The UAE’s Big Brother Is the Central Intelligence Agency
The UAE, the United Arab Emirates, is a cancer spreading in Africa. This cancer has infected much of eastern Africa and is spreading into northern, central and western parts of the continent.
The worst outbreak of this disease—the UAE disease, has been in Sudan where the ruling Emirates family instigated an attempted coup d’état three years ago, backing a warlord and his army, General Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo and the Rapid Support Forces, also known as the Janjaweed since the war in Darfur/west Sudan from 2003 to 2005.
When he launched the attempted coup Hemedti’s fighters quickly scored major victories against the Sudanese Army lead by a coterie of corrupt, sycophantic officers. This was helped by a generous outpouring of UAE cash and weapons shipments to keep the coup attempt running smoothly.
The capital of Khartoum was quickly overrun, eventually forcing the head of the Sudanese Army, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, de facto president of Sudan, to retreat to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.
As he watched his army being bruised and battered, in retreat across much of the country, General Burhan turned to his neighbor to the south, Eritrea, and its battle-hardened military to step in and help his army regroup and regain some fighting spirit.
Eventually, with the Eritrean involvement, supplying training and logistics and even leading the fight alongside the Sudanese army, General Burhan’s military began to fight back effectively and turned the tide of war against the UAE-backed attempted coup by Hemedti and his RSF/Janjaweed.
In response, the UAE stepped up its weapons supply, with plane loads being delivered to the RSF via Chadian airports under the watchful eye of the Chadian army. The UAE sent several hundred drones to support the attempted coup and, when that didn’t work, planeloads of mercenaries began to put boots on the ground in Darfur, much like what was done when the UAE intervened in Yemen against the Houthis from 2015 to 2017. Mercenaries from Libya, CAR, Somalia, Ethiopia and, last but not least, Colombia.
Of course, the UAE has denied this but the Sudanese army destroying a planeload of Colombian mercenaries in Darfur dispelled any cries of innocence by the Emirati Royal Family.
As the Sudanese army under General Burhan began to drive the UAE-backed RSF fighters out of the urban areas captured at the beginning of the attempted coup, the Sudanese army warned the Chadian military that they would be targeted for supporting the RSF; this resulted in the Chadian Army withdrawing most of its support for the RSF and the partial closure of the Chad airports to UAE arms shipments.
To counter this the UAE turned to their henchman in Libya, long-time CIA asset “General” Khalifa Haftar ensconced in eastern Libya, who gave them a military base on the Sudanese border to transship weapons and supplies to the RSF/Janjaweed.
In the course of the fighting in western Sudan, to where the RSF fighters had retreated after being driven out of the capital Khartoum, some horrendous crimes were committed by the UAE-backed RSF and the mercenaries supplied to General Hemedti by the UAE.
The Sudanese government-controlled town of Al Fashir was surrounded by the RSF and, for months, has been completely cut off from food and medical supplies. Starvation, cholera without any access to medical treatment, and steady shelling and drone attacks from the RSF have resulted in thousands killed and thousands more dead from starvation, as bad if not worse than in Gaza.
Due to battlefield setbacks the UAE cancer in Sudan is steadily shrinking, but murder and mayhem by the RSF continues. Eventually the Hemedti-led RSF will be driven from Sudan into Chad, Libya and other countries with their tails between their legs but not before doing incalculable damage.
The UAE cancer has also been eating at the Somali people for many years now, long before it infected Sudan. Al-Shabaab, “the youth” in Arabic, are an approximately 15,000-man army of terror being paid $300 a month which—along with food, fuel and military supplies, must run up to $7 million a month, $80+ million a year going back over 15 years—means the UAE has spent almost $1 billion trying to buy with blood money a foothold in Somalia in the form of a port.
We know this because a former head of Somali Puntland regional National Intelligence spoke out on this, the UAE’s involvement in supporting terrorism in Somalia and, in particular, Al Shabab.
![Members of the Al-Shabaab, in Somalia [World Defence Forum/Facebook]](https://covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/members-of-the-al-shabaab-in-somalia-world-defen-1.jpeg)
As I write Al Shabab is waging a brutal war against the slowly collapsing Somali government led by a U.S.-anointed “president.” Remember, when this new Somali president had not even been inaugurated when the AFRICOM, the U.S. military in Africa, had already begun reoccupying their bases from which they had been expelled across Somalia.
Having control of ports seems to be an obsession with the British-installed Royal Family, the Emir and his spawn, and the UAE cancer is trying to spread wherever it can find ahold, from Somalia to Socotra, an island in the Gulf of Aden, to the Persian Gulf and back to north and central Africa in Libya, Chad and especially South Sudan.
For years Libyan weapons left over from the U.S./NATO overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi have poured into Africa’s Sahel region fueling murder and mayhem by religious fanatics, with the role of the UAE in Libya linking the Emir and his lackeys to this blood-soaked trade.
So far, the alliance of Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan have prevented the UAE cancer from infecting the Red Sea coast though one of the main reasons for the UAE supporting Hemedti’s RSF is getting a port in Sudan on the Red Sea.
The mafia family ruling the UAE is separate from the government of the country, the day to day professionals, who are not happy with what the Royal Family is dragging the UAE into.
The dream of Emirati royalty is to create, or re-create in their distorted version of history, a new “empire,” marine-based in ports in strategic parts of the region and even includes the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, whom the Emirates consider little more than buffoons, and whose rightful rulers are their Emirate cousins.
You should ask, really, from where did this information come?
Some may remember when, early in 2025 when the Trumpists came to power, hearings were held which exposed, for a brief period, how the CIA was funding terrorist groups in Africa, including Boko Haram in west Africa and Al Shabab in east Africa.
Recently, the Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, noted for his reticence, gave an interview where he went in-depth into, amongst other problems, the role of the UAE in Africa. He exposed a whole range of crimes including in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and other countries.
As someone who has followed President Isaias’s speeches for decades now, this presentation was exceptional in its detail and breadth, disclosing an intricate web of crimes being committed by the UAE in their attempt to buy an “empire.”
Of course, one must not forget the Big Brother of the UAE, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, by statute in charge of dirty dealings by the U.S. internationally.
The U.S. has always preferred to leave their crimes to be committed by their compradores in the region, keeping their “deniability” and to be able claim their hands are clean.
In 2023, the U.S. provided $343,000 in foreign aid to the UAE and, according to the State Department, has $29.3 billion in active government-to-government sales through the foreign military sales program.
Weapons systems sold under this latter program include F-35 fighter jets, MQ-98 remotely piloted aircraft, Paveway and GBU-39 small diameter bombs and Patriot, Javelin, Hellfire and Sidewinder missiles.
Since 2016, the U.S. has also authorized the permanent export of more than $11.3 billion in defense articles to the UAE via the Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) process.
The UAE has fought alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq, and was involved in the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria.
The UAE hosts the Gulf Air Warfare Center at Al Dhafra Air Base, where approximately 3,500 U.S. personnel are based and which provides regionally focused air- and missile-defense training for around 2,000 participants from ten nations every year.
UAE ports also provide critical logistical support for the U.S. Navy and, collectively, host more Navy ships than any other port outside the United States.
Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee has introduced measures to block U.S. arms sales to the UAE because those arms are being provided to militias in Sudan accused of major human rights crimes and genocide.
The Trump administration, however, approved the sale of $1.4 billion in Boeing-made helicopters and F-16 fighter jet parts sale to the UAE in May in advance of a visit by Trump to the UAE where he discussed the deepening of financial ties between the U.S. and UAE.
The latter has pledged to invest $1.4 trillion in the U.S. over the next decade, expected to focus on semiconductors, energy and artificial intelligence (AI).
Despite its collaboration with U.S. imperialism, the UAE cancer is shrinking, facing defeats on at least two fronts, Sudan and Ethiopia.
In both cases Eritrea has played an important, if not decisive, role behind the scenes. In Somalia all the hard work the Eritreans put into training more than 15,000 professional security forces has gone for naught and matters only seem to be getting worse for the Somali people.
But in Sudan and Ethiopia the UAE cancer is receding and,opefully, with the continued leadership of Africa’s most successful Pan Africanist government and its President Isaias Afwerki it seems a cure for the UAE disease is possible, Inshallah?
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About the Author
Thomas C. Mountain is an educator and historian with over 40 years background in Africa.
He lived and reported from Eritrea from 2006-2021 and at one time was the most widely distributed independent journalist in Africa.
Follow him on X/twitter at thomascmountain. He is best reached at thomascmountain@gmail.com.
“how the CIA was funding terrorist groups in Africa, including Boko Haram in west Africa and Al Shabab in east Africa” – can links be provided to documents on this?