“Gold and Men”…What Does the UAE Want from Sudan?

Mohammed Pasha Zayed
Why is the UAE spending billions in a poor country exhausted by wars and divisions?
Is the UAE pouring in all this money merely to fight political Islam?
Salma Hamad
28 September 2025
Questions echoed amidst the blood of victims and the disillusionment of sceptics! To answer them, we may turn to an article published on the AFP website on 2 May 2023 entitled “The War of the Straits and the Hidden Treasure”. It stated:
*(Sudan represents the hidden treasure for major powers, as it possesses 200 million acres of fertile agricultural land, 11 flowing rivers, 102 million head of livestock, 400 billion cubic metres of annual rainfall, alongside 1.4 million tonnes of uranium, 6.8 billion barrels of oil, and 85 billion cubic metres of gas.
Sudan also ranks second in gold production on the African continent, with an output exceeding 90 tonnes annually, valued at up to five billion dollars, in addition to its silver, copper and uranium resources. It also holds a geostrategic position overlooking the Red Sea and the gateway to the Horn of Africa).*
This is Sudan in the eyes of the covetous: a hidden treasure, a grand prize awaiting its captor.
As for the UAE, it views Sudan as an additional treasure through which it can remedy its structural imbalances in food and resources, and as a vast human reservoir for the supply of mercenaries.
The UAE is a small state with a limited population (its citizens number no more than one million), yet it seeks to impose itself as a global power through wealth and weaponry, imagining that it can subjugate nations and plunder their resources.
Despite its oil wealth, the UAE suffers from acute shortages of other minerals, and its barren land offers neither crops nor water. Its people knew no comfort until the export of its first oil shipment in 1962. Since then, the spectre of “post-oil” has haunted it, driving its search for alternatives to safeguard its wealth and luxury through political and military influence.
One of its chief strategies has been the purchase of ports and the control of maritime straits to dominate global trade routes. Yet it has repeatedly failed, as in the case of Doraleh Port in Djibouti, Berbera and Bosaso in Somalia, the Port of Sancak in Izmir, Turkey, and Abu Amama Port in Sudan, as well as the aborted project to privatise Port Sudan in favour of “Dubai Ports” under public pressure. It also failed in 2006 in its attempt to take over the ports of New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, Miami, Philadelphia, and New Orleans following opposition from the US Congress.
The UAE realised that money alone cannot build global influence, that amassing modern weapons does not create an army, and that great powers must have armies to build and defend them. Hence, it wagered on Sudan as a human reservoir supplying fighters whose bodies would underpin its political, economic and military empire. Indeed, the UAE has already deployed thousands of Sudanese soldiers in the Yemen war and in support of its ally Haftar in Libya.
Perhaps the most striking evidence of Emirati military expansion is its network of military bases encircling Sudan:
Abd al-Kuri Island near Socotra (Gulf of Aden)
A military base in Mocha Port, Yemen (Red Sea)
Perim Base on Mayun Island (Bab al-Mandab)
Riyan Base in Hadramawt
Bases in Bosaso and Berbera, Somalia
Am Jaras Base in Chad
Al-Khadim and al-Kharrouba bases in Libya
Birao Base in the Central African Republic
A military base under the guise of a “field hospital” in Eastern Aweil, South Sudan
These bases encircle Sudan like a bracelet around the wrist, paving the way for the plunder of its wealth. The UAE has so far succeeded in seizing about 90% of Sudan’s gold production and has begun smuggling uranium and rare minerals from the Copper Pit region, which is under the control of the Rapid Support Forces.
In the sphere of food security and agricultural investment, the UAE has planned to take over the most fertile lands and the largest agricultural projects:
Wadi al-Hawad Agricultural Project: aiming to reclaim 2.4 million acres in the first phase out of 5 million, one of the world’s largest food security ventures.
Amtar Project in Northern State covering 300,000 acres.
Zayed al-Khair Project in Gezira State covering 40,000 acres.
Abu Hamed Agricultural Project (400,000 acres) with a road linking it to the proposed Abu Amama Port.
More dangerously than economic intrusion and military exploitation, the UAE has pursued demographic engineering to alter the country’s identity and disrupt its social fabric. It views the populations of Central and Northern Sudan as the most deeply attached to national identity and the central state, and the most aware of foreign ambitions, making them a historical base of resistance to external domination. Thus, Abu Dhabi has supported waves of unprecedented displacement and forced migration using extreme violence—from killing to rape, expulsion and humiliation—to depopulate these areas and resettle alternative groups, especially in fertile and strategic zones.
Geopolitically, Emirati control over Sudanese ports and its Red Sea position would mean dominance over one of the world’s most vital trade arteries, from Bab al-Mandab to the Suez Canal.
And what of the UAE’s so-called war on political Islam?
It is nothing more than a deceitful ploy the UAE has used to divide the Sudanese national front and to delude the gullible into believing that its war is against the “Islamists” rather than against Sudan itself.

In conclusion:
The encirclement of Sudan with military bases, the attempt to seize its wealth, land and water, and the control of its ports and strategic location are all tools in an Emirati project aimed at building global influence. For the UAE, Sudan is not a mere neighbour or partner but a reservoir of wealth and men to preserve the glitter of “wealth and luxury” after oil runs out.
The French newspaper Le Monde summed up this strategy in its report of 29 April 2023:
“The UAE plans to plunge Sudan into an endless spiral of chaos as an alternative to the failed coup it supported for the Rapid Support Forces militia.”
In this sense, what is happening in Sudan does not appear to be a mere internal conflict but part of a deliberate external project seeking to dispossess Sudan of its land, wealth and people. Unless Sudanese grasp this truth and confront it with unity and resolve, their homeland will remain hostage to regional schemes that see it only as a “treasure to be looted and a geography to be violated.”

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=7896