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[Zmeselo]

Migration
“I am going to Saudi Arabia, or my grave”: The exodus of Ethiopia’s frustrated youth

https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news ... ion-africa

“Please come back, my son, I will share everything I have with you.”


Hussain Said scrolls through his phone looking for the number of the trafficker who encouraged his two brothers to make the dangerous journey to the Gulf. He hasn’t heard from one of his brothers – Ramato – for months.

23 April 2025

OROMIA, Ethiopia

In late 2014 something strange, anarchic and powerful began to stir in Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest and most populous region. It was a protest movement, which over the next four years would bring wave after wave of defiant young men into the streets.

The protesters called themselves Qeerroo, an Oromo word traditionally used to describe a young, unmarried man. The term soon came to epitomise the frustrated ambitions of an entire generation of Oromos, as well as their increasingly assertive demands for change.

The Qeerroo movement was an expression of youthful anger: anger at the landlessness and joblessness that many young Oromos faced; at what they saw as the marginalisation of the Oromo by Ethiopia’s political elite; and, above all, at the repressive governance of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the political party that had ruled the country with an iron fist since the early 1990s.

The rumblings of discontent that began in 2014 would eventually produce a political earthquake: In 2018, after massive protests led by the Qeerroo, Ethiopia’s prime minister resigned. The man chosen to succeed him, Abiy Ahmed, would be the first leader in Ethiopian history to openly identify as an Oromo. He promised a future of political freedom and economic prosperity.

But seven years after Abiy was sworn in, the brighter future the Qeerroo hoped he would usher in has failed to materialise.

Landlessness and unemployment remain ubiquitous. An economic crisis caused partly by the fallout from Ethiopia’s 2020-22 civil war has sent the cost of living skyrocketing. Meanwhile, an armed insurgency launched by the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) has ravaged parts of Oromia since late 2018, causing widespread suffering. Both the OLA and government security forces have been accused of rampant human rights abuses.

In the small towns, there is just no work,

explained Terje Østebø, a professor at the University of Florida and an expert on Oromia.

Corruption is completely out of control, and prisons across Oromia are filled with people.

The government or its militias

can accuse anyone of being OLA and try to get money from them. If you don’t pay, you’ll be put in prison, and unless you pay you won’t get out,

Østebø told The New Humanitarian.

There is so much discontent and hopelessness.

In Oromia – the most populous region of Ethiopia – many young people undertake the dangerous journey to the Gulf to escape unemployment and limited economic prospects. Marco Simoncelli/TNH

No options other than migration

The anger that spurred the Qeerroo movement a decade ago has faded into despair. For many disillusioned young Oromos, there seems to be no point in protesting or demanding change. Thousands are deciding the only way out of their misery is to migrate.

The symptoms of this malaise are on full display in Kofele, a district of the Arsi Zone in central Oromia. Numberless groups of young men sit idle in the streets of the region’s major town (also called Kofele) – living evidence of the joblessness that plagues much of the region.

In the countryside, in the mud-and-wattle houses dotted among the rolling hills, large families scratch out a living cultivating barley and bananas on tiny plots of land. Grown-up children soon discover there is no land for them to inherit. So they move to the towns, where there is no work for them to do.

It is difficult for young people to sustain their lives here, and their families are in difficulties,

said Bushra Ibrahim, a Qeerroo representative in Ashoka, a small town in Kofele.

They feel they have no choice but to go abroad and change their lives.

Many Oromos who choose to migrate use the so-called Eastern Route, seeking to cross the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden into Yemen, with the ultimate goal of reaching Saudi Arabia. While the trend has traditionally been young men, there was a sharp increase in women and girls making the journey – accounting for nearly one third https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/03/15/m ... suffering/ of all migrants using the route in 2024.

It’s a hazardous ordeal: 558 deaths https://dtm.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbd ... frame=true were recorded last year, mostly caused by drownings. Overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels capsized on at least six occasions in 2024, and smugglers have also been known to throw people into the sea.

Major towns on the route from Oromia to Puntland


According to the UN’s migration agency, IOM, at least 96,670 people crossed from the Horn of Africa into Yemen over the course of 2023, about one third more than made the journey in 2022. Some 95% of those migrants came from Ethiopia.

Last year, an even greater number of people tried to leave. By October 2024, the IOM had registered 184,701 people exiting Ethiopia along the Eastern Route, surpassing the total number of exits for the entirety of 2023.

Overall, at least 234,015 people left Ethiopia in 2024 and headed towards the Red Sea coastline – a 27% increase on the previous year.

In 2023, about three quarters of the crossings into Yemen occurred via Djibouti. But owing to tightened security and increased patrols by Djibouti and Yemeni coast guard vessels, an increasing share of migrants had switched by the end of that year to crossing from the port of Bosaso, in the Puntland region of Somalia.

The IOM's figures may represent only a fraction of the true number of crossings. And while Ethiopians of other ethnic groups, including Tigrayans and Amharas, are also migrating in large numbers, Oromos appear to account for a large share of the crossings, particularly those leaving from Bosaso.

One local government official in Kofele told The New Humanitarian that in his district alone perhaps 10,000 people are now emigrating on an annual basis. The New Humanitarian was unable to independently verify that figure.

Seduced by the dalalas

Many young Oromos, Bushra explained, are seduced by the blandishments of dalalas – people-smugglers who call up frustrated young men or approach them in towns across the region, spinning tales of the lucrative job opportunities in Saudi Arabia and promising to facilitate the journey.

They also see people who have been to Saudi Arabia and come back, and who have bought a house and a car,

the official noted.

Their plan is to be like them.

Negesu Tabse, an elderly farmer in Kofele and father of 11 children, knows this only too well. One day in the summer of 2023, his 17-year-old son, Abdelfattah, disappeared. He had been listless for some time, Negesu recalled, saying he could see no future for himself at home.

Negesu owns just a quarter of a hectare of land, not enough to parcel out among his sons, who therefore cannot easily get married and/or start a family.

I didn’t have any land to give him,

he said.

Sometimes Abdelfattah would say ‘This life is not good; maybe I need to go somewhere else’.

But when Abdelfattah went missing, the family were shocked.

We didn’t know what had happened to him, and we were afraid,

said Negesu.

We were all crying at home.

For a week, the family heard nothing. Then, suddenly, Abdelfattah rang home. He was calling from Las Anod, a contested Somali town https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news ... d-fighting between breakaway Somaliland and Puntland that has been at the centre of a war between Somaliland and a secessionist militia called SSC-Khaatumo since 2023.


Marco Simoncelli/TNH Elderly farmer Negesu Tabse shows a photo of his son, Abdelfattah, who was held for ransom by traffickers before he managed to reach Yemen.

Beatings and ransoms

Abdelfattah explained that he had been contacted by a dalala, who offered to take him to Saudi Arabia for free if he could meet him in Harar, a city in eastern Ethiopia. When Abdelfattah arrived, he was taken across the border into Somaliland, and eventually on to Las Anod.

At first, he said, he and his fellow migrants were treated fairly well. But once in Somaliland the dalalas became abusive. In Las Anod they were beaten, Abdelfattah said, and told to call their families to ask for money. Abdelfattah told his father that if he didn’t send the dalalas 30,000 birr (about $230), they would kill him.

The family sent the money to the dalala’s bank account. Then they begged their son to come home.

Please come back, my son, I will share everything I have with you,

Negesu told Abdelfattah.

He didn’t accept. He said he needed to work and change his life. So he didn’t come back.

The dalalas took him on to Bosaso, a port city in Puntland on the Gulf of Aden, from where he eventually managed to cross into Yemen. Now Abdelfattah is somewhere in northern Yemen near the border with Saudi Arabia, his family says. He has tried to cross once but was pushed back by Saudi border guards. Every time his family calls, they beg him to return, but each time he refuses.

Just across the road from Negesu’s farm, another family is also mourning the departure of their children. Bonsai Said says two of her sons, Musa and Ramato, left for Saudi Arabia via Bosaso late last year, one within a month of the other.

Musa, aged 18, went first. His brother, Hussain, explained that he had been in touch with a dalala, who promised to buy him new clothes and a new phone and fund his trip to Saudi Arabia if he came to Adama, a city in central Oromia.

Musa disappeared, and the family heard nothing from him for several weeks, until he called them from Bosaso in severe distress. Like Abdelfattah, he described beatings and abuse by the dalalas, and said they were threatening to kill him unless the family sent them 40,000 birr.

They paid the ransom, and Musa managed to cross into Yemen and on into Saudi Arabia, where he now works as a labourer on a date farm. He is yet to send back any money, his family says, but they are glad he is alive.


Bonsai Said speaks with her husband and two of their children inside a barn on their farm about the fate of their two sons who took the Eastern Route.Marco Simoncelli/TNH

“Don’t follow me”

When he called from Bosaso, Musa begged his brothers not to attempt the journey, describing his ordeal of hunger, beatings, and the killings of other migrants at the hands of the dalalas.

Musa said: ‘Don’t follow me. The road and the situation is very difficult’,

Bonsai, his mother, recalls.

Yet, less than a month after Musa left, Ramato, aged 20, went as well. A few weeks later he too called from Bosaso, asking the family to pay a ransom, which they duly did. But unlike Musa, it is not clear whether Ramato managed to make it across to Yemen. When The New Humanitarian visited his family in late February, they had not heard from him in a month.

Boats carrying migrants across the Gulf of Aden regularly sink. In March, the IOM reported that four boats had capsized off the coast of Yemen, with more than 180 migrants feared dead. Even for those who survive the crossing, traversing war-ravaged Yemen is itself fraught with danger.


A close up portrait of Bonsai Said.Marco Simoncelli/TNH Bonsai Said’s sons, Musa and Ramato, left home to try and reach Saudi Arabia. Musa made it and has found work, but she hasn’t heard from Ramato for months.

We are very worried,

said Bonsai, tears welling in her eyes.

Despite knowing the dangers, many young Oromos seem to have decided, like Ramato, that they must reach Saudi Arabia at any cost.

Some stop initially in Hargeisa, the capital of the self-declared independent Somaliland, working as shoe-shiners or casual labourers to save up money for the journey. On a trip to Somaliland in March, The New Humanitarian met several groups of young Oromos walking along the road towards the coast, in searing heat, with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Back in Kofele, the local government official says a new rhyming Oromo saying has recently been coined by local youth:

Gala Suudii, yookin gala luudii.

In English, the rough translation would be:

I am going to Saudi Arabia, or to my grave.

[Deqi-Arawit]

Skuni Shitmeslo.

Unlike the Skunis of Wedi Medhin Berad, they have not denied the current status of their country, that is also why they are undermining the sub-human Galla in twitter and other social platform . You on the other hand, as a second underwear, Low IQ and brainless follower, you are ready to snatch the nationality of those eritreans who are languishing in Libyan Jail for the purpose not to hold any accountability to the Eritrean dictator.

[Digital Weyane]

አቢይ አህመድ ያቀረበውን የክተት ጥሪ በመቀበል በቅርቡ የብልፅግና ፓርቲ የሚዲያ ሠራዊትን ተቀላቅሎ የኤሚሬትስን ህልውናን ለማስጠበቅ ሲል በየድኅረ ገፁ እየተዋደቀና ኤርትራውያንን አይቀጡ ቅጣት እየቀጣ ያለው ትግራዋይ ብልፅግናዋይ ዎንድማችን Deqi Arawitን ለማድነቅ እወዳለሁ።

[Zmeselo]

The Big Story | Politics



How Abu Dhabi built an axis of secessionists across the region

By Andreas Krieg

https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story ... region-how

28 March 2025

From North Africa to the Gulf, the UAE has aggressively expanded its counter-revolutionary strategy in the wake of the Arab Spring

Earlier this month, Sudan’s https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/sudan government brought proceedings against the United Arab Emirates, https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/uae accusing it of “complicity in genocide” https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/suda ... y-genocide in the Sudanese civil war.

The case sheds light on the Abu Dhabi network providing https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/suda ... -trade-rsf lethal and financial support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a violent non-state actor fighting Sudan’s government in a bloody civil war.

The RSF is but one of the nodes in a network of non-state actors the UAE has curated over the past decade. The small Gulf monarchy has tapped into secessionist causes from Libya, https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/libya to Yemen, https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/yemen Sudan and Somalia, using surrogates as Trojan horses to generate strategic depth and influence.

Like Iran’s https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iran “axis of resistance” - a network of non-state actors loosely tied together under an Islamic revolutionary banner - the UAE’s “axis of secessionists” comprises a network of non-state actors tied together under a counterrevolutionary banner. Like Tehran, Abu Dhabi has curated a multilayered network of violent non-state actors, financiers, traders, political figureheads and influencers to create bridgeheads in countries of strategic value to Emirati national interests.

Paradoxically, yearning for a strong state, Abu Dhabi’s ruling elite has created a network of strongmen whose reliance on armed violence has done more to destabilise central governments and undermine state sovereignty across the region.

As a small hydrocarbon state of just one million citizens (and millions more expat residents), the UAE has traditionally been forced to delegate statecraft to surrogates to fill capacity gaps. When foreign and security policy ambitions started to expand during the Arab Spring, https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/arab-spring so too did the Emirati need for ways to project influence overseas with a minimal footprint.

Abu Dhabi was looking for an effective means to translate petrodollars into geopolitical influence. Ironically, it was the fear of revolutionary non-state actors in 2011 that triggered the UAE to more assertively seek surrogates through which it could contain revolutionaries threatening to overthrow Arab autocrats from North Africa to the Levant and the Gulf.

Most of all, Abu Dhabi wanted to contain and undermine the Muslim Brotherhood https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/w ... rotherhood and other Islamist non-state actors that appeared to be best organised to shape the post-revolutionary order.

The Bani Fatima

In a federation of seven emirates, Abu Dhabi and its ruling Al Nahyan family quickly developed into the main hub in a tribal monarchy. Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, the near-bankruptcy of the emirate of Dubai https://www.bbc.com/news/business-11837714 and the subsequent cash injection from oil-rich Abu Dhabi, power has increasingly centralised in the hands of three brothers: Mohammed, Mansour and Tahnoon bin Zayed.

Under their leadership, Abu Dhabi grew into the financial hub of the Emirates. They built a network of corporate and state-owned enterprises that would deliver everything Emirati statecraft https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/r ... s-need-why required.

The three brothers - dubbed the Bani Fatima - created a parallel infrastructure to deliver strategic investments and financial services. They tied logistics and commodity trading companies, as well as private military and security firms, to the newly developing centre of power.

When it became clear that their surrogates were unable to seize central government, the UAE was happy to play a game of divide and conquer

Beyond geo-economics, the Bani Fatima succeeded in curating webs of private and semi-private entities to connect with sociopolitical and economic shapers in the region. While Abu Dhabi appears to be quite hierarchical internally, a more horizontal core-periphery dynamic thus emerged, with networks of individuals, companies and governmental organisations revolving around the Bani Fatima and their close advisers as the hub of these networks.

What commenced as a war against Islamic civil society and Islamist non-state actors under the pretext of fighting “terrorism” in the Arab Spring developed into a grand strategy of weaponised interdependence. After successfully conspiring with the Egyptian https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/egypt military in 2013 to stage a coup to oust the only democratically elected president in Egypt’s history, Abu Dhabi gained the confidence to use its networks to remake the socio-politics of the region.

The overall vision for President Mohammed bin Zayed and his brothers has become one of strategically entangling elites across the Middle East and Africa into the UAE’s hub. What China https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/china is playing as a game of geo-economics, whereby countries develop a co-dependence on Chinese investments and trading power, the UAE has expanded into a geo-strategic space where warlords, criminal smuggling networks, traders and financiers develop a dependency on UAE infrastructure. In return, Abu Dhabi can use its influence to gain strategic depth in countries relevant to core Emirati interests.

Where the Emirati ministries of defence or foreign affairs lack capacity to generate strategic depth, surrogates - mostly in the private sector in countries of interest - can fill the gap. The influence Abu Dhabi generates can be traded with the United States, https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us Russia https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/russia or China in return for great power protection and relevance.

Diverse networks

Secessionist or insurgency causes in unstable states inevitably build coherent networks that are embedded in local communities. Like Iran’s cultivation of armed non-state actors tied to communal - mostly Shia resistance - causes, the UAE found that communities with a strong cause are best suited to host armed non-state actors.

When it became clear that their surrogates were unable to seize central government, the UAE was happy to play a game of divide and conquer. In Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia, communally based non-state actors have all created alternative claims to territoriality and sovereignty to rival their respective UN-backed central governments.

The networks Abu Dhabi has curated are diverse. Nodes in the networks retain a great degree of autonomy, with the UAE content to surrender some control over activities on the ground. Connections between the various networks tend to be horizontal rather than vertical, where Abu Dhabi often remains the switch to orchestrate and connect different nodes from different networks.

While much of the attention on the UAE’s axis of secessionists focuses on militarised non-state actors - such as the Libyan National Army (LNA), the RSF in Sudan, the Security Belt Forces (SBF) in Yemen, or the Somaliland Armed Forces and Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) in Somalia - there is an extensive underbelly of financial, logistics, trade and information networks that keep them afloat.

The security networks of armed militias, rebels and mercenaries are supported by networks of logisticians and commodity traders. In addition, financial networks allow surrogates to exchange commodities and minerals for more fungible assets.

Financial networks also provide surrogates with the means to bypass sanctions and purchase goods, services and arms in the UAE to support their ventures. UAE-based logistics companies provide a range of vehicles to ship material support and arms to and around countries of destination. Information networks of influencers, media companies and spin doctors generate the necessary narratives to whitewash in-country operations.

The Libya experiment

The roots of the Emirati axis of secessionists go back to 2014. A former commander of Muammar Gaddafi’s army, Khalifa Haftar, https://www.middleeasteye.net/video/has ... ower-libya had recently returned to Libya from exile.

In February 2014, he unsuccessfully tried to launch a counterrevolution on YouTube, https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/201 ... ps?lang=en and Abu Dhabi took notice. Within three months, Emirati money, military and information support reshaped the warlord’s YouTube revolution into a full-scale counterrevolutionary effort, under the banner of fighting “terrorism”.

Operation Dignity was conducted by a network of disenfranchised militias and brigades against the Emirati scarecrow of the “Muslim Brotherhood” - a catch-all bogeyman describing all revolutionary forces that toppled Gaddafi in 2011. Their attack on the Libyan parliament https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2014/5/1 ... parliament in May 2014 forged the LNA, an oxymoronic web of militias that is neither inclusively national, nor an army in the traditional sense.

While Operation Dignity https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20 ... 12444.html failed to completely undo the achievements of the revolution, Haftar nonetheless succeeded in capturing eastern Libya, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015 ... ue-general with Benghazi as its capital. Attempts by the LNA, with Emirati and Russian support, to topple the UN-backed government in Tripoli consecutively failed - but this did not stop the LNA from building its own sociopolitical infrastructure rivalling that of the central government.


Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar (C) is pictured in Benghazi on 20 February 2025 (Abdullah Doma/AFP)

Today, the LNA is a militia network with a quasi-state. At its helm is an ageing strongman whose family has created a system of patronage in Benghazi that will ensure regime longevity. More importantly, the UAE has been able to revive the traditional “ eastern cause” of tribes in eastern Libya.

The LNA’s sphere of influence neatly fits the boundaries of Libya’s traditional region of Cyrenaica, which sees itself as socio-culturally separate from western Libya’s Tripolitania and the southern Fezzan.

The security networks fuelling the LNA over the years were transnational. The LNA’s activities became a major gateway for African mercenaries, https://reliefweb.int/report/libya/merc ... -elections as Russian and Saharan soldiers of fortune became essential force multipliers for Libyan militia brigades.

Libya thus emerged as a bridgehead for the UAE’s regional security networks. Military bases were used to supply fighters with material and lethal support, and a carousel of guns-for-hire spun out of the LNA’s war into other conflicts in the region.

Fighters, material support and arms had to be flown not just into Libya, but onward to other conflict zones

Emirati advisers on the ground were involved in training and providing intelligence support to the LNA, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/6/9 ... nvolvement while the UAE on multiple occasions delivered air support. When in 2019, Russia’s Wagner network set up shop in Libya https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-58009514 - allegedly paid by UAE banks https://www.thetimes.com/world/us-world ... ion=global - the LNA’s hub position in a continental security network was fully established.

Haftar was able to provide Russia with a platform from which to launch operations across the continent. Russian planes https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienr ... y-airbase/ could land on LNA-seized military bases and fly onward to other conflict zones in the region.

A key asset https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/u ... -networks- was a network of logisticians and private logistics companies, often based in the UAE, that would provide strategic airlift capability. Fighters, material support and arms had to be flown not just into Libya, but onward to other war zones.

The supply chain of the UAE’s security network has been widely privatised to achieve plausible deniability. In 2020, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the UAE airforce relied on Emirati companies to drop 150 cargo planeloads https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae- ... un-embargo of arms into Libya - an arsenal that still feeds fighters across the network today.

Abu Dhabi has also provided financial networks to assist with the funding of LNA operations. Billions of dollars in frozen Gaddafi assets were allegedly released https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180 ... zen-funds/ from Emirati banks to eastern Libya to fund Haftar’s endeavours.

In addition, LNA authorities tried to sell Libyan oil https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/6/2 ... l-oil-sale from seized oil fields behind the back of the National Oil Company through a rival firm, and to deposit receipts in Emirati banks https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... 025-02-17/ - but commodity traders were nervous to bypass Libya’s state oil company, shifting the illegal sales to the black market. Still, reports suggest that Haftar’s family https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/liby ... legal-woes at least has been able to bank privately in the UAE.

Coming of age in Yemen

Amid the LNA’s consolidation of power in Libya, the UAE was called upon by Saudi Arabia https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/saudi-arabia in March 2015 to support its war against the Houthis in Yemen. For Abu Dhabi, Yemen offered an opportunity to develop strategic depth in the southern coastal areas, with Aden and the Bab al-Mandab Strait as one of the world’s key maritime chokepoints.

Not only was Abu Dhabi able to continue its war against “terrorism” - including both jihadist networks and Islamist civil society groups and politicians - but it could also expand (and later weaponize) its web of interdependence.

The UAE executed a range of military operations to secure Yemen’s coastal areas, but after a Houthi missile struck an Emirati base in Marib in September 2015, killing 52 soldiers, https://www.newarab.com/analysis/uae-mo ... sses-yemen Abu Dhabi rethought its strategy. The deadliest attack in the history of the UAE’s armed forces prompted it to limit the exposure of its troops, and increasingly delegate fighting to contractors and mercenaries.


Fighters affiliated with Yemen’s separatist Southern Transitional Council deploy around the site of a reported explosion in Aden on 29 June 2022 (Saleh Obaidi/AFP)

In 2016, the Emiratis established the Security Belt Forces (SBF), https://acleddata.com/yemen-conflict-ob ... lt-forces/ a paramilitary force built from a conglomerate of tribal fighters in southern Yemen. With this and the political umbrella of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), established the following year, Abu Dhabi increasingly divorced its Yemen policy from the original Saudi-led campaign.

Realising that the highly polarised and divided sociopolitical realities of Yemen could not be controlled, the UAE resorted to a divide-and-rule approach, similar to the one in Libya. The STC would be established atop the existing southern secessionist cause.

The Southern Movement was the best organised, with a clear narrative built around independence from Yemen’s north, and a ready-made tribal network of brigades that could bring armed force to bear at a low cost for the Emiratis. A general from the SBF, Aidarus al-Zoubaidi, was appointed to helm the STC - quite unlike Haftar, although far less suited to play the role of military strongman.

Despite marketing itself as a united southern front, the STC remains largely a network of brigades whose commanders operate with extensive autonomy from any central leadership, acting more like warlords with their own armies and law enforcers tied to them personally. Like Libya’s LNA, command and control in the UAE’s security network in Yemen is widely decentralised.

As Yemen’s north plunged into more chaos, the UAE tried to consolidate influence under the banner of the STC in the south. In 2019, STC-aligned militias seized the presidential palace https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/8/1 ... tary-camps in Aden, depriving the already exiled UN-backed government of its local residence.

The Riyadh Agreement https://www.middleeasteye.net/boxout/riyadh-agreement of 2019, though marketed as a reconciliation between the central government and the separatists, elevated the STC to a position of international legitimacy. Abu Dhabi has since lent its diplomatic and political clout to the STC, introducing Zoubaidi to its partners in Russia, where he speaks as the legitimate representative of Yemen.

Emirati financial and trading networks create the wiring to support the STC materially and financially. The territories held by the STC are economically lucrative, with the coastal areas - Aden in particular - offering access to the most important maritime shipping routes in the world.

After the Dubai-based DP World’s contract to manage Aden’s port was terminated https://www.reuters.com/article/legal/g ... L5E8JQ2ZX/ in 2012, as of last year, the Abu Dhabi-based AD Ports was reportedly negotiating to resume port management. Such a deal would grant the state-owned Emirati company control of a strategically critical trading post, while generating revenues for the STC.

Furthermore, the STC’s control enables Emirati companies to access the energy infrastructure in Balhaf and oil fields in Masila. Southern Yemen’s crown jewels are thus offered to Emirati entities. Networks of UAE-based commodity traders arrange for oil to be smuggled https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... hatgpt.com from Yemen and sold on the global market, with some profits likely pocketed by the STC administration. The UAE brings investments to STC-held territories, in return for Emirati access to critical national infrastructure.

Pulling strings in Sudan

Sudanese fighters have been part of the Emirati web of networks from the outset. Sudanese fighters supported the LNA in Libya, and the RSF under warlord Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, sent thousands of men to fight for the UAE in the war in Yemen. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/thou ... line-yemen

RSF guns-for-hire became a lucrative source of income for Hemeti in supporting the Saudi-Emirati war against the Houthis. Drawn from tribes in the border region between Sudan and Chad in the conflict-ridden region of Darfur, the RSF was built on a separatist cause fuelled since the 1980s.

Used as a praetorian guard by former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the RSF has developed into a state within a state since its formal creation in 2013. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/1 ... ort-forces

The immense wealth that Hemeti and his family were able to accumulate, through gold trade and smuggling, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae- ... ays-report ensured the RSF’s financial independence. Using the UAE as a hub to sell Sudanese gold - both legally and illicitly mined - they have accumulated wealth in Emirati banks.

In 2018, the outbreak of the Sudanese revolution https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/s ... revolution against long-standing strongman Bashir plunged the country into instability. A military coup by the Sudanese army in 2019 was supported by the RSF, unleashing a struggle for power in Khartoum.

For Abu Dhabi, this was a chance to do away with the Islamist-leaning Bashir regime and get access to an important crossroads in eastern Africa. But Emirati and Saudi funding was unable to contain the power struggle, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/12/su ... emeti-rsf/ which escalated into a full-scale civil war by 2023, pitting the RSF against the Sudanese military.

Hemeti presented an opportunity for Abu Dhabi to back another military strongman with financial entanglements in the UAE - one whose militia network had a strong separatist cause. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1 ... progresses

Darfurian tribal fighters had already made a name for themselves in Gaddafi’s war against Chad https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsConten ... arfur.aspx in the 1980s - a campaign led on the Libyan side by none other than Haftar. Since RSF fighters had already supplemented the LNA https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... e-conflict and supported the STC-aligned security networks, it is not surprising that both Libya and Yemen became sources https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/resea ... -conflict/ of material and military support to the RSF. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/su ... 023-05-03/

Returning fighters have brought back arms and munitions.

In addition, the LNA’s arms depots were restocked by the UAE https://www.newarab.com/news/uae-supply ... r-defences in 2020, enabling Haftar to resupply his partners in Sudan with Emirati weapons, while granting Abu Dhabi plausible deniability.

As the war in Sudan intensified, the RSF needed more small arms, missiles, mortars and drones. Abu Dhabi has been using innovative ways to conceal illegal shipments https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/29/worl ... -chad.html of arms under the guise of humanitarian aid, using UAE-based logistics companies to fly them into Chad and Uganda, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/suda ... -trade-rsf from where they are either flown onward or driven across the border to Darfur.

Parts of the network are almost self-funding. The Hemeti family's network of mines, commodity traders, front companies and bank accounts all coalesce in the UAE, which has become the financial haven for the RSF’s gold business. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/suda ... -interests

Gold is mined in RSF-held territories, flown to Dubai, exchanged for cash, and stored in Emirati banks. That money can pay salaries, charter air cargo flights, buy weapons and vehicles, and hire PR companies or Russian mercenaries.

The US Treasury has sanctioned https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2772 a range of UAE-based companies https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1220 - some fronting for the Hemeti family to purchase supplies for the RSF, others providing the logistics to fly supplies and Wagner mercenaries into Sudan. Abu Dhabi has provided this network with the necessary infrastructure to create a value chain, from the raw gold in the ground to arms being delivered to fighters on the RSF front lines.

Emirati information networks, meanwhile, offer Hemeti opportunities to polish his image. Amid increasing media pressure on the RSF over atrocities committed in Sudan - including accusations of genocide https://reliefweb.int/report/sudan/geno ... d-militias - Hemeti has relied on UAE-based PR companies to polish his image https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -officials and give the RSF a veneer of legitimacy.

Abu Dhabi’s broad global network of public relations specialists and media consultants have tried to transform the image of the militia network into a sophisticated alternative to the UN-backed government. These efforts have been undermined, however, by the newly filed genocide case https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/17/su ... age_anchor at the International Court of Justice.

Divide and rule in Somalia

Somalia is the physical manifestation of the Horn of Africa. Its immense strategic value to global shipping routes and trade corridors into the African hinterland put the country on the UAE’s radar as far back as 2010.

For Abu Dhabi, Somalia has been a key focal point in its policy to generate interconnectivity and weaponised interdependence. For state-owned logistics giants DP World https://www.dpworld.com/somaliland and AD Ports, https://www.adportsgroup.com/en/news-an ... y-sign-mou it offers ideal locations for transshipment hubs.

But bilateral relations between Abu Dhabi and the federal government in Mogadishu have had their ups and downs, making it an unreliable avenue to generate Emirati influence. The UAE has thus resorted to a policy of bypassing Mogadishu to engage directly with various states, especially those with a separatist agenda.

Realising that Mogadishu's federal government did not want to put all its eggs in the Emirati basket, Abu Dhabi diversified its approach in Somalia

In 2010, the UAE set up a force of mercenaries in the region of Puntland to hunt down pirates on land and sea. The Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) https://pmpf.so/ was initially run by a UAE-based company, in violation of a UN arms embargo, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/worl ... malia.html and reported directly to the Puntland president, bypassing the sovereignty of the Somali federal government. The UAE has paid salaries and in 2022 opened a military base in Bosaso, https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2024 ... ad?lang=en which has become a node in the resupply network of the RSF in Sudan.

Since 2017, the UAE has also expanded its engagement with Somaliland, arguably the autonomous region with the strongest independence movement within the Somali federation. To strengthen its claim to autonomy, the Somaliland government accepted an Emirati bid to establish a military base https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38956093 in Berbera, an important geo-strategic location in the Gulf of Aden.

Abu Dhabi has also been training Somaliland forces to further separate the region’s security sector from the federal government in Mogadishu. Today, the UAE is the most important investor in Somaliland, and it is likely behind an effort to lobby the Trump administration to recognise https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3j1qn0499o the state as an independent nation in return for basing rights.

Since 2023, Abu Dhabi has also increased its footprint in Jubaland, strengthening the southern Somali region’s separatist claim at a time of heightened tensions with Mogadishu. The UAE has conducted drone strikes https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/pol ... ce-somalia and provided military vehicles to Jubaland state forces. Jubaland leader Ahmed Madobe maintains intimate ties with Abu Dhabi, and has allowed the Emiratis to build a military base in the regional capital of Kismayo.

Upon realising that Mogadishu’s federal government did not want to put all its eggs in the Emirati basket, Abu Dhabi strategically diversified its approach in Somalia. Rather than going after the primary centre of power, the UAE decentralised its approach, going after alternative centres of power where it could guarantee a monopoly of patronage - at the expense of Somalia’s territorial integrity.

Indispensable broker

The UAE’s support for the RSF is just one piece of a much wider networked puzzle, which aims to generate strategic depth through a web of intermediaries. Abu Dhabi has established itself as a hub in a regional network that not only augments the UAE’s limited capacity and status, but creates an organic, self-sustaining system of interdependence, where nodes operate with degrees of autonomy that in turn provide the UAE with plausible deniability.

The value chain that Abu Dhabi has created across the region cannot be divorced from the UAE as a jurisdiction, but is maintained by an assemblage of state and corporate actors that do not directly feature the Bani Fatima.

Held together by the prospect of political autonomy from a central government, a profiteering motive, and access to the UAE’s exceptional financial and logistical infrastructure, the axis of secessionists has emerged as a resilient network across an important geo-strategic space.

Both middle and great powers cannot avoid engaging with Abu Dhabi in these jurisdictions, elevating the UAE’s global status to that of an indispensable broker - one that is able to pit one interest against another, while securing strategic bridgeheads for itself.

Russia’s mercenary and commodity-profiteering network of the Africa Corp, https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/07/af ... kina-faso/ formerly known as Wagner - relies on the axis of secessionists to get in and out of Africa. China’s hunger for resources requires secure supply chains across the African continent, and Beijing will find it hard to avoid key chokepoints that are now under direct or indirect Emirati influence. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is also entering the game of geo-economics, tapping into the connections Abu Dhabi has generated.

Through this axis, the traditional, small state of the UAE has been elevated to a regional great power, achieving far more effective levels of entanglement and interdependence than its larger neighbour Saudi Arabia, or its agile neighbour Qatar. https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/qatar

For Abu Dhabi, this network has become the bedrock of strategic autonomy to pursue its own interests - even when at odds with western interests and values.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

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The Big Story | Politics



How Abu Dhabi built an axis of secessionists across the region

By Andreas Krieg

https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story ... region-how

28 March 2025

From North Africa to the Gulf, the UAE has aggressively expanded its counter-revolutionary strategy in the wake of the Arab Spring

Earlier this month, Sudan’s https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/sudan government brought proceedings against the United Arab Emirates, https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/uae accusing it of “complicity in genocide” https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/suda ... y-genocide in the Sudanese civil war.

The case sheds light on the Abu Dhabi network providing https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/suda ... -trade-rsf lethal and financial support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a violent non-state actor fighting Sudan’s government in a bloody civil war.

The RSF is but one of the nodes in a network of non-state actors the UAE has curated over the past decade. The small Gulf monarchy has tapped into secessionist causes from Libya, https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/libya to Yemen, https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/yemen Sudan and Somalia, using surrogates as Trojan horses to generate strategic depth and influence.

Like Iran’s https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iran “axis of resistance” - a network of non-state actors loosely tied together under an Islamic revolutionary banner - the UAE’s “axis of secessionists” comprises a network of non-state actors tied together under a counterrevolutionary banner. Like Tehran, Abu Dhabi has curated a multilayered network of violent non-state actors, financiers, traders, political figureheads and influencers to create bridgeheads in countries of strategic value to Emirati national interests.

Paradoxically, yearning for a strong state, Abu Dhabi’s ruling elite has created a network of strongmen whose reliance on armed violence has done more to destabilise central governments and undermine state sovereignty across the region.

As a small hydrocarbon state of just one million citizens (and millions more expat residents), the UAE has traditionally been forced to delegate statecraft to surrogates to fill capacity gaps. When foreign and security policy ambitions started to expand during the Arab Spring, https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/arab-spring so too did the Emirati need for ways to project influence overseas with a minimal footprint.

Abu Dhabi was looking for an effective means to translate petrodollars into geopolitical influence. Ironically, it was the fear of revolutionary non-state actors in 2011 that triggered the UAE to more assertively seek surrogates through which it could contain revolutionaries threatening to overthrow Arab autocrats from North Africa to the Levant and the Gulf.

Most of all, Abu Dhabi wanted to contain and undermine the Muslim Brotherhood https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/w ... rotherhood and other Islamist non-state actors that appeared to be best organised to shape the post-revolutionary order.

The Bani Fatima

In a federation of seven emirates, Abu Dhabi and its ruling Al Nahyan family quickly developed into the main hub in a tribal monarchy. Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, the near-bankruptcy of the emirate of Dubai https://www.bbc.com/news/business-11837714 and the subsequent cash injection from oil-rich Abu Dhabi, power has increasingly centralised in the hands of three brothers: Mohammed, Mansour and Tahnoon bin Zayed.

Under their leadership, Abu Dhabi grew into the financial hub of the Emirates. They built a network of corporate and state-owned enterprises that would deliver everything Emirati statecraft https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/r ... s-need-why required.

The three brothers - dubbed the Bani Fatima - created a parallel infrastructure to deliver strategic investments and financial services. They tied logistics and commodity trading companies, as well as private military and security firms, to the newly developing centre of power.

When it became clear that their surrogates were unable to seize central government, the UAE was happy to play a game of divide and conquer

Beyond geo-economics, the Bani Fatima succeeded in curating webs of private and semi-private entities to connect with sociopolitical and economic shapers in the region. While Abu Dhabi appears to be quite hierarchical internally, a more horizontal core-periphery dynamic thus emerged, with networks of individuals, companies and governmental organisations revolving around the Bani Fatima and their close advisers as the hub of these networks.

What commenced as a war against Islamic civil society and Islamist non-state actors under the pretext of fighting “terrorism” in the Arab Spring developed into a grand strategy of weaponised interdependence. After successfully conspiring with the Egyptian https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/egypt military in 2013 to stage a coup to oust the only democratically elected president in Egypt’s history, Abu Dhabi gained the confidence to use its networks to remake the socio-politics of the region.

The overall vision for President Mohammed bin Zayed and his brothers has become one of strategically entangling elites across the Middle East and Africa into the UAE’s hub. What China https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/china is playing as a game of geo-economics, whereby countries develop a co-dependence on Chinese investments and trading power, the UAE has expanded into a geo-strategic space where warlords, criminal smuggling networks, traders and financiers develop a dependency on UAE infrastructure. In return, Abu Dhabi can use its influence to gain strategic depth in countries relevant to core Emirati interests.

Where the Emirati ministries of defence or foreign affairs lack capacity to generate strategic depth, surrogates - mostly in the private sector in countries of interest - can fill the gap. The influence Abu Dhabi generates can be traded with the United States, https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us Russia https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/russia or China in return for great power protection and relevance.

Diverse networks

Secessionist or insurgency causes in unstable states inevitably build coherent networks that are embedded in local communities. Like Iran’s cultivation of armed non-state actors tied to communal - mostly Shia resistance - causes, the UAE found that communities with a strong cause are best suited to host armed non-state actors.

When it became clear that their surrogates were unable to seize central government, the UAE was happy to play a game of divide and conquer. In Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia, communally based non-state actors have all created alternative claims to territoriality and sovereignty to rival their respective UN-backed central governments.

The networks Abu Dhabi has curated are diverse. Nodes in the networks retain a great degree of autonomy, with the UAE content to surrender some control over activities on the ground. Connections between the various networks tend to be horizontal rather than vertical, where Abu Dhabi often remains the switch to orchestrate and connect different nodes from different networks.

While much of the attention on the UAE’s axis of secessionists focuses on militarised non-state actors - such as the Libyan National Army (LNA), the RSF in Sudan, the Security Belt Forces (SBF) in Yemen, or the Somaliland Armed Forces and Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) in Somalia - there is an extensive underbelly of financial, logistics, trade and information networks that keep them afloat.

The security networks of armed militias, rebels and mercenaries are supported by networks of logisticians and commodity traders. In addition, financial networks allow surrogates to exchange commodities and minerals for more fungible assets.

Financial networks also provide surrogates with the means to bypass sanctions and purchase goods, services and arms in the UAE to support their ventures. UAE-based logistics companies provide a range of vehicles to ship material support and arms to and around countries of destination. Information networks of influencers, media companies and spin doctors generate the necessary narratives to whitewash in-country operations.

The Libya experiment

The roots of the Emirati axis of secessionists go back to 2014. A former commander of Muammar Gaddafi’s army, Khalifa Haftar, https://www.middleeasteye.net/video/has ... ower-libya had recently returned to Libya from exile.

In February 2014, he unsuccessfully tried to launch a counterrevolution on YouTube, https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/201 ... ps?lang=en and Abu Dhabi took notice. Within three months, Emirati money, military and information support reshaped the warlord’s YouTube revolution into a full-scale counterrevolutionary effort, under the banner of fighting “terrorism”.

Operation Dignity was conducted by a network of disenfranchised militias and brigades against the Emirati scarecrow of the “Muslim Brotherhood” - a catch-all bogeyman describing all revolutionary forces that toppled Gaddafi in 2011. Their attack on the Libyan parliament https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2014/5/1 ... parliament in May 2014 forged the LNA, an oxymoronic web of militias that is neither inclusively national, nor an army in the traditional sense.

While Operation Dignity https://webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/20 ... 12444.html failed to completely undo the achievements of the revolution, Haftar nonetheless succeeded in capturing eastern Libya, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015 ... ue-general with Benghazi as its capital. Attempts by the LNA, with Emirati and Russian support, to topple the UN-backed government in Tripoli consecutively failed - but this did not stop the LNA from building its own sociopolitical infrastructure rivalling that of the central government.


Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar (C) is pictured in Benghazi on 20 February 2025 (Abdullah Doma/AFP)

Today, the LNA is a militia network with a quasi-state. At its helm is an ageing strongman whose family has created a system of patronage in Benghazi that will ensure regime longevity. More importantly, the UAE has been able to revive the traditional “ eastern cause” of tribes in eastern Libya.

The LNA’s sphere of influence neatly fits the boundaries of Libya’s traditional region of Cyrenaica, which sees itself as socio-culturally separate from western Libya’s Tripolitania and the southern Fezzan.

The security networks fuelling the LNA over the years were transnational. The LNA’s activities became a major gateway for African mercenaries, https://reliefweb.int/report/libya/merc ... -elections as Russian and Saharan soldiers of fortune became essential force multipliers for Libyan militia brigades.

Libya thus emerged as a bridgehead for the UAE’s regional security networks. Military bases were used to supply fighters with material and lethal support, and a carousel of guns-for-hire spun out of the LNA’s war into other conflicts in the region.

Fighters, material support and arms had to be flown not just into Libya, but onward to other conflict zones

Emirati advisers on the ground were involved in training and providing intelligence support to the LNA, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/6/9 ... nvolvement while the UAE on multiple occasions delivered air support. When in 2019, Russia’s Wagner network set up shop in Libya https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-58009514 - allegedly paid by UAE banks https://www.thetimes.com/world/us-world ... ion=global - the LNA’s hub position in a continental security network was fully established.

Haftar was able to provide Russia with a platform from which to launch operations across the continent. Russian planes https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienr ... y-airbase/ could land on LNA-seized military bases and fly onward to other conflict zones in the region.

A key asset https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/u ... -networks- was a network of logisticians and private logistics companies, often based in the UAE, that would provide strategic airlift capability. Fighters, material support and arms had to be flown not just into Libya, but onward to other war zones.

The supply chain of the UAE’s security network has been widely privatised to achieve plausible deniability. In 2020, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the UAE airforce relied on Emirati companies to drop 150 cargo planeloads https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae- ... un-embargo of arms into Libya - an arsenal that still feeds fighters across the network today.

Abu Dhabi has also provided financial networks to assist with the funding of LNA operations. Billions of dollars in frozen Gaddafi assets were allegedly released https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180 ... zen-funds/ from Emirati banks to eastern Libya to fund Haftar’s endeavours.

In addition, LNA authorities tried to sell Libyan oil https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/6/2 ... l-oil-sale from seized oil fields behind the back of the National Oil Company through a rival firm, and to deposit receipts in Emirati banks https://www.reuters.com/business/energy ... 025-02-17/ - but commodity traders were nervous to bypass Libya’s state oil company, shifting the illegal sales to the black market. Still, reports suggest that Haftar’s family https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/liby ... legal-woes at least has been able to bank privately in the UAE.

Coming of age in Yemen

Amid the LNA’s consolidation of power in Libya, the UAE was called upon by Saudi Arabia https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/saudi-arabia in March 2015 to support its war against the Houthis in Yemen. For Abu Dhabi, Yemen offered an opportunity to develop strategic depth in the southern coastal areas, with Aden and the Bab al-Mandab Strait as one of the world’s key maritime chokepoints.

Not only was Abu Dhabi able to continue its war against “terrorism” - including both jihadist networks and Islamist civil society groups and politicians - but it could also expand (and later weaponize) its web of interdependence.

The UAE executed a range of military operations to secure Yemen’s coastal areas, but after a Houthi missile struck an Emirati base in Marib in September 2015, killing 52 soldiers, https://www.newarab.com/analysis/uae-mo ... sses-yemen Abu Dhabi rethought its strategy. The deadliest attack in the history of the UAE’s armed forces prompted it to limit the exposure of its troops, and increasingly delegate fighting to contractors and mercenaries.


Fighters affiliated with Yemen’s separatist Southern Transitional Council deploy around the site of a reported explosion in Aden on 29 June 2022 (Saleh Obaidi/AFP)

In 2016, the Emiratis established the Security Belt Forces (SBF), https://acleddata.com/yemen-conflict-ob ... lt-forces/ a paramilitary force built from a conglomerate of tribal fighters in southern Yemen. With this and the political umbrella of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), established the following year, Abu Dhabi increasingly divorced its Yemen policy from the original Saudi-led campaign.

Realising that the highly polarised and divided sociopolitical realities of Yemen could not be controlled, the UAE resorted to a divide-and-rule approach, similar to the one in Libya. The STC would be established atop the existing southern secessionist cause.

The Southern Movement was the best organised, with a clear narrative built around independence from Yemen’s north, and a ready-made tribal network of brigades that could bring armed force to bear at a low cost for the Emiratis. A general from the SBF, Aidarus al-Zoubaidi, was appointed to helm the STC - quite unlike Haftar, although far less suited to play the role of military strongman.

Despite marketing itself as a united southern front, the STC remains largely a network of brigades whose commanders operate with extensive autonomy from any central leadership, acting more like warlords with their own armies and law enforcers tied to them personally. Like Libya’s LNA, command and control in the UAE’s security network in Yemen is widely decentralised.

As Yemen’s north plunged into more chaos, the UAE tried to consolidate influence under the banner of the STC in the south. In 2019, STC-aligned militias seized the presidential palace https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/8/1 ... tary-camps in Aden, depriving the already exiled UN-backed government of its local residence.

The Riyadh Agreement https://www.middleeasteye.net/boxout/riyadh-agreement of 2019, though marketed as a reconciliation between the central government and the separatists, elevated the STC to a position of international legitimacy. Abu Dhabi has since lent its diplomatic and political clout to the STC, introducing Zoubaidi to its partners in Russia, where he speaks as the legitimate representative of Yemen.

Emirati financial and trading networks create the wiring to support the STC materially and financially. The territories held by the STC are economically lucrative, with the coastal areas - Aden in particular - offering access to the most important maritime shipping routes in the world.

After the Dubai-based DP World’s contract to manage Aden’s port was terminated https://www.reuters.com/article/legal/g ... L5E8JQ2ZX/ in 2012, as of last year, the Abu Dhabi-based AD Ports was reportedly negotiating to resume port management. Such a deal would grant the state-owned Emirati company control of a strategically critical trading post, while generating revenues for the STC.

Furthermore, the STC’s control enables Emirati companies to access the energy infrastructure in Balhaf and oil fields in Masila. Southern Yemen’s crown jewels are thus offered to Emirati entities. Networks of UAE-based commodity traders arrange for oil to be smuggled https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... hatgpt.com from Yemen and sold on the global market, with some profits likely pocketed by the STC administration. The UAE brings investments to STC-held territories, in return for Emirati access to critical national infrastructure.

Pulling strings in Sudan

Sudanese fighters have been part of the Emirati web of networks from the outset. Sudanese fighters supported the LNA in Libya, and the RSF under warlord Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, sent thousands of men to fight for the UAE in the war in Yemen. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/thou ... line-yemen

RSF guns-for-hire became a lucrative source of income for Hemeti in supporting the Saudi-Emirati war against the Houthis. Drawn from tribes in the border region between Sudan and Chad in the conflict-ridden region of Darfur, the RSF was built on a separatist cause fuelled since the 1980s.

Used as a praetorian guard by former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the RSF has developed into a state within a state since its formal creation in 2013. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/1 ... ort-forces

The immense wealth that Hemeti and his family were able to accumulate, through gold trade and smuggling, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae- ... ays-report ensured the RSF’s financial independence. Using the UAE as a hub to sell Sudanese gold - both legally and illicitly mined - they have accumulated wealth in Emirati banks.

In 2018, the outbreak of the Sudanese revolution https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/s ... revolution against long-standing strongman Bashir plunged the country into instability. A military coup by the Sudanese army in 2019 was supported by the RSF, unleashing a struggle for power in Khartoum.

For Abu Dhabi, this was a chance to do away with the Islamist-leaning Bashir regime and get access to an important crossroads in eastern Africa. But Emirati and Saudi funding was unable to contain the power struggle, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/12/su ... emeti-rsf/ which escalated into a full-scale civil war by 2023, pitting the RSF against the Sudanese military.

Hemeti presented an opportunity for Abu Dhabi to back another military strongman with financial entanglements in the UAE - one whose militia network had a strong separatist cause. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1 ... progresses

Darfurian tribal fighters had already made a name for themselves in Gaddafi’s war against Chad https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsConten ... arfur.aspx in the 1980s - a campaign led on the Libyan side by none other than Haftar. Since RSF fighters had already supplemented the LNA https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... e-conflict and supported the STC-aligned security networks, it is not surprising that both Libya and Yemen became sources https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/resea ... -conflict/ of material and military support to the RSF. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/su ... 023-05-03/

Returning fighters have brought back arms and munitions.

In addition, the LNA’s arms depots were restocked by the UAE https://www.newarab.com/news/uae-supply ... r-defences in 2020, enabling Haftar to resupply his partners in Sudan with Emirati weapons, while granting Abu Dhabi plausible deniability.

As the war in Sudan intensified, the RSF needed more small arms, missiles, mortars and drones. Abu Dhabi has been using innovative ways to conceal illegal shipments https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/29/worl ... -chad.html of arms under the guise of humanitarian aid, using UAE-based logistics companies to fly them into Chad and Uganda, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/suda ... -trade-rsf from where they are either flown onward or driven across the border to Darfur.

Parts of the network are almost self-funding. The Hemeti family's network of mines, commodity traders, front companies and bank accounts all coalesce in the UAE, which has become the financial haven for the RSF’s gold business. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/suda ... -interests

Gold is mined in RSF-held territories, flown to Dubai, exchanged for cash, and stored in Emirati banks. That money can pay salaries, charter air cargo flights, buy weapons and vehicles, and hire PR companies or Russian mercenaries.

The US Treasury has sanctioned https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2772 a range of UAE-based companies https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1220 - some fronting for the Hemeti family to purchase supplies for the RSF, others providing the logistics to fly supplies and Wagner mercenaries into Sudan. Abu Dhabi has provided this network with the necessary infrastructure to create a value chain, from the raw gold in the ground to arms being delivered to fighters on the RSF front lines.

Emirati information networks, meanwhile, offer Hemeti opportunities to polish his image. Amid increasing media pressure on the RSF over atrocities committed in Sudan - including accusations of genocide https://reliefweb.int/report/sudan/geno ... d-militias - Hemeti has relied on UAE-based PR companies to polish his image https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -officials and give the RSF a veneer of legitimacy.

Abu Dhabi’s broad global network of public relations specialists and media consultants have tried to transform the image of the militia network into a sophisticated alternative to the UN-backed government. These efforts have been undermined, however, by the newly filed genocide case https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/17/su ... age_anchor at the International Court of Justice.

Divide and rule in Somalia

Somalia is the physical manifestation of the Horn of Africa. Its immense strategic value to global shipping routes and trade corridors into the African hinterland put the country on the UAE’s radar as far back as 2010.

For Abu Dhabi, Somalia has been a key focal point in its policy to generate interconnectivity and weaponised interdependence. For state-owned logistics giants DP World https://www.dpworld.com/somaliland and AD Ports, https://www.adportsgroup.com/en/news-an ... y-sign-mou it offers ideal locations for transshipment hubs.

But bilateral relations between Abu Dhabi and the federal government in Mogadishu have had their ups and downs, making it an unreliable avenue to generate Emirati influence. The UAE has thus resorted to a policy of bypassing Mogadishu to engage directly with various states, especially those with a separatist agenda.

Realising that Mogadishu's federal government did not want to put all its eggs in the Emirati basket, Abu Dhabi diversified its approach in Somalia

In 2010, the UAE set up a force of mercenaries in the region of Puntland to hunt down pirates on land and sea. The Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) https://pmpf.so/ was initially run by a UAE-based company, in violation of a UN arms embargo, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/worl ... malia.html and reported directly to the Puntland president, bypassing the sovereignty of the Somali federal government. The UAE has paid salaries and in 2022 opened a military base in Bosaso, https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2024 ... ad?lang=en which has become a node in the resupply network of the RSF in Sudan.

Since 2017, the UAE has also expanded its engagement with Somaliland, arguably the autonomous region with the strongest independence movement within the Somali federation. To strengthen its claim to autonomy, the Somaliland government accepted an Emirati bid to establish a military base https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38956093 in Berbera, an important geo-strategic location in the Gulf of Aden.

Abu Dhabi has also been training Somaliland forces to further separate the region’s security sector from the federal government in Mogadishu. Today, the UAE is the most important investor in Somaliland, and it is likely behind an effort to lobby the Trump administration to recognise https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3j1qn0499o the state as an independent nation in return for basing rights.

Since 2023, Abu Dhabi has also increased its footprint in Jubaland, strengthening the southern Somali region’s separatist claim at a time of heightened tensions with Mogadishu. The UAE has conducted drone strikes https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/pol ... ce-somalia and provided military vehicles to Jubaland state forces. Jubaland leader Ahmed Madobe maintains intimate ties with Abu Dhabi, and has allowed the Emiratis to build a military base in the regional capital of Kismayo.

Upon realising that Mogadishu’s federal government did not want to put all its eggs in the Emirati basket, Abu Dhabi strategically diversified its approach in Somalia. Rather than going after the primary centre of power, the UAE decentralised its approach, going after alternative centres of power where it could guarantee a monopoly of patronage - at the expense of Somalia’s territorial integrity.

Indispensable broker

The UAE’s support for the RSF is just one piece of a much wider networked puzzle, which aims to generate strategic depth through a web of intermediaries. Abu Dhabi has established itself as a hub in a regional network that not only augments the UAE’s limited capacity and status, but creates an organic, self-sustaining system of interdependence, where nodes operate with degrees of autonomy that in turn provide the UAE with plausible deniability.

The value chain that Abu Dhabi has created across the region cannot be divorced from the UAE as a jurisdiction, but is maintained by an assemblage of state and corporate actors that do not directly feature the Bani Fatima.

Held together by the prospect of political autonomy from a central government, a profiteering motive, and access to the UAE’s exceptional financial and logistical infrastructure, the axis of secessionists has emerged as a resilient network across an important geo-strategic space.

Both middle and great powers cannot avoid engaging with Abu Dhabi in these jurisdictions, elevating the UAE’s global status to that of an indispensable broker - one that is able to pit one interest against another, while securing strategic bridgeheads for itself.

Russia’s mercenary and commodity-profiteering network of the Africa Corp, https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/07/af ... kina-faso/ formerly known as Wagner - relies on the axis of secessionists to get in and out of Africa. China’s hunger for resources requires secure supply chains across the African continent, and Beijing will find it hard to avoid key chokepoints that are now under direct or indirect Emirati influence. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is also entering the game of geo-economics, tapping into the connections Abu Dhabi has generated.

Through this axis, the traditional, small state of the UAE has been elevated to a regional great power, achieving far more effective levels of entanglement and interdependence than its larger neighbour Saudi Arabia, or its agile neighbour Qatar. https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/qatar

For Abu Dhabi, this network has become the bedrock of strategic autonomy to pursue its own interests - even when at odds with western interests and values.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

One cannot help but to question the integrity and coherence of your silly narrative and the article u posted in relation to what is said in here. On the one hand, you report on Ethiopians departing for Saudi Arabia, only to segue without clear relevance into a discourse on the United Arab Emirates and its purported regional economic and geopolitical manoeuvres, replete with half truths and speculative inputs indeed

What is particularly disingenuous on your part and the article at hand iis the sudden portrayal of the UAE in a negative way so all of a sudden, despite the well documented and cordial relationship between dcitator Isaias Afewerki maintains with the Emirati leadership family nahyan and family makhtoum. I remember you used to bombarded us with images and videos extolling his visits to abu dhabi s you once championed with great enthusiasm on ur part as if it was a major achievement . What, then, has changed dear lad ? Has the UAE suddenly become the enemy??

The article in question makes further misleading claim suggesting that Jubbaland harbours separatist ambitions which is neither here nor there and that the UAE is exploiting this supposed rift between the federal govt and jubbaland certainly there are some issues with the federal govt and jubbaland . This explanation of events is really simply not true . Jubbaland has never formally advocated for secession from somalia furthermore the implication that the UAE is fuelling a separatist military structure in Somaliland is historically and factually flawed simply a lie told . Since 1991, Somaliland has maintained a distinct and independent defence apparatus, entirely separate from the Somali Federal Government. The two have not shared a unified military command for over three decades. so what is the UAE doing in here as if there was a cooperation or engagment betwene Hargeisa and Mogadishu

To imply that the Emirates are exploiting a non-existent “difference” is not only a distortion of reality but a disservice to some of our readers in here. If your intention is to critique regional dynamics feel free to do so or you want the dictator of asmara to be a savior of sudan, it would serve you well to do so with intellectual honesty and historical accuracy. Your leader, the eritrean dictator continues to enjoy favourable relations with both the Emirates and the Saudis. Thus, your sudden shift in tone appears, at best, inconsistent to the drums in asmara and, at worst, politically expedient indeed.


Dr Zackovich

[Selam/]

ሁለት ነገሮች ብቻ ልበል፥

- በቅርቡ አንዷ እንዲህ ብላለች፥ “ዓረብ ሃገር ታስሮ የወህኒ ቤት ምግብ መብላት ይሻላል፣ ሃገሬ ተቀጥሮ ከመስራት!”
እውነቱን ፍርጥርጥ አድርጋ ስለ ተናገረች አንድንቄያታለሁ።

- ኤርትራም ኢትዮጵያም ወጣቶቻው በስደት የሚሸሹዋቸው መናጢ ድሃ ሃገሮች ናቸው። እኔ ከአንተ እሻላለሁ እያሉ እርስ በእርሳቸው የሚንጓጠጡት የ ER ወስፌዎች አስተሳሰባቸው ከድዳም ፈጠጤ ዝንጀሮ አይምሮ አይሻልም።

[Digital Weyane]

ከብልፅግናዋይ ትግራዋይ ዎንድሜ Selam/ ጋር ሞቶ በሞቶ ኡስማማለሁ።

ኤርትራውያን ዲሞክራሲን ፍለጋ ሲሰደዱ ኡኛ ኢትዮጵያውያን ግን በውጭው ዓለም የኛ የሆነው አብዮታዊ ዲሞክራሲ እና የብሄር ፌደራሊዝምን ለማስፋፋት እንዲሁም ባህላችንን ለማስተዋወቅ ነው የሚጋረጡብን ፈተናዎችና የሚገጥሙን ችግሮችን ተቋቁመን ባህር ተሻግረን፣ ውቅያኖስ አቋርጠን የምንጓዘው።

[Agazi General]

WAWW ZEMSO FROM A DIRT POOR COUNTRY HE FLED LIKE MANY OTHERS INCLUDING FENDADAW IS DENIGRATING ETHIOPIA ANOTHER POOR COUNTRY THAT WE ALL ALSO FLED. I SUPPOSE THAT HE THINKS BEING FROM A TINY POOR COUNTRY IS BETTER ZEN BEING FROM A LARGE POOR COUNTRY