan what's happening on the ground because they have generally some of the best contacts that i've seen same case with lighthouse and same case with evidence just really high profile organizations doing some really really good work as julia has mentioned lighthouse in collaboration with their partners put out a documentary recently on the 29th of june and we are recording this on the 6th of july so just about a week ago on how the uae is supporting the uae is supporting the rsf through a network of allies specifically in libya and yeah that's that's exactly what you're going to talk about because the uae has been funding and supporting the rsf throughout this war and it's widely agreed upon that without that financing without you know that material help that financial help those weapons that get shipped in then the rsf wouldn't be able to continue the war against the saf the sudanese armed forces so i'm going to let julia explain a little bit more about the reporting that they did the documentary itself and then we'll take it from there sure thanks so i think it is important say that on both sides this is a proxy war and as your listeners will be probably more familiar with the war in sudan than the average person you know i think talking about it as only a civil war between two generals from the beginning you know does a disservice to the complexity of what is actually happening on the ground and both sides you know have their foreign backers and then some however as you said what we investigated was the role of the emiratis in supporting the rapid support forces and this is something we have seen since the early days of the war and then again as the rsf was on the back foot the emiratis really stepping up their support for the rsf and early in the war we saw this support material support so fuel weapons cars going through countries like chad to a lesser extent libya and throughout the three plus years of war in sudan they've managed to really establish a sprawling network where they are using different countries in the region including kenya including libya as we investigated chad south sudan ethiopia not only to provide this material support but also to conduct training outside of sudan for the rsf troops to send mercenaries who they have recruited from colombia to train and in some cases to fight alongside the rsf so this is a really vast and complex network of support and of course one of you know one of the main questions is why is the uae so robustly supporting the rsf and i think that's quite a complicated answer himeti the head of the rsf has a long-term loyalty to the rulers in the uae he provided them with support with rsf troops for their war in yemen of course there is trade and financial interests in sudan from gold to agriculture and then i think some of it is just about you know the fact that when we talk about the uae we're talking about a country with basically limitless resources and so i think one of the questions for me is you know whether or not they are fully fully behind the rsf they continue to sort of just you know they've backed this horse and they're going to continue to dump resources behind this horse and so you know i think the question for a lot of sudan watchers is how long that support might last and what we've seen is it has lasted and increased throughout the war and it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all though of course the emiratis completely deny any involvement at all and what we found in our report in libya we went to eastern libya to benghazi and to kufra which is a very well-known trafficking hub sort of on the border triangle with chad sudan and libya and we found not only are the emiratis continuing to use this route to by air and by you and to send weapons and to send cars and fuel, as I said, but also Libya is the site of many training camps for the RSF, was the site of a lot of training for the RSF before the fall of El Fasher in Darfur, and that there are still active training sites where RSF soldiers are training alongside the Libyan National Army and are training with Colombian mercenaries in eastern Libya. So it's quite an active route for them. We managed to speak to seven defectors from the RSF who were at the time living in Libya and had left the group, and they were obviously very helpful in helping us to uncover what's going on there."
url: https://fronts.co/podcast/due-south-julia-steers-of-lighthouse-on-sudan-uae.md
canonical: https://fronts.co/podcast/due-south-julia-steers-of-lighthouse-on-sudan-uae/
datePublished: 2026-07-21T14:00:09.000Z
dateModified: 2026-07-21T14:00:10.000Z
author:
  - name: Fronts Staff
    url: https://fronts.co/authors/fronts-team/
publisher: Fronts
image: "https://media.fronts.co/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,height=630,fit=cover,gravity=auto,quality=80,format=auto/images/articles/due-south-julia-steers-of-lighthouse-on-sudan-uae-b36d762b.png"
type: NewsArticle
language: en
audio: https://media.fronts.co/audio/due-south-julia-steers-of-lighthouse-on-sudan-uae.mp3
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<!-- aeo:section start="lede" -->
ladies and gentlemen good morning good evening good afternoon whenever and wherever you're listening to us from this is the do you south podcast with me wilfred minor africa correspondent for fronts.co war fronts and all our other associated media properties and today i am joined by julia steers from lighthouse reports and we'll be talking sudan sudan sudan julia talk to the people thanks for having me so i'm julia steers as you said i work for lighthouse reports and i have been based in nairobi for the last 10 years covering the region and with a heavy focus on sudan and we have our latest documentary out as a collaboration between lighthouse reports sudan war monitor and evident media and we investigated the role of the uae in terms of fueling one side of the war in sudan particularly through libya so thank you so much julia for agreeing to come onto the podcast so for our listeners in case you're not familiar with the sudan war monitor it's one of the leading outlets especially for us when it comes to understanding what is happening in sudan what's happening on the ground because they have generally some of the best contacts that i've seen same case with lighthouse and same case with evidence just really high profile organizations doing some really really good work as julia has mentioned lighthouse in collaboration with their partners put out a documentary recently on the 29th of june and we are recording this on the 6th of july so just about a week ago on how the uae is supporting the uae is supporting the rsf through a network of allies specifically in libya and yeah that's that's exactly what you're going to talk about because the uae has been funding and supporting the rsf throughout this war and it's widely agreed upon that without that financing without you know that material help that financial help those weapons that get shipped in then the rsf wouldn't be able to continue the war against the saf the sudanese armed forces so i'm going to let julia explain a little bit more about the reporting that they did the documentary itself and then we'll take it from there sure thanks so i think it is important say that on both sides this is a proxy war and as your listeners will be probably more familiar with the war in sudan than the average person you know i think talking about it as only a civil war between two generals from the beginning you know does a disservice to the complexity of what is actually happening on the ground and both sides you know have their foreign backers and then some however as you said what we investigated was the role of the emiratis in supporting the rapid support forces and this is something we have seen since the early days of the war and then again as the rsf was on the back foot the emiratis really stepping up their support for the rsf and early in the war we saw this support material support so fuel weapons cars going through countries like chad to a lesser extent libya and throughout the three plus years of war in sudan they've managed to really establish a sprawling network where they are using different countries in the region including kenya including libya as we investigated chad south sudan ethiopia not only to provide this material support but also to conduct training outside of sudan for the rsf troops to send mercenaries who they have recruited from colombia to train and in some cases to fight alongside the rsf so this is a really vast and complex network of support and of course one of you know one of the main questions is why is the uae so robustly supporting the rsf and i think that's quite a complicated answer himeti the head of the rsf has a long-term loyalty to the rulers in the uae he provided them with support with rsf troops for their war in yemen of course there is trade and financial interests in sudan from gold to agriculture and then i think some of it is just about you know the fact that when we talk about the uae we're talking about a country with basically limitless resources and so i think one of the questions for me is you know whether or not they are fully fully behind the rsf they continue to sort of just you know they've backed this horse and they're going to continue to dump resources behind this horse and so you know i think the question for a lot of sudan watchers is how long that support might last and what we've seen is it has lasted and increased throughout the war and it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all though of course the emiratis completely deny any involvement at all and what we found in our report in libya we went to eastern libya to benghazi and to kufra which is a very well-known trafficking hub sort of on the border triangle with chad sudan and libya and we found not only are the emiratis continuing to use this route to by air and by you and to send weapons and to send cars and fuel, as I said, but also Libya is the site of many training camps for the RSF, was the site of a lot of training for the RSF before the fall of El Fasher in Darfur, and that there are still active training sites where RSF soldiers are training alongside the Libyan National Army and are training with Colombian mercenaries in eastern Libya. So it's quite an active route for them. We managed to speak to seven defectors from the RSF who were at the time living in Libya and had left the group, and they were obviously very helpful in helping us to uncover what's going on there.

All right, that's a lot, Julie. You guys did some really, really good work. I want to zero in on something you've mentioned, that Hermete provided support to the UAE a little while ago, and this is part of the origin why the UAE has been very insistent on supporting him throughout this war.

Tell us a little bit about that. I think that's part of it. I think, you know, we often see quite an oversimplified narrative as to why the UAE is backing the RSF.

Of course, it's a bit about gold. I think it is a bit about just personal loyalties. The other sort of ideological standpoint that they're coming from is that they say they're fighting SAF, who is backed by Islamists, which, you know, there is truth to that.

SAF has support from Islamist parties in Sudan. And so ideologically, the UAE, it was the same for their fight in Yemen. They said they were fighting the Muslim Brotherhood.

And so they say that would be a reason why they would be supporting the RSF, because they're sort of the anti-Islamist force. Now, again, they deny all involvement. But I think the answer is, it's multiple answers in one, right?

So loyalties between Hometi and the leaders of the UAE. There's photos of them, you know, meeting several years ago. There's the Yemeni war connection.

And there's agricultural and gold trade reasons as well. It's interesting that you mentioned that the SAF is supported by Islamists, because just over the past week, the American government sanctioned several Islamist groups within, that are supporting the SAF, rather, as part of its broader efforts to reduce the Islamist influence within the SAF. And I was speaking with Michael D'Angelo from the Critical Threats Project.

And he mentioned that this Islamist influence within the SAF is part of the reason why the countries around the world are hesitant to support the SAF over the RSF, you know, despite the length of the atrocities that the RSF has committed. Is this something... seen the new coverage definitely it's something we hear a lot about and i think again there's really no good guys in this war right both sides have committed brutal atrocities against civilians both sides have very complex and problematic backers i think in general the international community sort of deals with saf as the legitimate government and you'll hear the rsf being referred to as a paramilitary or as a rebel group but as you said there's a lot of sort of hand-wringing about the backers of saf including you know these islamists who have been for decades and decades very influential in sudenese politics and then on the battlefield as well there's all of these oops sorry one second my mic fell so yeah as we were saying you know both sides have problematic backers and both sides have really committed extensive atrocities against civilians so there's really no good guys in this war and the international community has to some extent dealt with saf as if they are the legitimate government of sudan and you'll hear the rsf referred to as a paramilitary or as a rebel group but of course saf depends heavily on its islamist backers who have been you know really influential in sudanese politics for a long time and then on the battlefield as well saf is fighting alongside you know sudanese islamist militias who they've sort of recruited into their fight as well so of course that's problematic for the international community to some extent and saf's backers are egypt which which you know comes with its own issues as well so yes i think that will be something if saf has continued to be treated as sort of the more legitimate government of sudan as compared to the rsf which as you know has declared a parallel government that will be something that i imagine behind closed doors western governments are trying to address in terms of the heavy influence of its most parties let's talk about the address for a moment and you know the idea that they've launched their own parallel government and they did it in nairobi and you for listeners who are unaware both you and i are based in nairobi so this is something that is close hits close to home for both of us so what do you make of the rsf's attempts to establish a parallel government new declare itself a ruling force within sudan definitely i mean i think from an rsf perspective it makes sense that they would want to declare a parallel government it was very clear that their strategy from the beginning was to sort of hold the periphery which includes darfur so they've established this parallel government which you know its capital is in yala in darfur and i think it gives them particularly now that they've taken the city of belfast last october they you know they have a full grip Darfur, which they say they rule with their government in Nyala. Now, I think what's interesting, as you said, is that they launched this government here in Nairobi, and there was a big event at KICC, the convention center in downtown Nairobi.

They sort of pulled out all the stops for it. You know, it's something that I think you and I know could not have happened without the approval of the government here. I mean, there were Kenyan police, you know, checking my press badge on the way into the event.

And then, as you see in the documentary, when we interviewed the spokesman for their government, TASSIS, he was also here in Nairobi. So, as I said, you know, we investigated Libya for its particular role in being a massive logistical hub for weapons trafficking and troops training, as supported by the UAE. But, of course, Kenyans should be asking themselves, you know, what is going on in Kenya exactly, and what is moving through Kenya from the UAE, how much money is here from the RSF and the UAE, you know, what President Ruto is up to in terms of making his own deals with the UAE to support the RSF.

But I think, you know, it's quite obvious that the Kenyan government is supportive of the RSF. I completely agree that the Kenyan government is supportive of the RSF. We have a video on our website, fronts.co, where this podcast will live, actually discussing it in depth why Kenya is supporting the RSF.

Because I'm sure you remember, at some point, it came out that RSF officials were flying around the world on Kenyan passports, on Kenyan passports. Specifically, Hermeti's brother, and I believe Hermeti himself, he was flying around the world on a Kenyan passport, and that the Kenyan government had even flown one of Hermeti's brothers on the presidential plane, to I believe it was Chad for a meeting. The simple fact that was happening was, you know, very surprising to see, just because Kenya has traditionally placed itself as a hub for democracy, a peacemaker in the region.

So to see the government so outrightly support one of the sides was very concerning to see. And it seems strange, too, because it didn't seem as though Kenya was really under any pressure to take sides. You know, in the past, they've tried to be a place where warring parties, whether in South Sudan or Sudan have, or Somalia, have come for peace talks, you know.

And I think as a neighboring country, it's actually quite strange that they chose to so obviously take sides. And, you know, I think we can assume that a significant amount of money has probably changed hands to create that dynamic. I agree.

It definitely has to be about the money because Justin Lynch, the Managing Director of Conflict Insights Group, one of the contributors to the report you guys made, told Bellingcat that it was hardly a coincidence that after the RSF public conference, Kenya got a $1.5 billion loan from the UAE. And then there was a search in suspicious UAE to RSF shipments transiting through Kenya. Yes, exactly.

It's all linked. Yeah, it's all linked. And with that, let's go back to the documentary.

So you guys were embedded with the Libya National Army. Tell us, how did that happen? How did that come about?

And what was the experience like being in such a situation? Because everything we read about Libya from the outside looking in, and as someone who is steeped in this kind of work, in our line of work, I am constantly reading about the worst of the worst things happening in Libya. So how was it embedding with the LNA?

How did it happen? What kind of conversations led to that actually happening? And what did you guys see?

So many, many conversations led to that. It's a very difficult country, you know, and we live in a region where outside of Kenya, it's not particularly easy to report in many of our neighboring countries. However, Libya is very difficult to get journalist accreditation, to get into the country.

And so we have been trying for really much of the last year to get into eastern Libya. And that's largely because we felt like there's been so much exceptional work done by colleagues on the role of the UAE in Sudan, including, you know, by the New York Times, which really broke the story about the Chad air bridge. But a lot of it has been because of the difficulty of access, you know, open source reporting, satellite imagery reporting, which is super valuable.

But we were really trying to get on the ground somewhere to one of the main operating theaters of the UAE to understand what it felt like on the ground and actually to talk to real people who were involved in this network, both Libyan National Army sources and RSF defector sources and active RSF sources as well. So it was really important for us to actually get to Libya. And as I said, we tried for about a year before we were actually on the ground there.

And then our only opportunity to get to Kufra, which, as I said, is the main trafficking hub in southern Libya, was to go with the LNA, the Libyan National Army. And it was complicated because we knew we wouldn't really be able to do to break away from them and do real reporting while we were on the ground because we had minders. Even when I wanted to go meet, you know, a Sudanese source in Kufra town, we had Libyan National Army minders who were escorting us everywhere.

But they were willing to take us out into the desert where they typically do these patrols. And we saw, you know, one of the main checkpoints that we had actually been monitoring through social media analysis and satellite imagery analysis. One of the main sort of gateways from southern Libya into Sudan, a place called Checkpoint 22, that we had seen RSF soldiers posting on TikTok from for many months.

So it was, you know, very interesting to finally have our feet on the ground in a place where we knew was an RSF hub. But of course, none of the Libyan army soldiers who we were with would acknowledge that at all. So, you know, as a reporter, it's very strange to be somewhere where you know everything is happening, but the LNA was very committed to sort of putting on this smoke and mirror show for us.

You know, that was also at a point where the Libyan role in, you know, backing the RSF was known. So they were incredibly sensitive to, you know, bad PR around it, basically. So they were really trying to show us there's nothing going on here.

We're not letting these trucks go through the desert anymore. But, you know, it was we had done so much reporting on it that, of course, it was almost laughable at that point. In the documentary, you see at one point they take us out into the desert.

And because we had been analyzing by satellite images in RSF training camp in the desert, we knew we were like 20 or 30 miles away from this camp. And of course, I'm asking the lieutenant who we were with to like drive in that direction. And he's saying, you know, the sand is too soft to go over in that direction.

So, of course, they were not about to drive us towards a known RSF training camp. So it was it was both fascinating and also frustrating to be in a place where we knew so much was going on in the shadows. And the Libyan National Army obviously was not going to acknowledge any of it.

But I think in the end, it was still quite valuable for our reporting to be able to be on the ground. I found it very fascinating that Lieutenant Anhaif Fata, I hope I'm pronouncing his name correctly, the guy who was driving you around said that everything that you guys had reported on so far that you could see with satellite images was all rumors and people trying to create a conflict between Libya and Sudan, the SAF. So were you guys pushing back on this?

Because I know in this situation, you're beholden to the LNA because you're embedded with them and they have their minders with you everywhere. So were you guys pushing back on this? It is hard.

You're right. You know, I obviously like to ask the difficult questions, but also we were totally reliant on them for our own security, for getting us on the flight back. You know, everybody was somehow affiliated with the LNA who we were with.

So you had to sort of like pace out your questions and not show your cards too early. We did push back on it. I mean, you see me in the piece push back on it a little.

And in fact, I went even harder than what we ended up. including in the piece because, you know, that piece is for a broad audience. I had asked him actually about specific attacks on that border, on the Libyan-Sudanese border that had happened last summer, where Egypt on behalf of SAF actually bombed convoys, RSF, LNA, joint convoys. So, you know, we knew there had been extensive clashes because Egypt was getting annoyed at the level of support that was moving through Libya.

So, of course, this man knew that his own troops had been bombed because of this dynamic. And so, you know, I think it was one of those situations that we've all dealt with in reporting before. And, you know, I felt similarly when interviewing the RSF guy who was sort of just grinning back anywhere.

You know, he knows he's lying. I know he's lying. And there's sort of no amount of pushing back that's going to get him to acknowledge the truth.

But you still sort of have to be there and remind him of these questions. And, you know, at the end of the day, he's doing his job and he is going to stick to the LNA party line. And you can really feel it in the country, you know, how committed everybody is to sort of backing the Haftar's government and really sticking to the party line.

And you really could feel it throughout the documentary. And even in other reporting, I've seen that everyone is very committed to sticking to a certain narrative. But as you mentioned, it doesn't really hold up, especially with all the evidence.

You mentioned an attack by Egypt on Libya back in the summer. Tell us about this. I don't believe our audience has heard about this attack yet.

So, you know, I might not get all the details right off the top of my head, but last summer, there were several airstrikes on convoys on the Libyan side of the border that were by Egyptian planes. And what we heard at the time was that given the sort of grinding fight in Al-Fashir and the level of support that was flowing into the RSF from the Emiratis via Libya at the time, SAF and their backers in Egypt were, finally had sort of deemed that it crossed a red line, given the level of violence in Al-Fashir. And they were, you know, sending a very obvious message to the RSF and to the LNA.

And it did get through to the LNA. We did speak to some sources in the LNA who said that was, that they really did stop some of the flights through Kufra around that time. You know, I don't think Libya wants any part in, you know, war with Egypt.

And there were some, you know, diplomatic meetings, I believe, in Cairo between the Libyans and the Egyptians to try and de-escalate. So it really. make headlines beyond you know libyan and some other regional media but it was a significant event in addition to other clashes that took place on the libyan side of the border between you know groups that were aligned with sap and groups that were aligned with the rsf so you know it's an obvious enough and a long-standing enough trafficking route that there have been some serious issues around that which again is what that makes it all the more sort of absurd to have people sort of just look you right in the eye and say you know nothing is happening on this border it's completely absurd have there been any other attacks by egypt since then has there been any other escalations because so far as you rightly pointed out this has been a proxy war whatever's happening in sudan has been a proxy war between uae and the other forces backing the address of on one side and you know groups like egypt iran that have been backing the saf on the other side so this would be one of the first instances where you always see the proxy masters you know for lack of a better word attacking you attacking each other because of this war so have there been other attacks yeah i think there were some very sort of discrete attacks from egyptian aircrafts like i said last june i believe last october in the lead-up to the fall of elf asher and you know most of it has been at convoys striking convoys near in this sort of border triangle region and from what we've heard from diplomatic sources most of it has been to deter libya and the uae from using the supply route they're really trying to shut down the libya supply route because it's been so beneficial to the rsf's fight across star four i think they have been successful and that we did really see a slowdown in flights through khufra after some of these strikes so you know we were like many others tracking the flights that were going from benghazi to khufra by the time we got to benghazi in february 2026 the lna really wanted to tell us there's no flights going through khufra anymore and that was not entirely true but it was to some extent true they slowed down the flow now that could be because of the attacks by egypt i think that was part of it could also be because after the rsf took elf asher in late october they didn't need as much weapons and troops flowing through libya however what we've seen and i think what the emiratis are good at is they're very sort of nimble in terms of responding to the situation on the ground in sudan so once the chad air bridge was exposed and the fighting shifted to different areas of darfur they moved a lot of their operations to libya Once some of the flights in Libya started slowing down, we did see, we think, some upticks in the truck convoys through the desert, or they slowed down the flow of things through Libya for a bit. And then by the time we were there in February, it seemed as though it was increasing again.

And so, you know, you've seen trying to cover the UAE's role in Sudan is like a game of whack-a-mole because you start focusing on one country and then you hear, oh, actually, now maybe they're moving stuff through. Kenya, oh, actually, now there's a training base in Ethiopia. There's a new base in Libya.

They're potentially moving stuff through South Sudan into Kordofan now that the finance has shifted to Kordofan. So, as I said, this is a country with almost limitless resources and that is reliant, you know, on just sort of making handshake deals with regional governments to set up their logistical networks. So they have been quite adaptable.

So I'm not sure that the strikes by Egypt actually did anything to disincentivize the UAE. I think it just sort of forced a bit of a re-strategizing to some extent. And it did intimidate the Libyans.

You know, the Libyans are definitely not trying to get fully drawn into the war. That idea of intimidation is very interesting to me because you mentioned that part of the reason why all the UAE guys, sorry, the Libyan guys who took you around, Libya were very insistent that, you know, nothing wrong is happening. There's no RSF training base.

There's no war in Basin, say, is because they're afraid of bad PR. So is it purely because of this fear of what Egypt will do or is there a broader fear as part of this that there could be international repercussions for their role in the Sudan war? I think it's more the international repercussions.

So to the extent that we were able to talk to some higher level LNA sources about their role in it, they were really framing it as, look, we're the little guy. When the UAE asks you to do a favor for them, we as Eastern Libya, you know, it's not even an internationally recognized government. So they don't really feel able to push back against the UAE.

Now, the reality is their leaders are also massively benefiting from this trafficking trade and from their role with the UAE. So it's not quite as simple as sort of the little guy being strong, strong armed by the UAE. But there is some truth to that.

You know, the UAE helped Libya's leader, Khalifa Haftar, in his own war several years ago. And so they're not really in a position to say, sorry, you can't use our country as a as a trafficking route. But at the same time, you know, Eastern Libya used to rely on Russia's Wagner group as well.

And I think they felt very isolated from the international community because of that and because. their own war, and they're finally at a time of relative stability, and they are trying to normalize some of their relationships between the Benghazi and the Tripoli side, including we had heard at the time that we were there that they were going to do a joint training exercise between East and Western Libya with the U.S. military, and that they were going to hold a training exercise in the middle of the country for troops from both sides. We saw Saddam Haftar, who is, you know, the heir apparent to his father. He was in D.C. in Washington last week, I believe, meeting with Marco Rubio.

At the time that we were there, we heard that the LNA was very focused on normalizing their relationship with the U.S. specifically and sort of messaging to the U.S., you know, we're no longer this sort of Wagner-backed warring government. We're a legitimate government who wants to be taken seriously on the international stage. So I think it's much more about wanting to be taken seriously by the international community and not wanting to seem like they're a bad actor on one side of the Sudanese civil war.

It's not really worth it for them to be seen in that way. But, you know, of course, the truth is very complicated. It is a very complicated situation for them because, as you said, on one hand, they're a junior partner to the UAE who is being strong armed into doing everything that they're doing.

But on the other hand, their leadership is benefiting and they still want to present to Washington that they are a credible government that isn't being a disruptive force in the region. So it's a very fine line that they're walking. And again, it raises questions about why they're doing it.

But the most important for me is the fact that the UAE is capable of finding so many countries to either strong arm or you just get to outrightly agree with them on supplying weapons to the RSF or using their air bases as places that can easily move weapons. One of the most recent reports I saw is that Uganda has now become one of the leading places that the UAE is shipping weapons through. Have you heard that as well and we tried to investigate that to an extent.

We were definitely hearing that, you know, as early as a year ago. I think Uganda is very difficult to report on, you know, sort of the role of the Ugandan government and the UPDF, the military there. But we've definitely heard about routes through Uganda as well.

So I think they've really wrapped in, as I said, a pretty sprawling regional network to fuel their war in Sudan. And a big question for me as well as what happens, you know, hopefully the war in Sudan will end soon. And I'm curious about sort of the Emiratis long game in the region now that they've been able to do it. able to establish this network and how they might use it in the future.

And I also think it's important to say, you know, the U.S., who is, you know, a partner of the UAE's, the U.S. has also not said to them directly, I mean, Rubio has made some statements that have said, you know, something to the effect of, okay, the proxy actors in this war need to stop. But we've heard a lot of diplomatic frustration from the Africa teams, you know, in the U.S. State Department and in the U.K. that their leadership is not pushing back harder, right? So I think, you know, the blame is not only on regional governments in Africa, the other countries that are a part of Sudan's peace process, including the U.S. and the U.K., I don't think have exerted all the pressure that they could said on the UAE, which would set an example.

You know, if the U.S. even said to Kenya, it's a bad look for you guys to be partnering with the UAE and to be allowing the RSF to set up their government here, you know, that might move the needle as U.S. support is important in Kenya. But I don't think it's a priority for the U.S. to push back on the UAE. And, you know, I don't.

So therefore, you know, should it be, will it be a priority for some of our smaller regional governments? I completely agree that every country seems to not really be interested in rocking the boat, so to speak, because there was a report in The Guardian on the 23rd of June that the U.K. government, the U.K. foreign office received warnings that a genocide could happen in Sudan as far back as 2024, but did not go public with the news for fear of upsetting the UAE. And the UAE is a very rich country, a very prosperous country with the ability to invest in, you know, basically everything.

One of the most successful teams in British soccer, the team Man City, is owned by the UAE. So it has its fingers in a lot of pies. And part of this is the fact that it buys a lot of weapons from the U.K., from France.

And these weapons end up in the hands of the addresses. What did you guys find out about that? Yeah, we have been looking into that really for the last 18 months at Lighthouse Reports.

And that has been a very, very difficult part of the investigation that we hope still is ongoing. We hope to have more on that in a couple of months' time. But as you said, there have been British weapons that were sold to the UAE, found in Sudan.

There have been other European weapons sold to the UAE, found in Sudan. The UAE's response to that has been, you know, it's a fluid market. And just because we at one point bought them doesn't mean that we were sort of the onward sellers to Sudan.

And there's, you know, lots of different weapons turning up in Sudan from different origins, but we unequivocally found that Emirati weapons were directly making their way to the RSF, but I think for our fellow journalists and sort of OSINT reporters, I think there's a lot of work still to be done on tracking the weapons, but at the same time, you know, the UAE does a really good job at keeping their network opaque and maintaining plausible deniability to some extent, you know, I think now that deniability is implausible because it's, they've been caught on so many different fronts, but in terms of actually tracking the exact weapons that they've given to the RSF, that's quite difficult. It really is quite difficult, and there is a lot of work to be done, completely agree, but one of the outlets that has done some really good work on this is Bellingcat and the Kenyan outlet Daily Nation. Sometime last year, I believe, they came out with a report saying Kenyan weapons had been found, you know, among stockpiles that the RSF had, and you know, it was again very surprising to see weapons marked for use by Kenyan, you know, that had been delivered pretty recently end up in the arms of the, you know, of the RSF.

So, again, it's, it's just a very complicated flow of weapons to this militia group. Yeah, and I think we see there's no consequences, really, you know, that was, that was great reporting by the nation in Bellingcat, and we have not seen any consequences for Kenya, for other governments, you know, the UK or France, and so I don't think it really does much, you know, there's just such a lack of sort of political will around Sudan in so many ways that I don't think, you know, I think the more reporting, the better, and hopefully we can continue to report on this issue, but it's been interesting that even these sort of bombshell discoveries of Kenyan weapons or British weapons found that there hasn't been a lot of sort of impact on the diplomatic side from that. So what kind of consequences should exist?

Yeah, this is a question I ask a lot of my guests, you know, when we're talking about complicated issues like this, you know, when we're talking about Rwanda in the DRC, what kind of consequences should exist? Because Kenya's weapons being found, you know, being used by the RSF is a, is a really big deal, and as is the fact that the UAE has been flying weapons into Sudan, and was doing the exact same thing during one of the biggest crises that the nation has faced when El Fasha fell in late October last year. So what kind of consequences would you like to see?

Well, I like to be a journalist, so I don't have to answer that question. And I can leave it to your diplomatic guests. But, you know, I think one thing we've tried to do in this report and with another report that we at Lighthouse Reports did with Al Jazeera's fault line programs about the fall of El Fasher is to remind people that, you know, these weapons flowing in, the troops getting trained and going back to fight in Darfur has massive consequences on Sudanese civilians.

I think we get so caught up sometimes in geopolitics that we forget the extreme toll that this war has had on Sudanese civilians. And so I think driving the conversation a bit in that direction, particularly to pressure the parties who are involved in the peace talks, would be helpful. I think, as I said in the interview in the doc with the RSF spokesman, you know, just some transparency, you know, about the proxy actors in the war.

To me, it's really insane that Western diplomats sort of allow everybody to come to the table, including the UAE, who is involved as a so-called neutral party in these peace talks. And that they all just pretend as if the UAE, you know, accept this denial and accept this narrative that the UAE is not involved. So I think, you know, some pressure to just acknowledge the true dynamics of the war and then perhaps they could really come to the table and talk about peace would be helpful.

And I do think, you know, what I've heard from folks at NGOs, places like Amnesty International, who have a new report out recently where they name certain commanders and they do name some of the regional elements of the war. And from diplomats as well, is that pressuring regional governments for to not work with the UAE would have an impact. So, OK, we're three years into the war and we can see that the U.S. and the U.K. are going to do very little to actually push the UAE.

But can there be pressure to make it, you know, less favorable for African governments to work with the UAE? You know, that is something that diplomats have said may have some impact. I mean, for me, overall, you know, they should be driving at transparency, but I'm not quite sure what consequences they could specifically sort of lay out.

I'm not sure that answers your question, nor if I've if I've totally skirted around it. No, no, it's OK. As a journalist as well, it's easier to be on the side where I'm asking that question and say, what do you think should be done to punish all the parties involved in these atrocities rather than saying what? things should be done because again we as people reporting on these things we need to be impartial we can't let our own personal feelings cloud what's happening so yeah i think it's clear there should be consequences for the uae you know i think i'm not sure how fair it is for there to be you know sort of severe consequences for some of the smaller governments working with the uae when there's a total lack of political will to actually impose consequences on the uae itself you know to some extent that seems unfair and sort of an old trick of western diplomacy so like i said i think driving home the impact exposing the network is important but also driving home the impact of you know these are not just weapons flowing in and sort of serial numbers on ammunition that we're tracking and all of that's important to know but also to continue to try and get as much coverage about sudan as possible where we're reminding the people who are in the peace talks and in the decision-making positions in all of these governments you know that hundreds of thousands of people have died and that the rsf is continuing to commit war crimes of unimaginable levels and that is actually the impact of the uae i completely agree one of the things that makes this a very difficult political minefield for you countries like the u.s to maneuver is the fact that for the u.s specifically for this trump administration the uae bought 49 49 percent stake in the trump family cryptocurrency venture world liberty financial for 500 million dollars and such close financial ties means that no matter how much we would want to see the uae punished the country is actually responsible for delivering that kind of punishment is so heavily in bed with the uae regime we most likely won't see any meaningful punishments in the near future yes i think massively compromised and then also you know given what's going on in the middle east at the moment this perception that the uae is you know a stable and very important american partner in the fight against terror i think when you have that sort of two-fold relationship where they're financially very important to the american government and then perceived to be defensively very important to the american government i have a very hard time unfortunately seeing the war in sudan taking precedence over those priorities yeah again the war in sudan just feels like an afterthought to much of the world and speaking of much of the world there's something you guys mentioned in your piece that colombian mass energies have been heavily recruited into the war in Sudan.

They've been training the Sudanese troops, and at some point they were training Libyan troops while the Sudanese war. So walk us through that. Yes.

So this is another one of the now sort of worst-kept secrets of Emirati involvement in the war in Sudan. There's been some good reporting by the UN and other media on this issue, which is that the Emiratis, through a UAE-based company called Global Security Services Group, recruit Colombian soldiers into the Emirati army, and then they are used to, you know, as mercenaries to train RSF troops. So they have done so in Sudan itself on the ground, in Libya, and there were reports as well that they were fighting alongside, you know, extensive reports, including, I believe, in Human Rights Watch, that they were fighting alongside, that they weren't just trainers, but actually in combat in Al-Fasher, which, as you know, was one of the sort of most consequential battles for control of Darfur.

So we spoke to RSF defectors who confirmed the use of Colombian mercenaries in Libya, specifically a camp that is known to us as Camp 17, and they walked us through, you know, how some of the training worked. And in the case of that camp, they were training some of the higher ranking LNA soldiers who would then, in Arabic, train the RSF soldiers who were there. And, you know, this is because they are better trained on certain types of equipment and more experienced in certain types of warfare that they're used for these purposes.

And then the idea is that the RSF soldiers go back to Sudan, to Darfur most likely, with these weapons that they've now learned about from the Colombian trainers, and they train the rest of the RSF troops on the ground. So, for me, the fact that they were used in Al-Fasher is one of the biggest tragedies because Al-Fasher was a city of 250,000 population for anyone in our audience who hasn't seen, you know, our coverage of Al-Fasher or any of the other coverage that's out there. It was a city at one point that had a population of 250,000.

And by the time the experts from the UN were going into the city, it had become a ghost town. And from the videos we saw on social media, multiple, multiple videos of, you know, the RSF fighters recording their own atrocities, it was a bloodbath. And this is something I keep on saying, and it's something we got from Yale's Humanitarian Research Lab.

There was so much bloodshed that bloodstains could be seen from space. When you get to a situation where that much bloodshed is happening, everyone involved, even culpable, is honestly just inhumane. is something we can do with. So there's no trial in the country.

So let's see if we can take a look at someone's history. And from fault there. And so it's just quite a few ways and there's no time that I Yeah, and I think, you know, there's no question that the RSF really widely targeted civilians in that attack.

As I said, we did an investigation, two investigations on the fall of El Fasher as well at Lighthouse. And, you know, they were targeting people as they fled, just targeting people who were trying to escape the city in really brutal and inhumane ways, as you said, often documented by their own soldiers with total sort of brazenness for their war crimes. And, you know, I think El Fasher is a case where so many different entities have blood on their hands, because, as you know, and I'm sure your listeners know, we were warned about it for months and months and months.

And there was efforts to create a humanitarian corridor, which didn't happen. And there was a lot of talk in diplomatic circles of this is exactly what was going to happen. And so I think the question is, you know, for all of us and for people in the international community, like, how are we OK with the fact that we knew exactly what was going to happen?

And based on the RSF's behavior in other parts of Darfur and Zabzem and El Janaina, you know, we knew that it would likely involve elements of ethnic cleansing, widespread use of rape against women and girls. And yet there was still really no will to try and prevent it from happening. Honestly, just every time I think about the tragedy that happened in El Fasher, I get a little choked up because it's sad.

Because, as you said, we were warned about this. Outlets like warfronts had coverage warning that this would happen, that you were looking at a worst case scenario here. It just like that it was allowed to happen is tragic.

It reminds me. And then you see people say calling it shocking, you know, and it's really like, in fact, by definition, it wasn't shocking because everybody had been warned. And then we saw it play out in real time in a way that, you know, as you said, like brings tears to your eyes in its gruesomeness.

But I think calling it shocking is inaccurate because people knew that it was coming. Exactly. It reminds me of something that happened in Mozambique back in, I believe, 2021 or 2022, somewhere around there, the Battle of Palma, where everyone had warned that the Palma natural gas plant was going to be a target of the Islamic State Mozambique province.

And when it happened, people were acting shocked, like we didn't see this coming from a mile away. So the fact that people are still acting shocked is genuinely very disappointing for me. And it leads me to another city in Sudan that is currently being besieged, currently has a lot of drone attacks raining down on it on a nearly daily basis.

The city of El-Obi. where RSF is really attempting to take that city. So have you seen evidence of any help by the Colombian mercenaries to take the city of El Obeid? That's an interesting question.

We have not seen evidence specifically of Colombian mercenaries there, although it's definitely something to look into. We have heard from source reporting that the Libyan route is being used to supply the fight in El Obeid. And so, you know, I wonder personally if any of the training that we know has been ongoing in Libya is factoring into what RSF fighters are doing in El Obeid, what kind of equipment might be moving through Libya and other countries to back this fight, as you said.

Vicious drone warfare, of course, either side in Sudan manufactures drones, so these drones are coming from external actors, brutal attacks on civilians. And I was with Janine Morna from Amnesty International. She's one of the researchers behind this big report on alfasera that just came out.

I was with her last week, and she just said, you know, God, please do not let me be writing a report, you know, a hundred and some odd page report on El Obeid in a couple months with the same sort of dynamics where everybody is warning that both sides have really shown no mercy against civilians, and that if the city falls, we could be seeing the same dynamics play out against civilians in El Fasher, you know, potentially thousands of people killed. You know, and let's hope that there is some intervention or stepping back from the brink or something because, you know, one would hope that all of the attention that the fall of El Fasher got and all of the warnings that are feeling very familiar about El Obeid, you know, let's hope that somebody listens to them. And I think, you know, it will come out in the coming weeks and months what specifically, you know, how specifically the RSF has conducted their fight there, whether it's Colombian mercenaries on the ground or whether it's new equipment or new training on drones.

You know, it's unclear at this point. I was asking about the Colombian mercenaries because Justin Lin's Conflict Insight Group has had a report saying that, you know, the Colombian mercenaries were involved with drones and, you know, specifically using drones to target El Fasher before it fell. Again, I would hate for your colleague at Amnesty to have to write another report about El Obeid in the same vein as El Fasher because no one is taking this seriously.

No one is taking the crisis as a nine alarm fire. It's something that shouldn't be happening. But, you know, the world honestly doesn't seem to care.

I mean, I will say, as I said, just to add one. So I have a snapshot. point to what you're saying, you know, I've, I've covered different African countries for the last decade, you know, I've reported in DR Congo, many times, and that's often, you know, called one of the forgotten conflicts, I have never reported on a conflict where the people, the victims and survivors of the war themselves had told me so much and so emphatically, that they feel just utterly forgotten by the rest of the world. I mean, every single person, I've been working on this project at Lighthouse for over a year, which is all Sudan focused, all of our investigations.

And it has been really shocking to me just how consistently anybody who we speak to will just say, it's nice to be talking to you because we feel, you know, just so utterly forgotten and abandoned. Surprisingly, that is, that is a feeling that Sudan's ambassador to Kenya shared with me when we had a chance to speak last year, that the war in Sudan, the civilians, the casualties, the refugees being displaced because of this crisis feel very forgotten by the wider world, that it feels like nobody really cares enough to stop this war or even really care about the civilians. And we will come back to the civilians in a minute.

I wanted to ask about something you mentioned earlier, that when you were in Libya and you were speaking to the defectors from the RSF who you had fled and you were living in Libya, you guys still had Libyan minders to walk you guys around, you monitor what you were doing. So how, how was it possible to meet the defectors while still having Libyan minders around? Yes, that was quite complicated.

And to an extent, I'm limited about what I can say about that because we, you know, we still have some colleagues on the ground. But we, you know, we benefited from a very strong team, which included many Sudanese journalists who we couldn't mention in the credits. And we had done a lot of source reporting before arriving in Libya.

So we had spoken with all of these defectors before, and then we were able to meet them in a secure location without raising too much attention. But, you know, often that happens in places like hotels and that sort of thing. So we had to be very strategic about it to protect you know, our sources and to protect our journalist colleagues as well.

All right. I completely understand that. I just found it a really interesting line for you guys to have to walk in order to get all this interesting reporting out to the rest of us.

And I found it interesting because We recently covered some high-profile defections from the RSF to the SAF, including generals who had led several major sieges, including a guy who operated a group called the Shield Forces. We were one of the small militias within Sudan and was very well respected because of his intelligence capabilities. You have had a chance to speak with the defectors.

Have they indicated a sense that more people are willing to defect from the RSF to the SAF? And is it having a real-time battlefield impact on the group? I think that's interesting.

I think, as you said, these high-level defectors, who I believe are bringing some fighters with them, will be very interesting to see how much that feels like a big fracture within the RSF. And we've heard from SAF sources that they feel sort of emboldened by some of these higher-level guys who are having press conferences about defecting. And, of course, there will be more junior-ranking fighters who go along with them.

I think that could definitely be damaging to the RSF. The people who we spoke to were really battlefield fighters who had experience in the training in Libya. And so they were just leaving the RSF altogether.

But they did speak to a lot of discontent in the sort of lower ranks. You know, issues with getting paid. Issues with, you know, particularly after Al-Fasher, just the level of atrocities that they are committing against their own people.

Issues with the fact that they're supported by the Emiratis. So, yeah, I think their RSF leadership is probably quite worried about these bigger losses. And from what we could tell, you know, one of the things that was helpful to our investigation was that as it deepened, we kept hearing more and more about defectors.

So I think that's always a bad sign for a military, right, to have defectors leading sort of to all of the neighboring countries. So we have spoken to and heard about defectors in Uganda and defectors in Libya and defectors in South Sudan. So I would imagine that's a pretty big concern for the RSF.

It's definitely something that I think SAF will use to say, you know, see they're sort of cracking from within. Yeah, there is a very real sense that they're cracking from within, especially because of Hemeti, Dagallo, Hamdan Dagallo, seems to have a very longstanding rivalry with Musa Hilal, a guy who used to lead the Janjaweed, the group from which the RSF developed. And a lot of the fighters, a lot of the generals, a lot of the high-ranking officials who are fighting under the RSF's banner right now were very loyal to Hilal, or individuals who fought under him, gained their stripes under him. still feel a lot of loyalty towards him.

So when the RSF struck his compound, his facilities, because there was a feeling that he was not loyal enough to the RSF and he was instead loyal to the SAF, there was a great, great division. You mentioned that the lower rank soldiers were not getting paid. So tell us more about how much, did they ever mention how much they got paid and how long the payment had been delayed by?

No, they didn't get into specifics, but they did just say, you know, sometimes we wouldn't get paid for months at a time or they would pay us in looting essentially, right? So if they hadn't been paid when they were taking a city or a village, the leadership would say, well, just go take, you know, what you deserve, which of course is a war crime and sort of heightens the attacks on civilians. So, you know, I would say that there was just sort of general, it seems as though as the war has deepened that their ability to sort of maintain this sort of professional army environment has decreased.

And I think if you're not a true believer and if, you know, nobody in Sudan has been untouched by the war. So if your own family is being impacted by it and you're not getting paid well, and you're being asked to participate in, you know, brutal attacks on civilians, I would imagine a good amount of fighters will lose their will for it. Whether or not they can get out as our defectors were able to, you know, is another question, obviously.

Completely agree. It's something to watch whether the scale of atrocities, whether all of this happening is going to be enough for more people to defect from the RSF. Because the RSF has been going to great extents to prevent any future defections to the point where they declared an internal state of emergency.

So whatever happens in the future, this will be something really, really interesting to watch. So finally, I want us to go back to the civilians, because you got to speak with a refugee who had, a lady who had fled to Zamzam refugee camp, which is, I believe, just outside of El Fasha, and had fled to Libya with her four children. So tell us about that.

How, what was that experience like? So we interviewed several survivors of the war who ended up in Libya as refugees, including the woman who you see in the film. And all of them had really similar, you know, harrowing stories of being victimized, you know, two or three times.

So they're living, already living in a displacement camp. That camp is attacked by the RSF. They have to move elsewhere.

Then they're attacked by the RSF again, often, you know, losing family members along the way. And then when they finally decided to leave, they have to this really perilous journey where they're often getting attacked on the road so all three of the women who we interviewed said by the time we got to libya we had nothing you know we had to pay so many bribes and were harassed so much along the way that we and we came to libya with really only the clothes on our back and they're now living as refugees as you know there's you know millions of people just displaced from sudan all with very similar stories of losing family and having to sort of pay their way on these really difficult journeys to get out and all with very little hope about being able to go back anytime soon honestly it's it's a very tragic situation and my heart really goes out to all the people who are just trying to survive this war while both sides seem intent on endangering as many civilians as possible julia thank you so much for being with us today where can people find you your work lighthouse thank you for having me and thank you for doing so much work on sudan as well so people can find lighthouse at lighthouse reports.com and people can find our documentary on youtube at evident media's youtube channel all right so you heard from julia you can find the documentary on youtube i'll try to include a link with this piece and you will hopefully get to cover it some more on warfronts on our main channels that more people can see it but if you've been listening to us up to this point so far you're without a doubt one of our premium subscribers on fronts.co thank you so much for subscribing we wouldn't be able to do this work without you we don't take you guys for granted so thank you so much thank you julia for your time thank you to everyone who's listened we'll see you in the next one thank you thank you
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