From North Africa to the Gulf, the UAE has aggressively expanded its counter-revolutionary strategy in the wake of the Arab Spring, Earlier this month, Sudan’s government brought proceedings against the United Arab Emirates, accusing it of “complicity in genocide” in the Sudanese civil war…
The case sheds light on the Abu Dhabi network providing lethal and financial support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a violent non-state actor fighting Sudan’s government in a bloody civil war. The RSF is but one of the nodes in a network of non-state actors the UAE has curated over the past decade. The small Gulf monarchy has tapped into secessionist causes from Libya, to Yemen, Sudan and Somalia, using surrogates as Trojan horses to generate strategic depth and influence.
Like Iran’s “axis of resistance” – a network of non-state actors loosely tied together under an Islamic revolutionary banner – the UAE’s “axis of secessionists” comprises a network of non-state actors tied together under a counterrevolutionary banner. Like Tehran, Abu Dhabi has curated a multilayered network of violent non-state actors, financiers, traders, political figureheads and influencers to create bridgeheads in countries of strategic value to Emirati national interests.
Paradoxically, yearning for a strong state, Abu Dhabi’s ruling elite has created a network of strongmen whose reliance on armed violence has done more to destabilise central governments and undermine state sovereignty across the region.
As a small hydrocarbon state of just one million citizens (and millions more expat residents), the UAE has traditionally been forced to delegate statecraft to surrogates to fill capacity gaps. When foreign and security policy ambitions started to expand during the Arab Spring, so too did the Emirati need for ways to project influence overseas with a minimal footprint.
Most of all, Abu Dhabi wanted to contain and undermine the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist non-state actors that appeared to be best organized to shape the post-revolutionary order.
The Bani Fatima
In a federation of seven emirates, Abu Dhabi and its ruling Al Nahyan family quickly developed into the main hub in a tribal monarchy. Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, the near-bankruptcy of the emirate of Dubai and the subsequent cash injection from oil-rich Abu Dhabi, power has increasingly centralised in the hands of three brothers: Mohammed, Mansour and Tahnoon bin Zayed.
Under their leadership, Abu Dhabi grew into the financial hub of the Emirates. They built a network of corporate and state-owned enterprises that would deliver everything Emirati statecraft required, The three brothers – dubbed the Bani Fatima – created a parallel infrastructure to deliver strategic investments and financial services. They tied logistics and commodity trading companies, as well as private military and security firms, to the newly developing centre of power.
The overall vision for President Mohammed bin Zayed and his brothers has become one of strategically entangling elites across the Middle East and Africa into the UAE’s hub. What Chinais playing as a game of geo-economics, whereby countries develop a co-dependence on Chinese investments and trading power, the UAE has expanded into a geo-strategic space where warlords, criminal smuggling networks, traders and financiers develop a dependency on UAE infrastructure. In return, Abu Dhabi can use its influence to gain strategic depth in countries relevant to core Emirati interests.
Divide and rule in Somalia
Somalia is the physical manifestation of the Horn of Africa. Its immense strategic value to global shipping routes and trade corridors into the African hinterland put the country on the UAE’s radar as far back as 2010.
For Abu Dhabi, Somalia has been a key focal point in its policy to generate interconnectivity and weaponised interdependence. For state-owned logistics giants DP World and AD Ports, it offers ideal locations for transshipment hubs.
But bilateral relations between Abu Dhabi and the federal government in Mogadishu have had their ups and downs, making it an unreliable avenue to generate Emirati influence. The UAE has thus resorted to a policy of bypassing Mogadishu to engage directly with various states, especially those with a separatist agenda.
In 2010, the UAE set up a force of mercenaries in the region of Puntland to hunt down pirates on land and sea. The Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) was initially run by a UAE-based company, in violation of a UN arms embargo, and reported directly to the Puntland president, bypassing the sovereignty of the Somali federal government. The UAE has paid salaries and in 2022 opened a military base in Bosaso, which has become a node in the resupply network of the RSF in Sudan.
Since 2023, Abu Dhabi has also increased its footprint in Jubaland, strengthening the southern Somali region’s separatist claim at a time of heightened tensions with Mogadishu. The UAE has conducted drone strikes and provided military vehicles to Jubaland state forces. Jubaland leader Ahmed Madobe maintains intimate ties with Abu Dhabi, and has allowed the Emiratis to build a military base in the regional capital of Kismayo.
Upon realising that Mogadishu’s federal government did not want to put all its eggs in the Emirati basket, Abu Dhabi strategically diversified its approach in Somalia. Rather than going after the primary centre of power, the UAE decentralised its approach, going after alternative centres of power where it could guarantee a monopoly of patronage – at the expense of Somalia’s territorial integrity.
