Foreign Powers Are Fueling Sudan's War, UN Warns

Sudan's civil war has been grinding on for three and a half years, displacing more than 14 million people and creating one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Earlier this month, United Nations investigators gave a clear answer to a question many people have been asking: why won't this war stop? Their finding was blunt. Foreign powers fueling Sudan's war from the outside are keeping it going, arming both sides and flying their drones.

On September 3, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan released a report titled "Fuelling Sudan's conflict: weapons, fighters and external support networks." It documents how transnational networks of recruiters, weapons dealers, and logistical facilitators have strengthened both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, giving them the means to run increasingly sophisticated military operations. According to the investigators, the result has been devastating for civilians.

What the investigators found

The report's headline finding is striking. The mission documented the deployment of up to 2,000 former Colombian military contractors who worked directly alongside RSF units in Darfur and Kordofan, operating combat drones, artillery, and advanced weapons. Reuters reported that some of these contractors were present during operations around the city of al-Fashir in Darfur, which the RSF captured in October 2025. The UN mission has previously said mass killings there bore hallmarks pointing to genocide.

The weapons and fighters arrived through supply chains spanning several countries. The investigators said they found grounds to believe a network involving individuals and entities in the United Arab Emirates, Chad, Libya, and Somalia supplied the RSF with weapons, equipment, logistics, training, and foreign personnel. Private entities, recruiters, and logistical facilitators used transit points in Chad, southeastern Libya, and the Somalian city of Bosaso to move people and supplies into Sudan, according to UN News.

The report does not spare the other side. The mission said there are reasonable grounds to believe the Sudanese Armed Forces used foreign-supplied drones in operations that harmed civilians and civilian objects. Foreign suppliers have substantially expanded the drone capabilities of both forces, the investigators found, enabling them to strike far beyond the front lines. More than 1,000 people were killed in drone strikes in the first five months of 2026 alone, Reuters reported, and the mission accused both sides of serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, with some conduct amounting to war crimes.

Why civilians pay the price

"The consequences of this external support are being felt most acutely by civilians," said Mohamed Chande Othman, the chair of the fact-finding mission. "This external support has not brought greater protection for civilians. Instead, civilians are paying the price through attacks on homes, hospitals, schools, markets and places of refuge."

Foreign powers fueling Sudan's war also face what the mission called strict international legal obligations for states connected to these supply chains. Those states, the report said, must exercise due diligence, investigate and halt illicit mercenary and supply networks operating from or through their territories, and enforce the UN arms embargo. The UAE's diplomatic mission in Geneva rejected the allegations of involvement, saying it had not provided arms or other military-related materiel to any party in Sudan since the conflict began.

For anyone trying to understand how a local power struggle became a continental crisis, the mission's framing is useful. Foreign powers fueling Sudan's war did not start it, but the report makes clear they are sustaining it. Mission expert Mona Rishmawi said investigators identified "a transnational chain of networks spanning several countries" that fed fighters, training, weapons, and logistics into the war. The conflict that began as a power struggle between Sudan's military and the RSF in April 2023 has become a proxy war sustained by outside interests, and the drones flying over Sudanese cities are only the visible part of that machinery.

For more background on how modern conflicts reach civilians far from the front lines, see our explainer Ukraine War 2026: What Gen Z Needs to Know and our coverage of Ukraine's biggest Moscow drone attack yet. The full UN reporting on the Sudan investigation is at UN News, and Reuters' account of the probe is covered in Reuters' report on the Sudan probe.