"Allegations UAE provided arms to the RSF in #Sudan trigger a spat with the army and risk undermining a new initiative to end the civil war."
This is an extremely dangerous moment that didn't need to be and could undermine needed progress towards peace🧵
bloomberg.com
This is an extremely dangerous moment that didn't need to be and could undermine needed progress towards peace🧵
bloomberg.com
What Al-Atta said is of course true. UAE has been recklessly arming RSF for months. And President Deby in neighboring #Chad has been abetting it, but mostly because he's too weak to stop it, too much in need of UAE money to block it and too foolish to understand the consequences.
It is the fact that Al-Atta said what he said that is causing the furor, triggering the diplomatic standoff and the SAF's late rejection of IGAD summit outcome. But what the IGAD mediators and observers (US especially) dont get is that by remaining quiet for months about these
weapons flows; by speaking in hushed tones and diplomatic niceties about UAE doing everything it could to prolong the war and contribute to RSF crimes, we are now in a situation where the UAE is doubling down on the RSF and Chad is picking a fight with Sudan. A lose-lose outcome.
Recent reporting suggests that UAE is attempting to move its arms flights out of Chad and directly into Darfur now to avoid detection, which would only worsen the fighting IGAD claims to want to end. But how do you achieve that when in the same statement you obliquely condemn the
outside support coming to the RSF, you also single out for praise the UAE contributions to the IGAD Summit?
The dirty secret is that the amount of UAE money sloshing around Washington, London, Brussels, Addis, Cairo, Nairobi, Ndjamena, Niamey, Lomé, etc is vast and has bought
The dirty secret is that the amount of UAE money sloshing around Washington, London, Brussels, Addis, Cairo, Nairobi, Ndjamena, Niamey, Lomé, etc is vast and has bought
them our collective silence. But this double game of fretting about external military aid and praise for the UAE has to end if there's any hope of ending the war. It was not diplomatic of Al-Atta to say what he said but it now must be said by diplomats not already bought off.
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