UN Fact-Finding Mission Says Network Spanning UAE, Colombia, Chad, Libya and Somalia Supplied Fighters and Weapons to Sudan's RSF; UAE Denies It

Same Report, Two Countries, Two Very Different Numbers

On September 3, 2026, a United Nations human rights body put a name to something aid workers have watched for years: outside money and outside people keeping Sudan's civil war running^[1]. The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, a panel the UN Human Rights Council created in October 2023, released a report called "Fuelling Sudan's conflict: weapons, fighters and external support networks"^[1]. It found "reasonable grounds to believe" that a network of companies, middlemen and fighters — operating in or through the United Arab Emirates, Colombia, Chad, Libya and Somalia — armed and staffed Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group fighting the Sudanese army^[1][2].

The UAE says that's wrong. Its embassy in Washington says it does not arm either side in Sudan and does not let its territory be used to recruit, train or move fighters to any war, including this one^[2][5]. That flat denial, sitting next to a UN finding that names the UAE five different times, is the collision at the center of this story. Both statements are being made in good faith by people who each believe they hold the stronger evidence.

Untangling it means understanding a detail most coverage skipped: there are two different UN bodies here, using two different standards of proof, and the most-quoted number in the whole story didn't come from the report published on September 3 at all.

The Number Everyone's Repeating Didn't Come From This Report

The figure driving headlines is that 1,500 to 2,000 Colombian military veterans fought alongside RSF units, hired through a UAE-based firm called Global Security Services Group^[4]. That estimate comes from a completely different body: the UN Security Council's Panel of Experts on Sudan, which answers to the Security Council's sanctions committee, not the Human Rights Council^[3].

The Panel handed its final report to Security Council members on July 13, 2026. But it has never been published, because publishing requires the sanctions committee to agree, and any one permanent Security Council member can block that^[1][3]. The public only learned the Colombian estimate because Reuters described the report's contents on July 29, in what amounted to a leak^[4].

That distinction matters because the two bodies work differently. The Fact-Finding Mission publishes what it finds. The Panel of Experts often doesn't, and its unpublished numbers reach the public through journalism rather than an official document^[1][3]. When outlets blend the two together, a leaked estimate ends up borrowing the authority of a formal UN report it was never part of.

The UAE has also complained about the leak itself. On August 6, it wrote to the Security Council objecting that the unpublished Panel report reached reporters before member states even had a chance to respond to it^[3].

What "Reasonable Grounds to Believe" Actually Means — And Why It Cuts Both Ways

The Fact-Finding Mission's report uses a specific legal phrase: "reasonable grounds to believe." It's worth pausing on what that phrase does and doesn't mean, because both sides in this dispute are stretching it.

It's the standard bar for UN human rights inquiries. It means an investigator, looking at the evidence gathered, thinks a careful and reasonable person could conclude the alleged fact probably happened. It is not a criminal conviction. It doesn't require proof "beyond a reasonable doubt," the standard a court would use, and it doesn't assign guilt to any individual.

That gap is exactly where the argument lives. Groups accusing the UAE tend to treat "reasonable grounds to believe" as close to proven fact. The UAE and its allies argue the opposite — that it's a low bar built to justify more investigation, not a verdict, and that much of the underlying material traces back to Sudan's own army-aligned government, a party to the war with an obvious motive to internationalize its losses.

The UAE also points to something concrete: it says its own authorities investigated Global Security Services Group, the firm accused of hiring the Colombians, and found the company "is not involved in any mercenary activity in Sudan"^[4]. Critics counter that a state investigating its own registered company and clearing it isn't independent verification.

Why Hiring Contractors, Rather Than Sending Soldiers, Is the Point

There's a structural reason this dispute keeps circling back to a private firm rather than a government. Routing support through contractors isn't a side effect of the strategy — it may be the strategy itself.

A state that sends its own soldiers to fight in another country's war owns the legal fallout directly. A state where a private security company happens to be registered has more room to investigate that company on its own terms and announce it found nothing^[4]. Contractors are also politically cheaper to lose: no flag-draped coffins arrive home, no legislature demands answers.

Colombia's side of this fits the same pattern from the other direction. Decades of internal conflict there produced a large pool of veterans with combat, drone and sniper skills — and pensions that don't stretch to support a family^[8]. That labor supply exists independent of any single war. Colombian President Gustavo Petro has called the recruiters "spectres of death" and pushed a law, ratified in early 2026, to criminalize firms that funnel veterans into foreign conflicts^[9][12]. UN experts welcomed that law in March 2026^[9]. But laws raise the cost of recruiting; they don't erase the economics that make Colombian veterans a target for it.

The Fact-Finding Mission said Colombia acknowledged its nationals' involvement and described new steps it's taking, and the Mission found no evidence the Colombian state itself was responsible^[6].

The Report Also Undercuts the Side That's Citing It

Sudan's army-aligned government has leaned hard on this report to argue it's the victim of foreign-backed aggression, not just a civil war opponent. Its foreign minister has framed the fight as defending Africa against outside interference^[8]. The army's strongest specific evidence: the Panel of Experts says Colombian contractors, known as the "Desert Wolves," based at Nyala starting in March 2025 and ran drone operations that helped plan the siege and eventual capture of El Fasher in October 2025^[4].

But the same September 3 report cuts against the army's clean-hands narrative. The Mission also found reasonable grounds to believe the Sudanese Armed Forces used foreign-supplied drones in strikes that harmed civilians — though it labeled those particular findings preliminary^[2][6]. It documented repeated RSF drone strikes on El Obeid in July and August 2026 that damaged electricity and fuel infrastructure and may amount to war crimes^[6]. And it detailed a strike sequence in Kalogi, South Kordofan — a kindergarten ceremony hit first, then rescuers, then a vehicle carrying the wounded — that killed 114 people, about 60 of them children^[6].

So a report Sudan's government wants to use as proof of foreign aggression against it also accuses its own army of drone strikes that harmed civilians. Neither side gets to walk away from this document looking entirely clean.

The war itself, meanwhile, keeps grinding on regardless of who's named in UN filings. It began April 15, 2023, and has killed at least 59,000 people and displaced about 13 million, with famine now present in parts of the country^[1][2].

Why Washington Is Staying Quiet — And What That Silence Signals

The U.S. response so far has been narrow: sanction individuals and companies, not the UAE as a state. The Treasury Department designated a recruitment pipeline in December 2025, naming Colombian officer Alvaro Andres Quijano Becerra and the recruiting agency A4SI, and added further designations through 2026, each time pairing the sanctions with calls for a humanitarian truce^[7][15].

That approach lets Washington hold two positions that would otherwise conflict. The UAE is one of the closest U.S. security partners in the Gulf — a major arms buyer and a signatory to the Abraham Accords — and it's also the state named most often in reporting on Sudan's supply chains. Targeting intermediaries lets the U.S. claim a moral stance on Sudan's civilian harm without disrupting a strategic relationship it relies on. Critics call that approach mostly symbolic while large-scale arms sales to the UAE continue.

Coverage of the report split along predictable lines. The Associated Press wire story, run by outlets from the Washington Times to the Washington Post, kept the UAE's denial high in the piece and avoided naming it in the headline^[2]. Middle East Eye and Qatari-funded Al Jazeera put the UAE front and center, reflecting Qatar's rivalry with Abu Dhabi^[1]. Dubai-based Gulf News called the allegations "false claims made by parties to conflict," using "refutes" rather than "denies" — phrasing that presumes the UAE's denial already succeeded^[13]. Sudan Tribune was among the few outlets to report the Mission's findings against both the RSF and the Sudanese army rather than just one side^[6].

The Fact-Finding Mission's mandate runs out in October 2026 and needs a Council vote to continue^[1]. No state has been sanctioned over any of this so far — only individuals and companies^[7][15]. Whether that changes, and whether the still-unpublished Panel of Experts report ever sees full daylight, remains open.