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Exclusive: UAE flights linked to Sudan war tracked from Israel to Ethiopia

As Saudi Arabia-UAE rivalry intensifies, cargo plane connected to Mohammed bin Zayed conducts multiple flights across Middle East, Horn of Africa, and beyond


The Antonov An-124 Maximus Air Cargo, photographed here in Dubai in 2007, connected to UAE supply routes to Sudan and Libya (Wikimedia)

By Simon Hooper and Oscar Rickett

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae- ... l-ethiopia

21 January 2026

A cargo plane https://uk.flightaware.com/live/flight/URZYD/history previously linked to the supply of weapons to UAE https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/uae-backed fighters in Sudan https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/sudan and Libya https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/libya has made a number of flights in recent days between military bases in Abu Dhabi, Israel, https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel Bahrain https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/bahrain and Ethiopia, Middle East Eye can reveal.

While the purpose and any connection between the flights is unclear, they have taken place against the backdrop of a spiralling power struggle between the UAE and Saudi Arabia https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/saudi-arabia across Yemen https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/yemen and the Horn of Africa that has upturned the geopolitics of the region and prompted concerns of a new escalation in the Sudan war. https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/sudan-war

The UAE has been thrown onto the back foot after Saudi Arabia launched military action to oust the Emirati-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) from the Yemeni port city of Aden, and has been forced to withdraw from its key military base in Bosaso on the opposite Somali coastline.

Meanwhile, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/isra ... cial-visit where the UAE maintains another military base and controls the port of Berbera, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-g ... ica-crisis has further destabilised the regional order and prompted speculation that Ethiopia, which is closely aligned with Abu Dhabi, could be poised https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae- ... -agreement to do the same in return for access to Berbera.

The war in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/suda ... rmy-future and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/suda ... tary-force which began in April 2023 and has led to the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, is now firmly part of this struggle, with Saudi Arabia – alongside Egypt https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/egypt and Turkey https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/turkey - stepping up its military support for the SAF in an attempt to counteract the UAE’s longstanding patronage of the RSF.

The uncertainty at the UAE’s bases in Berbera https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-g ... ica-crisis and Bosaso https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/insi ... dan-bosaso after the Somali government cancelled https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/soma ... ajor-ports all its agreements with the UAE has seen Emirati personnel redeployed to Ethiopia, which, according to multiple sources, including a former Ethiopian government adviser, is now crucial to the UAE’s strategy in the region.

The adviser, who worked for the Addis Ababa government for over a decade, said that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali

certainly seems to see the future as Ethiopia aligning itself firmly with the UAE alliance rather than other options.

Some, in Ethiopia’s foreign ministry and elsewhere, believe the UAE has been calling the shots for Ethiopia in regard to the Sudan government, RSF and Eritrea over Assab for the last two years,

the source said, referring to the Eritrean port of Assab, which the adviser said Abiy

very nearly invaded last year at the behest of Abu Dhabi.

Addis Ababa will stick with the UAE. The Emiratis are therefore focusing military operations on Ethiopian territory.

- Jalel Harchaoui, analyst

Jalel Harchaoui, an analyst focusing on North Africa and political economy, told MEE that since the onset of the war in Sudan,

the UAE has acted with greater speed, audacity and financial commitment than any other foreign interferer.

But, he said, Saudi Arabia’s

victory over the UAE in Yemen late last year has strengthened Riyadh’s regional credibility,

and the Saudis are now

spending aggressively to alter the trajectory of the Sudan war.

Pakistani officials recently told https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/paki ... udan%C2%A0 Reuters that negotiations are advanced on a defence package valued at about $1.5bn that would include JF-17 Block III fighters, K-8 attack aircraft, and more than 200 drones for the Sudanese Armed Forces.

While several regional actors will adjust to Riyadh’s overtures, Ethiopia will not,

Harchaoui said.

Addis Ababa will stick with the UAE. The Emiratis are therefore focusing military operations on Ethiopian territory, preparing a major offensive as Saudi actions have disrupted other staging areas.

UAE cargo planes

The flight-tracking data analysed by MEE in recent days revealed a pattern of repeat flights between Abu Dhabi and Harar Meda airport, the main base of the Ethiopian Air Force, by an Antonov An-124 cargo plane flown by Maximus Air with the tail number UR-ZYD.

The Antonov An-124 has been called the world’s largest military transport aircraft. Maximus Air’s website https://www.maximus-air.com/fleet/antonov-124-100 describes it as capable of carrying

21x Toyota Land Cruisers or 4 x Mi 17 MTV Helicopters without breaking a sweat.

On 3 January, UR-ZYD flew from Abu Dhabi International Airport to Harar Meda, landing at 9.12am local time (6.12am GMT). It took off again at 10.45am local time (7.34am GMT) and returned to Abu Dhabi. On 12 January, UR-ZYD flew once more to Harar Meda, this time departing from Abu Dhabi’s Al Dhafrar military base. It landed at 10.50am, returning to Abu Dhabi at 1.34pm.

Evidence that an An-124 has been making repeated sorties between Abu Dhabi and this airfield seeing increased uptick in RSF presence and operations should be of global concern.

- Nathaniel Raymond, Yale HRL

It made the same journey a third time three days later on 15 January, landing in Ethiopia at 8.27 am and leaving at 10.45am.

On 17 January, it flew again to Harar Meda from Al Dhafrar, before flying onto Addis Ababa's main Bole International Airport.

From there, on 18 January it flew to Marseille in France, https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/france then onto Taraz Airport in Kazakhstan on the same day, according to plane-tracking websites.

On Monday, it flew from Taraz to Ghangzhou Airport in China, and on Tuesday it was recorded https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight ... /ZGGG/VTBU flying from China https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/china to U-Tapao International Airport in Thailand.

Intriguingly, days prior to its first flight to Ethiopia on 3 January, UR-ZYD made three round trips between military airbases in Bahrain and Israel.

On both 28 and 29 December, it flew from Bahrain’s Sheikh Isa Air Base and appears to have landed at the Israeli Air Force’s Ovda base in the southern Negev desert, according to flight-tracking data. On 31 December, it flew again from Sheikh Isa to Ovda, this time returning to Abu Dhabi.

Evidence that an An-124, given the significant cargo capacity of this particular airframe, has been making repeated sorties between Abu Dhabi and this airfield near an area seeing increased uptick in RSF presence and operations should be of global concern,

Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL), which monitors the war in Sudan, told MEE.

If it is proven that these flights are the result of the UAE supplying RSF, it is incumbent on Ethiopia to follow the lead of its neighbours and block the access of UAE and its proxies to Ethiopian airspace immediately.

The Sudanese intelligence source also said that the RSF had recently purchased

a minimum of six fighter jets

- Sukhoi Su-24s and MiG-25s that usually come from Serbia, which has a well-developed relationship with International Golden Group, an Emirati defence contractor.

The source said that the jets - including their wings and engines - are dismantled and then taken on cargo planes from the UAE to Ethiopia or to al-Kufra, an airbase in eastern Libya under the control of General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF).

Middle East Eye has contacted the UAE’s foreign ministry, the Ethiopian foreign ministry, the Rapid Support Forces and Maximus Air asking for comment. The UAE has denied supporting the RSF, which has been widely accused of genocide in Darfur, western Sudan.

The Haftar connection

Abu Dhabi-based Maximus Air describes itself as

the largest all-cargo airline in the UAE.

It is part of the Abu Dhabi Aviation (ADA) group of companies which is majority owned by an investment fund, ADQ, chaired by UAE national security advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Maximus Air's clients include

the GHQ Armed Forces, Crown Prince Court, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and several other government entities,

according to ADA's most recent report. https://ada.ae/wp-content/uploads/2025/ ... nglish.pdf

But the airline’s operations have previously attracted the attention of a United Nations panel of experts investigating the UAE’s sanctions-busting supply of weapons to Haftar, whose forces have been fighting against the internationally recognised government in Tripoli for much of the past decade.

The Horn of Africa is now at the mercy of what happens in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

- Kholood Khair, Sudanese analyst

In a report https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/ ... 103772.pdf from 2021, the panel accused Maximus Air of violating a UN resolution prohibiting the direct or indirect supply of weapons to parties fighting in Libya.

It identified 12 suspicious flights made by UR-ZYD between Assab in Eritrea and Mersa Matruh in Egypt, which it said were part of a covert Emirati “airbridge” operation to supply weapons to Haftar, whose forces have gone on to support the RSF in the war in Sudan.

Lana Nusseibeh, then the UAE's ambassador to the United Nations, said in 2021 that the allegations outlined in the report were “false” and that the UAE's government denied

them in their entirety.

In June last year, militias allied to Haftar helped the RSF take control of the Sudanese portion of the triangle border region https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae- ... der-region that runs through Sudan, Egypt and Libya, and MEE has tracked countless UAE-linked cargo flights going into Haftar’s al-Kufra airbase, which has been a key supply point for the RSF.

Now, Saddam Haftar, Khalifa’s son, is under pressure from Saudi Arabia to stop helping the UAE support the RSF. Egypt, which has stepped up its pre-existing support for the SAF in Sudan, has begun bombing RSF supply convoys running close to its territory.

On Monday, a “temporary closure” of al-Kufra airbase went into effect, with “runway repairs” due to last a month. This runway, though, was renovated as recently as February 2024, and the advertised closure is believed to be designed to buy the Haftar family time as they chose between the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The Horn of Africa is now at the mercy of what happens in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi,

Kholood Khair, a Sudanese analyst and policy expert, told MEE.

We are seeing the entrenchment of this Gulf imperium we’ve seen for the last five years… A lot of countries in the area are now making decisions based on which country in the Gulf they side with.

Mohammed bin Zayed's trips

The UN report from 2021 estimated that each flight made by UR-ZYD delivered a cargo of up to 18 military vehicles, and identified Mohammed bin Zayed, the current president of the UAE and then-crown prince of Abu Dhabi, as the beneficial owner of plane UR-ZYD.

The Panel was unconvinced of the accuracy of the documentation provided by Maximus Airlines LLC,

the report said.

The same aircraft has also been linked by open-source plane-monitoring sleuths to the UAE’s supply of weapons via Chad to the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.

In September 2023, the now-inactive plane monitoring X account @Gerjon_ highlighted 16 flights made over a period of five months by UR-ZYD between Abu Dhabi and N'Djamena in Chad.

The same account had previously identified https://gerjon.substack.com/p/the-uae-e ... estigation the same plane in connection with the supply of weapons by the UAE to Ethiopia during the war in Tigray in 2021.

Maximus Air did not respond to MEE's requests for comment.

Annual reports by the Abu Dhabi Aviation group in 2022 and 2023 highlighted the airline's "humanitarian mission" in support of

the UAE’s humanitarian efforts for refugees and displaced people.

Humanitarian and relief services have become a key component of operations at Maximus Air. The company works closely with the UAE Red Crescent Authority to provide end‐to‐end solutions to support affected countries around the world,

ADA said.

It cited the transportation of two MI-17 helicopters from China to Uganda in 2023 for deployment as part of a UN peacekeeping mission in the Abyei region between Sudan and South Sudan.

UR-ZYD’s links to Mohammed bin Zayed appear to extend beyond the UAE’s alleged involvement in arming its favoured protagonists in regional conflicts.

Last month, the aircraft was part of an entourage of cargo planes that accompanied the UAE president on an official visit to Pakistan.

Regional media reported that MBZ was also in the country to take part in the annual hunting season enjoyed primarily by members of Arab royal families for the houbara bustard, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/worl ... ntion.html a highly prized bird whose meat is valued for its reputed aphrodisiacal powers.

Ethiopian women and safety: why some switch their ethnic identity when they start working

January 19, 2026

Monica Beeder, University of Southampton

https://theconversation.com/ethiopian-w ... ing-271325


For women entering the formal labour market in Ethiopia, taking a job can expose them to new public spaces and risks. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

For many women in Ethiopia, getting their first formal job doesn’t just change their income; it can change how they describe who they are in everyday public interactions.

In a country where ethnicity https://brill.com/display/title/20290 shapes access to opportunities, safety and political rights, this shift is far from small.

That is the provocative finding of our recent study: formal employment can cause women to switch their self-reported ethnicity. We are a team of political scientists and development economists who study labour markets, gender and ethnic identity in Ethiopia. We studied this issue in a recent research project. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 ... 25.2467650

We used data from a unique field experiment with 27 firms across five Ethiopian regions, where job offers were randomised among qualified female applicants. This means the firms had more qualified applicants than positions, so eligible women were selected through a lottery system for job offers. We then tracked both women who received a job offer and those who didn’t over multiple survey rounds spanning roughly three years, collecting information on their employment status, earnings, working conditions, daily mobility and commuting patterns, household characteristics, and how they reported their ethnic identity.

What we found was striking. In our full sample of 891 women, around 8% changed their stated ethnicity at some point over the time we followed them. While this may sound like a small share, switching ethnic identity is rare and socially consequential, making this level of change substantial in context.

Women who received a job offer were 4.3 percentage points more likely to switch their stated ethnicity than those who did not. In the comparison group – women who were not offered a job – about 6% changed their stated ethnicity over time. Among women offered a job, this figure rose to around 10%. When we account for who actually took up the job, the effect is even larger.

To some readers, this may sound like a technical result. But in a country where ethnicity shapes politics, social opportunity and daily survival, it is explosive.

Changing one’s ethnic label is not a trivial act. It carries implications for family, community and belonging.

So, why would a job make someone change something so fundamental?

For women entering the formal labour market in Ethiopia, even at low wages, taking a job can reshape their daily routines and expose them to new public spaces and risks. These shifts in mobility and visibility create pressures that women who stay at home may never face.

As they navigate these new environments, some find themselves adjusting not just their schedules, but also how they present and even report their ethnic identity.

By showing that formal employment can lead to ethnic reidentification, our study reveals identity as a living, shifting facet of social life rather than a fixed badge.

As Ethiopia and other African countries pursue industrialisation, labour-market expansion and social mobility, we must pay attention: economic transformation may come with unexpected, and deeply personal, consequences.

Being vulnerable

Our in-depth interviews with women in the two cities with the highest switching in our sample – Dire Dawa https://www.britannica.com/place/Dire-Dawa in east-central Ethiopia and Hawassa https://ethiopiancities.org/hawassa-city/ in the southern region – reveal a striking mechanism.

Employment meant commuting through areas where ethnic and, in some cases, ethno-religious tensions were high.

Women told us they felt far more vulnerable on the road than at home, especially if their own ethnicity placed them on the “wrong” side of a local conflict.

As one respondent explained, the decision to switch was driven by practical concerns about personal safety rather than a deeper change in how they saw themselves.

Some women did not adopt the local majority’s identity but switched to a third, more neutral group, one not involved in conflict.

Whether this was possible depended on their appearance, religion and language skills. As several women explained, speaking the correct language allowed them to “pass”, meaning they were perceived as belonging to a safer group while out in public. We cannot say how common this strategy was across all women in our study, but the interviews confirm patterns we also observe in our quantitative data https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 ... 650#d1e770 of women switching to a third, neutral ethnicity to navigate local conflicts.

This makes sense in a country experiencing repeated waves of violence. In 2022, more than 40% https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peac ... y-insights of all conflict-related deaths worldwide occurred in Ethiopia.

In this kind of context, identity is not static; it becomes a resource.

Our findings challenge common assumptions across economics, the social sciences, and policy. While scholars have long recognised that ethnic identity can be fluid, it is often still treated as something relatively stable in practice, rooted in ancestry or birth.

What our evidence shows is the strategic side of this fluidity. Ethnicity can be consciously adjusted in response to economic conditions, mobility and the risks women face in public spaces.

In other words, identity is not only socially constructed. It can also shift in response to the pressures and incentives created by the work environment.

The protections needed

This raises uncomfortable questions about the global garment industry, which has progressively shifted production from Europe to Asia and is now beginning to extend manufacturing activities to parts of Africa https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/books ... 2025_e.pdf as global value chains are reconfigured in search of lower production costs. Ethiopia has encouraged this growth by developing large industrial parks. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 ... 1#abstract

But unlike in long-established manufacturing hubs, there are few safety nets, transport protections or policies designed around local ethnic dynamics.

When women must alter their identity to feel safe on the commute to a low-wage job, something is clearly missing.

Our findings show that when these global industries arrive without adapting to local realities, the burden falls disproportionately on women.

It is not a sign of progress when a woman has to change her identity, even temporarily, to commute safely to a low-paid job. If anything, it calls for a more honest debate about what industrialisation should look like, and what protections are needed for the workers it relies on.

This also raises more profound questions about belonging and dignity. Is changing your ethnic identity an act of personal agency – or a sign of social pressure and insecurity? What does it say about everyday life when your safety depends on how you present yourself while travelling to work?

Imagine having to change the language you speak on the bus – or even the surname you give when introducing yourself – just to avoid trouble on your way to work.

While not all women faced situations this extreme, the very possibility of needing such strategies illustrates the pressures created by moving through tense public spaces.

Zmeselo wrote: ↑

Today, 07:19

Zmeselo:

ሰሞኑን ታቦት ጣዖት ነዉ የሚል አባባል እዚህ የኢትዮጵያ መድረክ ላይ ተጻፈ።

ኣንብቤ ከሁሉም በላይ የኤርትራዊያንን አስተያየት መስማት ፈለኩ። ምክንያቱም ኤርትራ ዉስጥ የኖሩ ኢትዮጵያዊያን ኢትዮጵያ ማለት የበለጠ የገባን ኤርትራ ዉስጥ ኖረን ባየነዉ ያሉ ነበሩ።

ታቦት ጣዖት ነዉ?