The News
Sudan has launched a legal case against the United Arab Emirates, blaming the Gulf nation for arming the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the country’s ongoing civil war, as experts warn of an escalating proxy conflict.
The case, filed to the International Court of Justice, claims the UAE armed the group responsible for ethnic-based attacks in Darfur that the US said amounted to genocide. Two years of conflict have led to the gravest displacement crisis in the world and prompted the first global declaration of famine in decades.
SIGNALS
Sudan has become a ‘proxy war’ for Middle East rivals
Gulf nations see the conflict in Sudan as an opportunity to cement their hegemonic status in the Middle East,” turning it into a proxy war, a geopolitics analyst wrote in Foreign Policy in 2023. Sudan’s strategic location has led to it being seen as a “bridge” that links the Middle East and Africa, with its Red Sea coastline and proximity to the Bab el-Mandeb strait — a key transit route for oil and gas exports — making it “a crucial player in regional geopolitics,” a Middle East consultant told The Africa Report. Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have invested heavily in the country as they compete for regional primacy. Saudi Arabia has attempted to brand itself as peacemaker — which still backing the Sudanese army — while the UAE has been accused of smuggling weapons into Sudan to support the Rapid Support Forces under the guise of aid, a New York Times investigation found.
US aid freeze is huge setback as world’s worst hunger crisis rages
The Trump administration’s freeze on US aid has resulted in the closure of almost 80% of the emergency food kitchens set up to tackle the famine in Sudan, the BBC reported. Though the US Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s request to keep billions of aid frozen Wednesday, as it has been since January, it is unclear when the money will be released. Meanwhile, in Sudan, “people are screaming from hunger in the streets,” an emergency aid worker told the BBC. Despite speculation that China may step in to absorb the soft power lost by the US’ retreat, China’s relationship with Africa has never focused on aid, but instead “dealmaking, transactional partnerships, and “win-win” agreements,” Semafor’s Yinka Adegoke wrote.