The UAE invested heavily in Sudan towards the end of Bashir’s 30-year rule. From 2015, tens of thousands of Sudanese fought in the Saudi Arabia-UAE coalition in Yemen.

But as Bashir faced a domestic crisis, the UAE pulled its funding and supplies. The Emiratis were reportedly aggrieved by his stance on the Qatar blockade and his government’s links to political Islam.

Today, Sudan offers the UAE an arena from which to project its power across the Red Sea and east Africa.

The UAE holds significant interests in Sudan’s agricultural and mineral resources, many of which are untapped, including gold. The UAE has become a global trading hub in gold, in its attempts to diversify its oil-dependent economy.

RSF networks help facilitate and secure these exports: Hemedti and his family own a gold company that operates on lands seized by the RSF in Darfur in 2017. His youngest brother, Algoney Dagalo, is a businessman based in the UAE.

The UAE also controls several land and farming operations in Sudan, a country it has, for decades, positioned as an agricultural trade partner, amid fears of food insecurity across the Gulf.

International Holding Company, the UAE’s largest listed corporation, and Jenaan Investment Group now farm more than 50,000 hectares in Sudan.

The UAE has also expanded its seaport empire into Sudan, which is strategically positioned on the Red Sea — around a third of global container traffic passes through.

All this has happened while western competitors seek to outpace DP World, the UAE’s state-owned seaport operator.

The Gulf state proposed investing around $8bn in the Abu Amama sea port on Sudan’s Red Sea coast, only for the deal to fall through in November 2024 while the Sudanese civil war continued to rage.

Emirati hostility towards the Sudanese military is also often described as ideological, as Sudan’s army has longstanding links to political Islam dating from the Bashir era.