RSF

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deployed a military radar in the Somali region of Puntland as part of a secret deal, amid Abu Dhabi’s ongoing entrenchment of its influence over the region’s security affairs.

According to the London-based news outlet Middle East Eye, sources familiar with the matter told it that the UAE had installed a military radar near Bosaso airport in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region earlier this year, with one unnamed source saying that the “radar’s purpose is to detect and provide early warning against drone or missile threats, particularly those potentially launched by the Houthis, targeting Bosaso from outside”.

The radar’s presence was reportedly confirmed by satellite imagery from early March, which found that an Israeli-made ELM-2084 3D Active Electronically Scanned Array Multi-Mission Radar had indeed been installed near Bosaso airport.

READ: UAE: The scramble for the Horn of Africa

Not only does the radar have the purpose of defending Puntland and its airport from attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, but air traffic data reportedly indicates it also serves to facilitate the transport of weapons, ammunition, and supplies to Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), further fuelling the ongoing civil war in Sudan.

“The UAE installed the radar shortly after the RSF lost control of most of Khartoum in early March”, one source said. Another source was cited as claiming that the radar was deployed at the airport late last year and that Abu Dhabi has used it on a daily basis to supply the RSF, particularly through large cargo planes that frequently carry weapons and ammunition, and which sometimes amount to up to five major shipments at a time.

According to two other Somali sources cited by the report, Puntland’s president Said Abdullahi Deni did not seek approval from Somalia’s federal government nor even the Puntland parliament for the installation of the radar, with one of those sources stressing that it was “a secret deal, and even the highest levels of Puntland’s government, including the cabinet, are unaware of it”.

READ: UAE under scrutiny over alleged arms shipments to Sudan

The Sudanese army is redeploying forces to regain territory in Kordofan and Darfur from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan reports from the country’s capital, Khartoum, where the government has returned for the first time since the conflict started in 2023.

The Sudanese army is renewing efforts for an operation to retake the Kordofan and Darfur regions from the control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as the civil war rages deep into its third year.

The army has been assessing the RSF’s capabilities and resources in readiness for launching the military operation with a large number of military formations fully prepared to launch an attack, it said.

Any full-scale operation to liberate Kordofan in central Sudan and Darfur in the west would surpass the Sudanese Armed Forces’ (SAF) recapture of the capital, Khartoum, in March in terms of the planning that has taken place before the mission, it added.

Reporting from Khartoum, Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan said the Sudanese army had reorganised and redeployed troops in various parts of Kordofan.

“We have also seen the Sudanese army retake control of territories in the Kordofan region as well as launch air strikes and drone strikes on several RSF positions in Darfur and Kordofan,” she said.

“And it looks like these are the preparations or the first steps of that offensive that the army has been speaking about in efforts to regain control of territories in Kordofan and Darfur,” Morgan added.

The SAF on Friday said it inflicted heavy losses on the RSF during a series of air and ground operations carried out in Darfur and Kordofan.

In a statement, the military said its forces conducted strikes against RSF positions, destroying about 240 combat vehicles and killing hundreds of fighters.

It added that its ground forces had succeeded in pushing RSF fighters out of wide areas in Darfur and Kordofan, and operations were ongoing to pursue remaining elements.

Darfur Governor Minni Arko Minnawi said the recent military action by the SAF in Kordofan has prevented the RSF from laying siege on North Kordofan’s capital, el-Obeid.

But Morgan said people on the ground in the Kordofan region were not reassured by these words and want to see more definitive action from the SAF.

“They want to be able to return to their homes with the RSF withdrawing or retreating from the areas that they have taken over. So far, that is not happening,” she said.

In the meantime, attacks continue. A drone attack carried out by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, an RSF ally, on Monday reportedly killed five people in Habila in South Kordofan state.

The RSF’s recent resurgence in the vast regions of Darfur and Kordofan has displaced millions more people.

Both sides have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, while the RSF has been implicated in atrocities in Darfur that the United Nations said may amount to genocide.

Recently, the UN described el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, as a “crime scene” after gaining access to the largely deserted city for the first time since its takeover by the RSF in October, which was marked by mass atrocities.

International aid staff visited el-Fasher after weeks of negotiations, finding few people remaining in what was once a densely populated city with a large displaced population.

More than 100,000 residents fled el-Fasher after the RSF seized control on October 26 following an 18-month siege. Survivors reported ethnically motivated mass killings and widespread detentions.

Fierce fighting and global funding cuts have pushed more than 33 million people towards starvation in what has become one of the world’s severest humanitarian crises, nongovernmental organisations said on Friday as the war passed its 1,000th day.

The conflict has displaced 11 million people internally and abroad and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.

Prime Minister Kamil Idris announced on Sunday the government’s return to Khartoum, after nearly three years of operating from its wartime capital of Port Sudan.

In the early days of the civil war, which began in April 2023, the army-aligned government fled the capital, which was quickly overrun by the RSF.

The government has pursued a gradual return to Khartoum since the army recaptured the city.

“Today, we return, and the government of hope returns to the national capital,” Idris told reporters on Sunday in Khartoum.

Drone attacks hit fuel market in city that serves as headquarters for RSF’s alternative government.

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group says the country’s army struck a fuel market in the city of Nyala, the RSF’s administrative capital, as part of an intensified aerial campaign against its positions in South Darfur.

For three consecutive days ending Thursday, military drones and warplanes pounded strategic RSF sites across Nyala, including the international airport, military positions and training facilities.

The strike on the fuel market triggered a huge blaze as barrels of fuel exploded, according to footage circulated on social media, sending thick plumes of black smoke into the air.

Youssef Idris Youssef, who heads the RSF’s civil administration in South Darfur, accused the army of deliberately targeting civilians. He described the attack as part of “a systematic policy” to punish Darfur residents for not resisting the RSF presence in their communities.

The Sudanese military has not issued any statement regarding the strikes.

Casualties were reported among both civilians and RSF members involved in the fuel trade.

In the aftermath, RSF intelligence services conducted mass arrests near the targeted site and Nyala’s main market, detaining civilians and military personnel on accusations of providing coordinates to the army, according to local sources.

Nyala holds particular strategic importance as the seat of the RSF’s parallel government, known as TASIS, which the group declared in July. Led by RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, the alternative administration has been widely condemned as possibly fracturing Sudan, but controls significant territory across Darfur.

The city was struck by the army in October when it targeted the RSF and Nyala airport, which has been reportedly used by the RSF as a logistics hub for its forces.

Fighting continues across Darfur

Fighting has raged across Darfur since the RSF captured el-Fasher in October, an offensive marked by atrocities documented by rights groups.

The United States has said the RSF has committed genocide in Darfur.

This week, the RSF announced it had seized the Abu Qumra region in North Darfur and claimed advances towards Um Buru, though joint forces allied with the army disputed RSF assertions that they had also taken the town of Karnoi.

The attack on Nyala came just two days after Sudan’s prime minister, Kamil Idris, presented a peace proposal to the United Nations Security Council calling for RSF withdrawal from captured areas, disarmament in camps, and eventual elections.

The RSF rejected the plan, with spokesman Alaa el-Din Naqd telling Sudanese outlet Radio Dabanga it amounted to “wishful thinking”.

Sudan’s de facto leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, was in Ankara for talks on Thursday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at which Erdogan expressed his support for peace efforts and his opposition to dividing Sudan.

Hours earlier, a senior official in Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council ruled out any negotiations, declaring there could be “no truce and no negotiation with an occupier”.

The war, which erupted in April 2023, has killed more than 100,000 people and displaced nearly 14 million, in what the UN describes as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Since the RSF seized el-Fasher – the last major army stronghold in Darfur – the conflict has shifted to Central Kordofan, splitting Sudan between territories controlled by the military and the RSF.

Comments come days after PM Kamil Idris presented a plan to end the country’s nearly three-year war.

A senior official in Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council (TSC) has ruled out any negotiations with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as fighting continues to devastate the country.

“There is no truce and no negotiation with an occupier, and that the just peace that Sudan desires will be achieved through the roadmap and vision of its people and government,” Malik Agar Ayyir, deputy chairman of TSC, said in a statement on Thursday posted by the Ministry of Culture, Media and Tourism.

Speaking to ministers and state officials in Port Sudan, the eastern city where the government is based, he dismissed the narrative that the war is aimed at achieving “democracy”. Instead, he described the war as a “conflict over resources and a desire to change Sudan’s demographics” and emphasised an opportunity to strengthen national unity.

This comes days after Sudan’s Prime Minister Kamil Idris presented a plan to end the country’s nearly three-year war before the United Nations Security Council.

Consistent with the Sudanese army and the government’s position, the plan stipulates that RSF fighters must withdraw from vast areas of land that they have taken by force in the western and central parts of Sudan.

They would then have to be placed in camps and disarmed, before those who are not implicated in war crimes can be reintegrated into society.

The RSF has repeatedly rejected the idea of giving up territory, with Al-Basha Tibiq, a top adviser to commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, describing it as “closer to fantasy than to politics”.

RSF reports gains

The war, which has forcibly displaced about 14 million people, shows no signs of stopping as the RSF consolidates its hold over captured territory and expands attacks.

RSF fighters have continued to commit mass killings, systematic sexual violence, and the burying and burning of bodies in Darfur to cover up the evidence of war crimes over the past several months, according to international aid agencies working on the ground.

The humanitarian situation on the ground has only turned more disastrous after the capture of el-Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, in October.

The RSF announced on Thursday that its forces established control over the Abu Qumra region in North Darfur.

They “have continued their successful advancement to the Um Buru area, where they have completely liberated these areas”, the group claimed in a statement.

Despite the mounting evidence of widespread atrocities committed in western Sudan, the RSF claimed that the primary duty of its fighters is to “protect civilians and end the presence of remnants of armed pockets and mercenary movements”.

The group also released footage of its armed fighters, who claimed they were making advances towards el-Obeid, a strategic city in North Kordofan state.