Sudan’s ambassador to the EU has warned that European-made weapons are winding up on battlefields in the African country and fueling atrocities in its two-year civil war.
Abdelbagi Kabeir called on EU countries to stop selling arms to the United Arab Emirates, which a United Nations panel probed earlier this year over allegations it is backing a notorious rebel militia in the Sudanese conflict.
Sudan has been ravaged by a war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) of the government in Khartoum and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group accused by rights group and United Nations experts of ethnic massacres, mass displacement and systematic sexual violence.
The U.N. describes the humanitarian crisis as among the world’s largest, with tens of thousands killed since 2023 and some 25 million facing extreme hunger.
“The EU should weigh the moral balance over the trade balance,” said Kabeir, who represents Sudan’s internationally recognized government in Khartoum, during a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO as he criticized the bloc’s ties with the UAE.
U.N. experts have investigated the UAE’s role in supplying weapons to the RSF, allegations that Abu Dhabi has denied.
A sprawling France24 investigation in April traced munitions manufactured in Bulgaria, an EU member with a booming arms industry, from their sale to the UAE into the hands of RSF fighters, despite the bloc’s long-standing arms embargo on Sudan.
Kabeir said the EU is “bound by its own values” to ensure its weapons do not end up being re-exported to war zones such as Sudan. “Those weapons were not intended for third-party use,” he argued, adding the allegations put the bloc in a “very unpleasant situation.”
Bulgaria confirmed to U.N. investigators it had exported mortar rounds to the UAE in 2019 but said it did not authorize any re-export to Sudan. The Bulgarian foreign ministry did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.
The British government also acknowledged last month that U.K.-made military equipment has been discovered in Sudan, while human rights group Amnesty International last November highlighted alleged instances in which RSF fighters used UAE-made armored vehicles containing French military systems.
Following Amnesty’s report, French defense firm Lacroix, which manufactured the systems along with KNDS France, said it “confirms that it supplied GALIX self-protection systems to the UAE Armed Forces, employing smoke-based masking countermeasures.”
The company added it did so “in strict compliance with the export licenses granted to LACROIX and the associated non-re-export certificates.” A spokesperson for KNDS France directed POLITICO to that statement when reached for comment.
The UAE ordered more than €21 billion worth of weapons from France between 2015 and 2024, ranking the country among the top purchasers of French arms, according to a government report released earlier this year.
Both the SAF and the RSF have been accused by the U.N. and human rights organizations of serious abuses, including mass killings of civilians, torture and sexual violence. | Stringer/Getty Images
A UAE government official told POLITICO that Abu Dhabi “categorically rejects any claims of providing any form of support to either warring party since the onset of the civil war,” adding it “condemns atrocities committed by both” sides in the conflict.
“There is no substantiated evidence that the UAE has provided any support to RSF, or has any involvement in the conflict,” the official said. They stressed “the UAE operates a comprehensive and robust export control regime in line with its applicable obligations under international law, including with respect to arms control.”
Warm ties
European Council President António Costa visited Abu Dhabi in late October, calling the UAE “an important and reliable partner for the EU: for the prosperity, stability and security of both our regions and beyond.” Mediterranean Commissioner Dubravka Šuica is also due to visit the Gulf countries next month, including the UAE, according to an EU official afforded anonymity to discuss the trip.
Kabeir said the EU should use its diplomatic weight and the upcoming visit to press Emirati officials “to cease sending weapons to the RSF.”
“What happens in sub-Saharan Africa, the impact shows in the Mediterranean,” he warned, adding instability in Sudan would spill over into the rest of the region and spur migration flows.
The EU’s foreign affairs spokesperson Anouar El-Anouni told POLITICO the bloc’s common position on arms exports “establishes a duty to deny exports if they may contribute to human rights violations, internal instability or an armed conflict” and that it was up to member countries to comply.
“All third parties, notably countries in the region, that are supplying arms and funds to the belligerents must cease their support immediately,” he said, and “refrain from fuelling an already explosive situation.”
The EU will use its “diplomatic tools and instruments, including restrictive measures, to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict,” El-Anouni added.
The EU implemented targeted sanctions against senior RSF and SAF figures and firms in 2023, freezing assets linked to both sides and reaffirming its arms embargo on Sudan, which has been in place for more than 30 years. The sanctions were extended for another year in September.
Kabeir said the EU should lift its sanctions on the SAF “sooner than later,” arguing the measures had crippled the Sudanese economy and removing them would “open the way for more constructive engagement with the EU.”
He added the EU had provided some humanitarian aid, but the amount “has not been up to the pledges that were made, and certainly not up to the need of the population.” The bloc has allocated more than €273 million in 2025.
‘Break the nation’
Both the SAF and the RSF have been accused by the U.N. and human rights organizations of serious abuses, including mass killings of civilians, torture and sexual violence.
RSF fighters were accused of massacring members of the Masalit ethnic group in Darfur last year, killing thousands and forcing tens of thousands more to flee. SAF airstrikes, meanwhile, have been blamed for civilian casualties in densely populated urban areas.
The U.N. describes the humanitarian crisis as among the world’s largest, with tens of thousands killed since 2023 and some 25 million facing extreme hunger. | Jerome Gilles/Getty Images
“But of course, when you are in a war front, mistakes are liable to happen,” Kabeir said when pressed on the SAF’s own alleged abuses.
“It’s likely that an air raid on a military base killed some civilians in a failed shot. It can happen,” he conceded. “That’s natural when you are in a war.”
The UAE government official said Abu Dhabi “expresses alarm at the heinous attacks against civilians by RSF forces in El Fasher,” along with “the continued offensives by the Sudanese Armed Forces, which … have inflicted unimaginable suffering on a civilian population already on the brink of collapse.”
But Kabeir argued the Sudanese army’s violations amounted to isolated “incidents” rather than a “pattern” of “intentional targeting of civilians” — something he said the RSF is doing with the backing of the UAE.
“This is a campaign to break the nation,” he said. “To break the country.”
(Politico)
