Passports 'smoking gun' evidence of UAE involvement in Sudan civil war

Passports recovered from battlefields in Sudan suggest the United Arab Emirates is covertly putting boots on the ground in the country's devastating civil war, according to leaked documents.

- Mark Townsend

A 41-page document, sent to the UN security council and seen by the Guardian, contains images of Emirati passports allegedly found in Sudan and linked to soldiers of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the African country's notorious paramilitary.

The UAE has previously denied all accusations of supplying arms to the RSF, which is holding the city of El Fasher under siege in a wider campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

However, the suggestion that the UAE has deployed personnel to assist the fighting in Sudan would be an escalation, further inflaming the geopolitical complexities of the 15month civil war between the RSF and the Sudanese military.

The passports are claimed to have been recovered from Omdurman, the city across the Nile from the capital, Khartoum, in an area that was held by the RSF but recently reclaimed by the Sudanese army.

Analysts described the discovery as a "smoking gun" that challenged UAE denials. They said it also raised questions over what the US and UK knew about the level of the Gulf state's involvement in Sudan and whether the west had done enough to rein in the backing of a militia accused of genocide.

Cameron Hudson, a former Sudan adviser to the US government, said the west would be obliged to act.

"This will force Washington to acknowledge what it knows about this, and will force them to respond," he said.

Some experts believe that without the UAE's alleged involvement, the conflict driving the world's worst continuing humanitarian crisis would already be over.