ANALYSIS

Sudan, war by remote: who supplies, who pilots, who should stop it

4 October 2026 — Sudan

Sudan has been at war since April 2023. On one side is the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan; on the other the Rapid Support Forces, a militia born from the Janjaweed of Darfur and led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. Until 2021 they had governed together. Today the RSF control almost all of Darfur, which they finished conquering with the fall of El Fasher in October 2025, and parts of Kordofan. The army holds the centre, the east and Khartoum. Caught in between are 14.7 million displaced people and 19.5 million people in acute food insecurity, more than four Sudanese in ten. This war is no longer fought only with rifles and pick-ups. It is fought with drones launched hundreds of kilometres from their target, and with weapons that come from much further away. This piece tries to follow that chain.

The facts

On 1 September 2026 the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, set up by the UN Human Rights Council in 2023, presented its report to the Council's 63rd session (A/HRC/63/23). The report focuses on two things: the drone war and the external networks that feed it.

On drones, the report cites a figure from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: more than 1,000 civilians killed in drone attacks between January and May 2026. Some of the incidents documented by the Mission:

Source: UN Fact-Finding Mission, A/HRC/63/23, September 2026, paragraphs 28-51.

Hospitals, markets, a kindergarten, a wedding party. These are not isolated incidents, and both sides are responsible for them.

On 4 September the Emirates, through their UN mission in Geneva, replied that they are not involved in the war and have not supplied weapons or materiel to either party since April 2023 (Khaleej Times). They called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

The RSF network

To understand what the Mission has established, the degree of certainty matters. A UN fact-finding mission is not a court: when it writes that there are "reasonable grounds to believe" something, it means it has gathered enough evidence to support it, not that it has handed down a verdict.

With this degree of certainty, the Mission concludes that the RSF's military operations have been sustained by a transnational network of air, land and sea routes, linking people and entities located in the United Arab Emirates, Chad, south-eastern Libya and Puntland, in Somalia.

• The weapons. Since April 2025, Chinese 155-millimetre howitzers, air-defence systems, radars, armoured vehicles and reconnaissance and attack drones have arrived. Verified images show them in the hands of the RSF and then, in some cases, captured by the army.
• The routes. Witnesses describe recurring cargo flights from locations in the Emirates to Chad. In Libya, Benghazi, Kufra and Jufra act as hubs for weapons, vehicles, fuel and personnel, with the support of battalions of General Haftar's Libyan National Army. In Somalia, the port and airport of Bosaso, in Puntland, are identified as a recurring transit point, with a military base run by entities based in the Emirates.
• The men. The Colombian contractors are said to number between 350 and 2,000; the Mission believes the number is close to 2,000. They were recruited in Colombia, trained in the Emirates among other places, and moved to Darfur via Bosaso, Benghazi or Chad. On 28 April 2026 the Security Council sanctions committee targeted two of the recruiters: a retired Colombian colonel based in Abu Dhabi and his wife, who organised the recruitment in Colombia.

The most serious point concerns their role. According to the Mission, the Colombian contractors piloted and maintained the RSF's drones, including those used in the attacks, and in some cases never transferred control of them to the militiamen. The one flying the drone is not always the one fighting the war.

The army's drones

The same Mission documents the Sudanese army's attacks. Since the end of 2023, it writes, the SAF have greatly expanded their capabilities with systems supplied from abroad. Technical analysis identified features consistent with Turkish-made Bayraktar Akıncı combat drones in footage from Nyala and Al-Farshaya in January 2026. Among the remains of the attack on the Yabus market, components consistent with a Yiha III loitering munition were found.

Here the Mission stops: its investigation into external support for the army is described as "preliminary", and the report does not attribute the supply of these systems to any state. We report it as such, without going beyond what has been established.

Legal analysis

1. Striking civilians. International humanitarian law applies to all parties to an armed conflict, regular armies and militias alike. It prohibits attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and gives special protection to hospitals and schools (Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions; Additional Protocol II, to which Sudan has been a party since 2006). The Mission concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both the RSF and the SAF have committed serious violations, and that intentionally directing attacks against hospitals, schools and civilian objects may constitute a war crime. For El Fasher, in earlier reports, the Mission had already documented war crimes, crimes against humanity and conduct bearing the hallmarks of genocide, which we wrote about in the manifesto on Sudan.

2. The arms embargo. Since 2004 the Security Council has prohibited the supply of weapons to Darfur (resolution 1556, extended by resolution 1591 of 2005). The obligation applies to all UN member states. The RSF fight and resupply precisely in Darfur. The Mission writes that the nature, scale and persistence of external support raise "serious concerns" about compliance with the embargo, and recommends that the Security Council extend it to the whole of Sudan: today, weapons reaching the army outside Darfur are not covered by it.

3. The responsibility of those who help. A state that knowingly aids another state in committing an internationally wrongful act is responsible for it (International Law Commission Articles on State Responsibility, article 16). And Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions obliges all states not only to respect humanitarian law, but to ensure respect for it. International criminal law goes in the same direction for individuals: anyone who provides the means to commit a crime, knowing they will be used for that purpose, is an accomplice (Rome Statute, article 25, paragraph 3, letter c). This is why the Mission calls for the whole chain to be prosecuted: those who commit, those who order, those who finance, those who supply.

4. The limit of justice. The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over Sudan only for Darfur, because Sudan has not ratified the Rome Statute and the Court's jurisdiction derives from the Security Council referral of 2005 (resolution 1593). Crimes committed in Kordofan, in Khartoum or in Blue Nile remain outside it. In 2025 the International Court of Justice dismissed, for lack of jurisdiction, Sudan's case against the Emirates, as we reconstructed in an earlier piece. The Mission recommends extending the ICC's jurisdiction to the whole of Sudan and creating a special tribunal.

5. Who sells weapons to the suppliers. The Arms Trade Treaty, to which Italy is a party, prohibits the export of weapons when the exporting state knows they will be used for war crimes (article 6), requires an assessment of the risk of serious violations (article 7) and obliges states to prevent their diversion to other recipients (article 11). In January 2021 Italy had suspended exports of missiles and bombs to the Emirates over the war in Yemen; in April 2023 the government lifted the suspension (Al Arabiya). We have no evidence that Italian weapons have reached Sudan. But the risk of diversion to a conflict under embargo, after a UN report like this one, is exactly what the Treaty requires to be assessed before every new licence.

The symmetry test

The same questions, turned around.

A hospital hit by a drone is a crime because of what it does to the patients, not because of who pressed the button. The hospital in Ad-Da'ein, hit by the army, weighs as much as the kindergarten in Kalogi, hit by the RSF. That is why the table in this piece puts them side by side.

If it were Iran, or Russia, supplying drones and mercenaries to the RSF, would the international reaction be the same? The Emirates are a strategic partner of the United States and Europe, Italy included. The standard we apply to the Emirates must apply to anyone who supplies weapons used against civilians, and it is the same one we have applied elsewhere to Western states that supply armies accused of crimes.

And it applies to the Sudanese army and its suppliers. That the Mission has not yet attributed the army's drones to a state does not mean there are no suppliers. It means the investigation is not finished. It is one more reason not to shut it down.

Editorial judgment

This section expresses the site's position. It is separate from the facts set out above.

The war in Sudan is often told as an African war, distant and incomprehensible, between two generals. The Mission's report tells something else: a globalised war, with Chinese and Turkish weapons, routes running through four countries and two continents, pilots recruited in South America and trained in the Gulf. It is distant only for those who watch it. For those who fight it, it is very close to the international markets.

This changes the question. It is not enough to ask the two generals to stop. Those who make the war possible must be asked to stop making it possible. The embargo has existed for more than twenty years, and it is a list of prohibitions that almost no one enforces.

Then there is an imbalance that is not about Sudan, but about us. More than 1,000 civilians killed by drones in five months, a kindergarten with about 60 children dead, a hospital with 70: in Europe this news rarely gets beyond a short item. The figure does not prove an intention. It proves a choice of attention, and it is the same choice this site has decided not to make.

Finally, the Mission. By 9 October the states of the Human Rights Council decide whether to renew it, in the middle of the UN's financial crisis. Switching off the only independent body documenting this war, just as it has begun to put a name to the chain of suppliers, would be the simplest way to avoid having to answer its report.

Update, 6 October 2026. On Monday 5 October the Human Rights Council renewed the Mission's mandate, with 28 votes in favour, 10 against and 9 abstentions (Al Jazeera, Darfur24). According to the Syrian news agency SANA, the renewal is for one year, not the two requested by 68 civil society organisations, and those voting against included Egypt and Qatar: Egypt objects that the resolution puts the Sudanese army and the RSF on the same footing. The Sudanese government protested that its reservations had not been taken into account. The resolution also calls for an immediate and complete ceasefire, without preconditions. When this update was published, the official text was not yet available.

What to watch

• The Human Rights Council vote on renewing the Mission, by 9 October: length of the mandate and resources.
• The responses of Chad, Libya, Somalia and Ethiopia, which according to the Mission have not cooperated.
• The Mission's investigation into external support for the Sudanese army.
• The proposal to extend the arms embargo to the whole of Sudan and the ICC's jurisdiction beyond Darfur.
• The investigations in Colombia into the recruitment of the contractors.
• Italian export licences to the Emirates in the next annual report to Parliament under law 185/1990.

Related pieces: Ethiopia, the war no one is covering: a guide to understanding it · Sudan: the UN warns that an offensive on El-Obeid risks new international crimes · For Sudan — The Genocide the World Looks Away From

Sources: UN Fact-Finding Mission, A/HRC/63/23 (9/2026) · Khaleej Times (4/9/2026) · Al Jazeera (4/10/2026) · Human Rights Watch (21/8/2026) · Al Arabiya (17/4/2023) · Al Jazeera · Darfur24 · SANA

Verification note: the facts on the attacks and on the supply network come from the report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission (A/HRC/63/23), with the degree of certainty stated by the Mission itself ("reasonable grounds to believe"). The United Arab Emirates deny any involvement. Displacement and food insecurity: IOM (July 2026) and IPC (May 2026), via Al Jazeera. Situation as of 4 October 2026.

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