UN Report Says UAE Firm Hired Colombian Mercenaries to Fight Alongside Sudan’s RSF as Questions Grow Over Abu Dhabi’s UN Chief Bid

Introduction

Sudan’s war has been fought in the open for more than three and a half years, but some of its most important questions have been answered only in whispers: who is supplying the fighters, who is paying for them, and how do they reach the battlefield? This week, a confidential United Nations document gave those questions a detailed, documented answer. The report, submitted to the UN Security Council in early November and first disclosed by The New York Times on November 5, says that an Abu Dhabi-based private security company recruited hundreds of former Colombian soldiers and organised them into a combat unit that fought alongside Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces. The findings have landed at a sensitive moment. The United Arab Emirates has put forward a senior diplomat to become the next secretary-general of the United Nations, and the report has intensified the scrutiny of that candidacy. The UAE has denied the allegations in the strongest terms, insisting that it provides no military support to any party in Sudan and that the company at the centre of the claims sent no fighters to the war. What follows is a full account of what the investigators say they found, how the alleged network operated, what it meant on the battlefield, and why the disclosure matters far beyond Sudan, as set out in the UN report UAE Colombian mercenaries Sudan RSF November 2026.

1. What the UN report says

The document at the centre of this story is the fourth quarterly update of the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan, the body appointed by the Security Council to monitor the arms embargo and report on violations. Its findings were submitted to the Council in early November and remained confidential, as panel reports usually do, until their contents were disclosed in press reporting on November 5. According to accounts of the report, its central finding is direct: an Abu Dhabi-based private security company, the Global Security Services Group, recruited and deployed hundreds of former Colombian military personnel to fight alongside the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group at war with the Sudanese Armed Forces since April 2023. The report is said to mark the first time UN investigators have explicitly linked the UAE to the mercenaries’ operations, a step beyond earlier findings that documented the presence of foreign fighters without naming the network behind them. That distinction matters, because it turns a long-standing accusation about outside involvement in Sudan’s war into a documented claim with a named company, a named unit and a described route. The panel’s work is based on interviews, documents and field information gathered by its experts, and its reports carry weight precisely because they are written for the Security Council rather than for public debate. The disclosure does not settle the question of who knew what inside the UAE government, and the report’s full text has not been published, but it gives the Council, governments and the public the most detailed picture yet of how foreign fighters reached Sudan’s battlefields.

1.1 The Desert Wolves battalion

According to the report, the Colombian fighters were not scattered individuals hired one by one. They were organised into an operational battalion known as the Desert Wolves, or Lobos del Desierto in Spanish, a name that suggests structure, command and a shared identity rather than a loose collection of contractors. The fighters are described as having served in several military capacities, including infantry operations, artillery, drone operations and the training of RSF fighters. That range of roles matters: it points to a unit brought in for its professional skills, not simply for numbers. Former soldiers with experience in artillery and drones can change the shape of a battle, and trainers can pass those skills on to local forces, multiplying the effect long after the contractors themselves have left. Estimates of how many Colombians were deployed have varied across the reporting, from several hundred to about two thousand contractors over time. The variation reflects the difficulty of counting a covert deployment, where fighters arrive in waves, rotate home and are replaced, and where no government publishes a roster. What the different estimates agree on is the scale: this was not a handful of advisers but a substantial deployment, large enough to be organised as a battalion and large enough to matter in the fighting in Darfur.

1.2 A confidential report, a public disclosure

UN panel reports are written for the Security Council, and they are not normally published. Their findings reach the public only when the Council chooses to release them or when their contents are reported in the press. In this case, The New York Times obtained the report and disclosed its findings on November 5, and other outlets followed with their own accounts on November 6. The disclosure itself is part of the story, because it determines what the public can know and when. The panel’s mandate is to investigate and report, not to prosecute, and its findings are presented as evidence for the Council to act on. Whether the Council will act is a separate question, and one that depends on the politics of its members, several of whom have their own interests in Sudan and in the wider region. For now, the public record consists of the reported contents of the document, the denials that followed, and the earlier reporting that the new findings build upon. The full report has not been released, so the precise wording of its conclusions, the evidence cited for them and any caveats the investigators attached remain unseen outside the Council.

2. The firm at the centre of the allegations

At the heart of the report is a company that few outside the security industry had heard of before this week: the Global Security Services Group, known as GSSG. It is described in the reporting as an Abu Dhabi-based private security company with links to the Emirati ruling family. The report identifies GSSG as the principal recruiter and facilitator of the Colombian fighters, the firm that organised their hiring, their contracts and their movement into Sudan. That description places a private company at the centre of a state-level accusation, and it is the point on which the denials have been most forceful. Private security companies operate in a grey area of international law. They are legal businesses in the countries where they are registered, they hire former soldiers openly, and they describe their work as training, protection and logistics. The same structures, however, can be used to move fighters into a war zone, and the line between a security contractor and a mercenary is often a matter of what the person actually does once deployed. The report’s claim is that GSSG crossed that line, organising a combat deployment rather than a training or protection mission.

2.1 Global Security Services Group

Little about GSSG is in the public domain beyond what investigators and journalists have reported. It is based in Abu Dhabi, it operates as a private security company, and the reporting describes it as having close ties to the Emirati ruling family. The report says the company recruited the Colombian fighters, arranged their contracts and organised their movement through the UAE and onward into Sudan. That account, if accurate, would make GSSG the operational hub of the network: the firm that turned a recruitment pipeline into a fighting force. Human Rights Watch, in a report published in May 2026, reached a similar conclusion from its own research, documenting how GSSG apparently hired hundreds of Colombian former military personnel from 2024 onwards. The convergence of the two accounts matters, because the human rights group’s findings were based on interviews with fighters, families and recruiters, while the UN panel’s findings were based on its own investigations for the Security Council. Two different inquiries, using different methods, arriving at the same company and the same pattern is the kind of corroboration that gives a claim weight, even though neither account has been tested in a court.

2.2 The UAE’s denial

The United Arab Emirates has denied the allegations consistently and firmly. It has said it does not provide military assistance to either side in Sudan’s war, and it has rejected claims that it recruited, financed, trained or facilitated the deployment of foreign fighters to support the RSF. According to the reporting, the UAE’s position is that GSSG sent no mercenaries and violated no laws, and that the country’s role in Sudan is humanitarian. That denial has been repeated in letters to the United Nations, including a letter included in the leaked report in which the UAE rejected allegations of wrongdoing and said it takes accusations about mercenaries seriously. The denial is not a minor detail. It is the central dispute in the story, and it frames everything else: the report says one thing, the government named in it says another, and the public must weigh the investigators’ evidence against the government’s word. The UAE has also pointed to its humanitarian work in Sudan, including aid for civilians displaced by the war, as evidence of its intentions. For its critics, that aid does not answer the specific claims about fighters and weapons. For its defenders, the claims are unproven and politically motivated. The report itself does not resolve that argument; it presents evidence for the Security Council to consider.

3. How the fighters were recruited and moved

The most detailed account of the recruitment pipeline comes not from the UN report alone but from the earlier work of Human Rights Watch, whose 83-page report published on May 25, 2026 was titled From Bogota to El Fasher: The UAE’s Role in the Deployment of Colombian Fighters and Other Backing to the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan. The title captures the journey the report describes: Colombian former soldiers recruited at home, moved through the UAE, and deployed into the fighting in Darfur. According to that account, a Colombia-based recruitment agency called A4SI recruited the contractors, who then signed contracts with GSSG and were transferred through UAE military facilities, including Ghiyathi and Al Wathba, before being deployed to Sudan. The UN report is said to describe a similar route, with fighters trained at UAE bases and at a base in Bosaso, in Somalia, and moved into Sudan through Libya and Somalia, and in some accounts through Chad as well. The pipeline matters because it shows organisation. Fighters do not arrive in Darfur by accident. They are recruited, contracted, trained, transported and received, and each of those steps requires money, documents, transport and people willing to arrange them. A pipeline of that kind is evidence of a system, not a coincidence.

3.1 From Bogota to Abu Dhabi

The journey began, according to the reporting, in Colombia, where former soldiers were recruited by an agency operating in the country. Colombia has a large pool of former military personnel, many of them trained in counter-insurgency and experienced in combat, and many of them facing limited opportunities after leaving the armed forces. That combination has made Colombian ex-soldiers a sought-after commodity in the private security market around the world, and it has also made them vulnerable to recruiters offering high pay for work whose true destination is not always clear. According to Human Rights Watch, the recruits signed contracts with GSSG after being recruited by A4SI, and were then transferred through UAE military facilities at Ghiyathi and Al Wathba. The use of military facilities for training is a significant detail, because it suggests a level of organisation and access that a purely private arrangement would struggle to achieve. The fighters were not, on this account, simply flown to Sudan. They were processed, trained and moved through a system that ran through the UAE itself, which is why the report’s findings point back to Abu Dhabi rather than stopping at the recruiters in Colombia.

3.2 The route through Bosaso and Libya

From the UAE, the fighters’ route into Sudan ran through two countries that have become transit points in the war: Somalia and Libya. According to the reporting, a base run by the Puntland Maritime Police Force in Bosaso, on Somalia’s northern coast, served as a transit and training site for the mercenaries before their deployment. The fighters were also moved through eastern Libya, and in some accounts through Chad, before crossing into Sudan. The Bosaso connection has drawn particular attention, because the Puntland Maritime Police Force has long been linked to the UAE, which helped to build and fund it. In January 2026, Somalia’s Council of Ministers cancelled all agreements with the UAE, including those related to the port of Bosaso and security and defence agreements, a decision that followed months of tension over the UAE’s role in the region. Sudan itself submitted a report to the Security Council in 2025 saying that Colombian mercenaries had been flown from the UAE to Bosaso and then transferred to Sudan, a claim that predates the latest UN findings and points in the same direction. The route through Libya, meanwhile, runs through territory controlled by forces that have their own ties to the UAE and to the RSF, making it a practical corridor for moving people and supplies into Darfur.

4. The war in Sudan and the battle for El Fasher

To understand why the mercenaries mattered, it helps to understand the war they were joining. Sudan’s war erupted in April 2023, when a struggle for power between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, which had once been partners in government, turned into open fighting. The war has since spread across the country, but its fiercest battles have been fought in Darfur, the vast western region where the RSF has its roots and where it has sought to consolidate control. The RSF is a paramilitary force that grew out of the Janjaweed militias of the 2000s, and it has been accused by the United Nations and human rights groups of grave abuses against civilians, including in and around El Fasher. The Sudanese Armed Forces, for their part, have held the capital region and parts of the east, and have relied on air power and allied militias. The war has displaced more than 14 million people, according to figures cited in recent reporting, making it one of the largest displacement crises in the world. Into that war, the report says, came the Colombian fighters, bringing skills in artillery, drones and urban warfare that the RSF could use to press its advantage in Darfur.

4.1 Nyala: the base in Darfur

According to a July 2026 report by UN investigators, the Colombian mercenaries established a base in Nyala in March 2025. Nyala is the capital of South Darfur and one of the largest cities in the region, and it has been under RSF control for much of the war. A base there would have given the fighters a secure place to operate from, close to the front lines in Darfur and connected to the supply routes running through Libya and Chad. The same report said the Colombians participated in operations supporting the RSF’s campaign around El Fasher, the city that was then the last major stronghold of the Sudanese Armed Forces in Darfur. The establishment of a base is a significant detail, because it suggests a settled presence rather than a brief deployment. Fighters who set up a base are planning to stay, to train local forces, and to take part in sustained operations. It also suggests a level of integration with the RSF’s command structure, since a foreign unit operating from a city the RSF controls would need the group’s cooperation and protection to function.

4.2 El Fasher after a 500-day siege

El Fasher was the centre of the RSF’s campaign in Darfur, and its fall was one of the turning points of the war. The city was besieged for more than 500 days, cut off from supplies and subjected to repeated attacks, before it fell to the RSF in October 2025. According to the reporting, the Colombian fighters helped the RSF in the siege and in the operations that led to the city’s capture, bringing artillery and drone skills to a campaign that had already lasted well over a year. The fall of El Fasher gave the RSF control of all five Darfur state capitals and removed the last major obstacle to its dominance of the region. It also produced some of the war’s worst reported atrocities. In February 2026, the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan reported that it had found evidence establishing that at least three underlying acts of genocide had been committed by the RSF in and around El Fasher. The mission said the attack on the city bore the hallmarks of a deliberate campaign against civilians, not merely a battle for territory. The mercenaries’ role in that campaign is one of the most serious questions raised by the report, because it connects a foreign recruitment network to one of the war’s darkest episodes.

5. The report that never saw daylight

The November disclosure was not the first time UN investigators had documented the Colombian deployment. It was, in an important sense, the second. A report by UN investigators in July 2026 is said to have documented the training arrangements for the Colombian fighters, including the base in Nyala and their role in the campaign around El Fasher. That report, however, was never made public. According to the reporting, it was not published following objections at the Security Council, and The New York Times reported that Bahrain blocked its release at the UAE’s request, a claim Abu Dhabi denies. The unpublished July report is a reminder that the Security Council’s work on Sudan is shaped by politics as well as evidence. Reports that embarrass a member state, or a state with powerful friends on the Council, can be delayed, watered down or buried. The November report, by contrast, reached the public because it was disclosed in the press, not because the Council chose to publish it. The difference between the two reports is a measure of how much depends on disclosure, and how much can remain hidden when the Council’s members disagree.

5.1 The July findings

The July 2026 report, as described in the subsequent reporting, documented the training arrangements for the Colombian fighters and their deployment in support of the RSF. It recorded the base in Nyala, established in March 2025, and the Colombians’ participation in operations around El Fasher. Those findings were consistent with what Human Rights Watch had published in May, and they added the authority of a UN investigation to a picture that had previously rested on journalism and human rights research. The July report’s findings were significant in themselves, but they were also significant for what happened next: nothing, in public at least. The report was not published, its findings were not debated in open session, and no action followed from it in the months before El Fasher fell. Whether earlier publication would have changed anything is impossible to know, but the delay meant that the most authoritative account of the deployment remained out of public view during the decisive phase of the campaign in Darfur.

5.2 Why publication was blocked

According to The New York Times, the July report was blocked by Bahrain, acting at the UAE’s request, although Abu Dhabi denies that account. The mechanics of how a report is blocked are rarely explained in public, but the Security Council’s sanctions committees operate by consensus, which gives any member the ability to hold up a document. Bahrain’s reported role, if accurate, would illustrate how a state with close ties to the UAE can act on its behalf inside the Council’s machinery. The UAE’s denial, meanwhile, is consistent with its broader position that it has nothing to hide and that the allegations against it are unfounded. The dispute over the July report is a small episode in itself, but it points to a larger pattern: the Council’s ability to investigate and publicise violations depends on the willingness of its members to allow it to do so, and when a report touches a state with influential friends, that willingness can run out. The November report reached the public only because it was disclosed outside the Council’s formal process.

6. A UN leadership race under a cloud

The report’s timing has given it a second dimension, beyond Sudan itself. On October 21, 2026, the UAE formally nominated Lana Nusseibeh, a senior Emirati diplomat, to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the United Nations. Guterres’s term ends on December 31, and the race to succeed him is one of the most consequential appointments in international diplomacy. The nomination put a UAE candidate at the centre of the contest, and it also put the UAE’s record under a spotlight it might have preferred to avoid. The disclosure of the UN report, two weeks after the nomination, has intensified questions about that candidacy, with critics arguing that a country accused of fuelling a war through mercenaries should not be seeking to lead the organisation that is supposed to prevent wars. Supporters of the nomination, and the UAE itself, reject that argument, pointing to Nusseibeh’s diplomatic record and to the denial of the allegations. The contest will be decided by the Security Council and the General Assembly, and it is too early to say whether the report will change its outcome. But it has already changed the terms of the debate.

6.1 Lana Nusseibeh’s nomination

Lana Nusseibeh is a senior UAE diplomat with a long career in international affairs, and her nomination on October 21 was presented by the UAE as a serious bid for the UN’s top job. The secretary-general is chosen by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council, and the contest is shaped by regional rotation, great-power politics and the candidates’ records. A nomination from the UAE, a wealthy and influential Gulf state, was always going to attract attention, and the country’s critics were quick to raise its record in Sudan and in Yemen. Human rights groups condemned the candidacy, and Human Rights Watch accused Nusseibeh of whitewashing abuses, a charge that reflects the view of her critics that she has publicly denied her country’s role in supporting the RSF despite credible reports to the contrary. The nomination was made before the latest report was disclosed, but the questions it raised were already in the air, fed by the May report from Human Rights Watch and by earlier UN findings about external support for the RSF.

6.2 What the candidacy now faces

The candidacy now faces a direct challenge: a UN report, written by the organisation’s own investigators, that links a UAE-based firm to the recruitment of fighters for the RSF. That is a harder problem for the nomination than a report from a human rights group, because it comes from inside the system the candidate hopes to lead. Critics will argue that the report undermines the credibility of a bid that rests on the UAE’s standing as a responsible international actor. The UAE and its supporters will argue that the allegations are denied, that the report’s contents have not been verified in full, and that a candidacy should be judged on the candidate’s own record rather than on unproven claims about her government. Both arguments will be heard in the corridors of the UN in the coming weeks, and the outcome will depend on how member states weigh them. What is clear is that the report has made the Sudan question unavoidable in the leadership race. It is no longer a background issue raised by campaigners; it is a documented finding by UN investigators, disclosed in the press, and it will follow the candidacy until it is answered.

7. The human cost of Sudan’s war

Behind the reports, the nominations and the denials is a war that has devastated a country of nearly 50 million people. Sudan’s war has displaced more than 14 million people, according to figures cited in recent reporting, and has created a humanitarian crisis across the country, with millions facing hunger, disease and the collapse of basic services. The fighting has destroyed hospitals, schools and markets, and it has driven people across borders into Chad, South Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia, straining the resources of some of the world’s poorest countries. The mercenaries at the centre of the UN report are a small part of that story in terms of numbers, but they are a significant part of it in terms of what they represent: a war sustained from outside, by money, weapons and fighters that arrive from abroad. The UN’s September 2026 fact-finding mission found that transnational networks operating across several countries, including the UAE, had helped supply the RSF with weapons, logistics, training and personnel, and documented the deployment of up to 2,000 former Colombian military contractors who operated alongside the RSF. That finding, like the panel’s report, points to a war that is not only a Sudanese tragedy but an international one.

7.1 Fourteen million displaced

The figure of more than 14 million displaced people is difficult to grasp, but it means that roughly one in three Sudanese has been forced from home since April 2023. Some have fled to other parts of Sudan, crowding into towns and camps that cannot support them. Others have crossed into neighbouring countries, where they face new hardships and uncertain futures. The displacement has been accompanied by hunger on a scale that aid agencies describe as catastrophic, with famine declared in parts of Darfur and warnings of worse to come. The war has also destroyed the systems that might have helped people cope: hospitals have been looted or bombed, water supplies have been cut, and aid convoys have been blocked or attacked. The mercenaries did not cause this crisis, and no single deployment can explain a war of this scale. But the report’s findings are a reminder that the war has been sustained, in part, by outside support, and that the people paying the price are Sudanese civilians who had no say in the decisions that brought foreign fighters to their country.

7.2 The search for accountability

Accountability for Sudan’s war has been slow and incomplete. The UN panel of experts investigates and reports, but it cannot prosecute. The fact-finding mission documents violations, but it cannot compel cooperation. The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over Darfur and has pursued cases there, but its reach is limited and its proceedings are slow. The result is a gap between what is documented and what is punished, a gap that the mercenary report illustrates. The panel can name a company and describe a network, but it cannot fine the company, sanction its owners or put its recruiters on trial. That power lies with the Security Council, which can impose sanctions, and with national governments, which can prosecute their own citizens and companies. Whether either will act on this report is an open question. Sudan’s own government has made its views clear: its armed forces’ assistant commander-in-chief, Lieutenant General Yasser al-Atta, said on November 1 that mercenaries from Puntland were fighting alongside the RSF, and he placed blame on the president of the UAE, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, while listing fighters from South Sudan, Ethiopia, Puntland and Colombia among those he said had joined the war. His statement, like the report, is an accusation, not a verdict. But the accumulation of accusations, from a UN panel, from human rights investigators and from Sudan’s own military, is becoming harder to dismiss.

8. What remains unconfirmed and what to watch next

Much about this story is still unconfirmed, and the limits of the public record should be kept in mind. The full text of the UN report has not been published, so the precise wording of its findings, the evidence on which they rest and any qualifications the investigators attached to them remain unseen. The exact number of Colombian fighters currently in Sudan is not known, and the estimates that have been published range widely. The question of who inside the UAE government knew about the recruitment, and whether the company acted with state direction or on its own, has not been answered. The impact on Lana Nusseibeh’s candidacy for secretary-general is uncertain, and will depend on decisions taken by governments in the coming weeks. And the Security Council’s response, if any, is unknown: the Council may publish the report, debate its findings, impose new measures, or do nothing at all. These are not minor gaps. They are the questions that will determine whether the disclosure changes anything, or whether it becomes one more documented abuse in a war that has already produced many.

8.1 Questions the report leaves open

The most important unanswered question is the simplest: what exactly did the investigators find, and how strong is the evidence? Press accounts of a confidential report are a second-hand source, and they can omit caveats, overstate conclusions or miss context. Until the full report is published, the public is relying on the accuracy of the reporting, which has been consistent across outlets but is still not the document itself. A second question concerns the numbers: how many Colombians were deployed, how many remain, and what roles are they still playing? A third concerns the chain of responsibility: did GSSG act alone, or with the knowledge or direction of the UAE government? The report is said to link the firm to the ruling family, but the nature of that link, and what it proves, is not yet clear. A fourth question concerns the other countries on the route: what did the authorities in Somalia, Libya and Chad know, and what did they do? And a fifth concerns the fighters themselves: who recruited them, what were they told, and what happened to those who were killed, wounded or captured? Each of these questions has an answer somewhere, in documents, in interviews or in the report itself, but none of them has been answered in public yet.

8.2 What to watch next

The coming weeks will provide the answers. The first thing to watch is whether the Security Council publishes the panel’s report in full, or whether it remains confidential and known only through press accounts. Publication would allow the evidence to be examined and challenged, and it would put pressure on the Council to act. The second is whether any member state proposes new sanctions or other measures in response to the findings, and whether such a proposal survives the Council’s politics. The third is the fate of the July report, which was never published, and whether its contents will now be released alongside the November findings. The fourth is the UN leadership race, and whether the report changes the prospects of the UAE’s candidate or prompts other candidates to raise the Sudan question more forcefully. The fifth is the response from Colombia, whose citizens were recruited, and from Somalia and Libya, whose territory was used as a transit route. And the sixth is the war itself, where the RSF’s campaign in Darfur continues and where the role of foreign fighters may yet prove decisive. The coming weeks will provide the answers.

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