by ANDREAS KRIEG
From North Africa to the Gulf, the UAE has aggressively expanded its counter-revolutionary strategy in the wake of the Arab Spring
Earlier this month, Sudan’s government brought proceedings against the United Arab Emirates, accusing it of “complicity in genocide” in the Sudanese civil war.
The case sheds light on the Abu Dhabi network providing lethal and financial support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a violent non-state actor fighting Sudan’s government in a bloody civil war.
The RSF is but one of the nodes in a network of non-state actors the UAE has curated over the past decade. The small Gulf monarchy has tapped into secessionist causes from Libya, to Yemen, Sudan and Somalia, using surrogates as Trojan horses to generate strategic depth and influence.
Like Iran’s “axis of resistance” – a network of non-state actors loosely tied together under an Islamic revolutionary banner – the UAE’s “axis of secessionists” comprises a network of non-state actors tied together under a counterrevolutionary banner. Like Tehran, Abu Dhabi has curated a multilayered network of violent non-state actors, financiers, traders, political figureheads and influencers to create bridgeheads in countries of strategic value to Emirati national interests.
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