As the people of Sudan are being starved, murdered and pillaged, the gold industry is quietly prospering and making a beeline, from the bloodstained soils of Sudan, straight into the hands of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The Sudanese people have been facing genocide and ethnic cleansing since the outbreak of the Sudanese Civil War on April 15th 2023, and this has been accelerated by the ongoing shipment of arms from the UAE to the Rapid Support Force (RSF). This is a mutually beneficial relationship for the two parties: the RSF is strengthened by foreign arms shipments, and the UAE is compensated. According to Kaamil Ahmed, international development reporter for the Guardian, the UAE’s invested interest in Sudan is rooted in Sudanese gold: “In Darfur, there are lots of big gold mines… Most of the gold shipments in Sudan go to the UAE.” And whilst Emirati gold stores grow, the West is becoming increasingly complicit in the crisis, with some arms delivered to Sudan being traced back to British origin. In March of this year, Sudan approached the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing the UAE of complicity in the genocide, through its continued support of Sudan’s paramilitary RSF. The UAE lost no time in labelling this a “cynical publicity stunt” and, in May 2025, the ICJ said that it “manifestly lacked” the authority to resume the proceedings and threw out the case. Why is it that whilst war rages a wartime gold economy is thriving at unprecedented levels? To understand how Sudan’s suffering bankrolls foreign profit, we must start with the gold itself.
According to a report by the New York Times, the production and trade of gold within Sudan has now surpassed even pre-war levels, despite both the famine and mass displacement occurring domestically. Significantly, Sudan’s borders are rife with smuggling, meaning the official figures may still neglect the full extent of trade growth. Whilst the nation crumbles, their vast reserves, stretching across Darfur, South Kordofan and the Sahel belt, are being cultivated to become the financial lifeline of the war. This is clear evidence of how deeply the conflict has fused itself to the gold economy. Current gold extraction feeds only the armed groups who have turned gold into a weapon of survival, rather than stabilising Sudan’s economy or feeding its malnourished population, embedding the mineral into the very architecture of violence. This dynamic, according to UN experts, is part of a planned policy of “starvation tactics” in which armed groups profit from the sale of gold whilst tens of millions of civilians are forced to go hungry due to siege, displacement, and purposeful destruction of key agricultural areas. As a result, gold serves as both the prize AND the fuel in an economy of conflict. For Sudanese citizens, this indicates how the forces endangering their lives and homes are strengthened with each fresh shipment of gold that departs the nation. Gold has become the central currency of Sudan’s war whilst its largest beneficiary remains thousands of miles away.
So what is the UAE’s incentive? In the UAE’s plight to diversify its oil-dependent economy, Sudan, with its rich mineral and natural resources, is emerging as the clear solution. The US State Department claims that the UAE is the prime destination for smuggled gold from Sudan. A study by the NGO, Swiss Aid, revealed some figures. Between 2012 and 2022 alone, the UAE imported 2,500 tonnes of undeclared African gold, valued at an astounding $115 billion, much of which was linked to conflict zones, including Sudan. A Swiss watchdog accused Abu Dhabi of being “a global hub for gold of dubious origin.” In 2024, despite global scrutiny, the Gulf state sharply increased its imports from Sudan, rising from 17 tonnes the previous year to 29 tonnes, alongside large shipments from Chad and Libya, both also major exit routes for RSF-controlled gold. For the Emirates, the gold industry serves as a clear geopolitical tool, in addition to being a key component of the economy. The largest industrial gold mine in Sudan remains owned by an Emirati company with ties to its royal family and is situated on territory controlled by the Sudanese Armed Forces. This indicates that, in addition to buying gold linked to the RSF, the UAE is also supporting the other side, the official Sudanese Armed Forces, and replenishing the army’s depleted treasury. Regardless of who controls ground territory, the UAE has secured influence on both sides of the conflict’s financial infrastructure. However, gold is only part of the picture. The other half is the ongoing transit of foreign weapons from the UAE into the RSF’s arsenal. Together, these two exchanges create a vicious cycle that keeps the genocide in Sudan alive.
The UAE is the RSF’s most vital lifeline in Sudan, providing the weapons, supplies, and political cover that sustain the militia’s war machine. This involvement goes well beyond gold imports. By January 2024, Middle East Eye had documented the intricate web of supply routes that the UAE used to provide weapons to the RSF through Uganda, Chad, and Libya. The UAE has covertly supplied the RSF with drones, missiles, surface-to-air weapons, and armoured vehicles under the pretence of humanitarian missions. The RSF’s economic empire and military support are continuously interwoven. Its commander, Mohamed Hamdan ‘Hemedti’ Dagalo, has amassed an estimated $7 billion fortune through gold enterprises that are directly connected to Dubai and operate on territory that the RSF captured in Darfur in 2017. His family’s companies help extract, smuggle, and sell Sudanese gold into the UAE, where it is laundered into the international market and transformed into more weapons, money, and influence. RSF militants have even been sent to Yemen and Libya as UAE mercenaries, further highlighting the clear link between the two and strengthening a long-standing partnership that combines geopolitical, military, and commercial goals. Analysts regularly assert that the RSF could not have carried out its ethnic cleansing operation for so long without the UAE’s financial and logistical support.
Despite the UAE’s central role in arming the RSF, the responsibility does not end in the Gulf. The Guardian reported on the discovery of British-made weaponry on RSF-held battlefields, including engines for armoured vehicles as well as small-arms target systems, which raises grave concerns about the UK’s export regulations and its indirect role in the genocide. The UAE, which the British government has long acknowledged as a significant risk under Criterion 7 of its export licensing regulations, was discovered to be the initial buyer of these weapons. (Criterion 7 is one of the standards by which the government evaluates applications for export licenses, emphasising that a deal breaker would be the risk of diversion of the equipment to an unauthorised end-user.) However, licenses persisted despite growing evidence that the RSF were receiving Emirati equipment. Politically, the UK government continues to demonstrate a worrying absence of solidarity with the suffering of Sudan, appearing to be much more concerned with fostering their relationship with Emirati actors on the world stage. As much of this article has shown, greed, time and time again, is winning, with countries forever chasing power, gold or both. Following London’s failure to defend the UAE during a UN Security Council meeting on Sudan in April 2024, the Gulf state called off contacts with UK ministers. Two months later, representatives of the UK government advised African ambassadors not to discuss the UAE’s involvement in Sudan. When taken as a whole, these results paint a disturbing picture of Western complicity in Sudan, where the very forces committing crimes have been made possible by Britain’s exports, silence, and political caution.
As such, the war will continue to benefit those who are far away from its destruction, and the people of Sudan will continue to bear the consequences until this economic engine is disassembled.