AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn to Sudan, where the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk has warned another humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Sudan’s besieged city of El Obeid.

The U.N. Human Rights Council held an emergency session last week as fighting intensified between the Sudanese army and the UAE-backed paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, which are vying for control of the North Kordofan state capital. U.N. experts have urged the international community to prevent widespread atrocities similar to what was witnessed in El Fasher after it was seized by the RSF. Already, U.N. fact-finding missions have documented summary executions, abductions, torture and sexual violence in Kordofan. Over 11,000 people, including more than 5,500 children, have been displaced from El Obeid in the last two weeks, according to Save the Children.

And in the United Kingdom, a top human rights investigator said the British government was uniquely positioned to stop a genocidal massacre carried out by the RSF in Sudan’s El Fasher, but failed to do so over economic interests and diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates, which is accused of backing the RSF. Nathaniel Raymond of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health submitted testimony to the U.K. Parliament detailing his team’s efforts to warn of the threats. This is a portion of his comments.

NATHANIEL RAYMOND: I will speak personally, and I will speak bluntly. My outrage at institutional failure in the face of preventable genocidal killing, I see as a duty to stay angry as the obituary and the memorial for these people. They deserve someone to be angry for them.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a new investigation from Lighthouse Reports, Evident, Sudan War Monitor and Der Spiegel, that has uncovered how the United Arab Emirates supports a secret network of military training camps for the RSF that enables them to continue their deadly war in Sudan. This is a clip from the documentary called Inside the Secret Network Fueling Sudan’s War. In this clip, journalist Julia Steers of Lighthouse Reports is at the border of Libya and Sudan, reporting on the UAE-backed RSF training camp, supported also by the Libyan National Army, or LNA, a militia in eastern Libya.

JULIA STEERS: Analysts say that weapon smuggling at this border has surged by up to three times prewar levels. And it’s not just a trafficking route.

We’re on patrol about 50 miles south of Kufra, and they want us to go back to the checkpoint. But we know that there’s an RSF camp about 30 miles in that direction. And even though they say there’s nothing going on out here, we actually saw on satellite images, as recently as a couple days ago, that there is activity over at the camp.

Equipment and troops from this training camp have been linked to critical RSF battles back in Sudan. With the help of the LNA, the RSF has set up training camps and staging sites to prep weapons in this part of the desert. We found four previously unidentified training camps across Libya. Libyan authorities want these operations to stay in the shadows, but RSF soldiers are posting from Libya on social media.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined now from Nairobi, Kenya, by the award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker you just heard, Julia Steers, producer and correspondent on the documentary Inside the Secret Network Fueling Sudan’s War, also the correspondent and producer of the Al Jazeera Fault Lines and Lighthouse Reports documentary released earlier this year, headlined No Exit from El Fasher.

So, let me ask you, Julia, first, the latest, where the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned another humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Sudan’s besieged city of El Obeid. What do you know? And what is fueling this?

JULIA STEERS: So, what we know is that the RSF, the Rapid Support Forces, and the Sudanese army are fighting for control of El Obeid, which, as you said, is the capital of the North Kordofan region. They have been really brutally — both sides have been launching drone attacks against civilians for the last few weeks, and that’s been intensifying. And there is concern now that the RSF could be about to launch a ground offensive, which, of course, is very similar to what we saw of this during the siege of El Fasher in Darfur. The city of El Fasher fell to the Rapid Support Forces in October.

So, what we’re hearing is the international community, you know, warning of an impending humanitarian disaster. These drone attacks have also struck critical infrastructure, which could be potentially limiting people’s access to water, to electricity. So, it is believed that there is already a humanitarian crisis ongoing inside El Obeid. But, of course, the real fear is that this will be, you know, another repeat of El Fasher, where civilians were subjected to really extensive and grotesque war crimes at the hands of the RSF, who eventually went on to take that city.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the role of the United Arab Emirates, Julia.

JULIA STEERS: So, this war, which is often categorized in international media as a civil war, is really a proxy war on both sides. On the side of the RSF, their main backer is the United Arab Emirates. And there’s no question that the RSF would not be able to have gotten as far as they have, to have claimed nearly as much territory as they have, without the really robust support of the UAE. The UAE backs the RSF for a couple different reasons. Some of it is ideological. They are — they would say that they are fighting the Islamists who back the Sudanese army. You know, other reasons include just loyalty to the RSF’s leader and economic reasons and interest in gold and infrastructure in Sudan.

But what they’ve done during the course of this now over-three-year war, in terms of their support for the RSF, is establish this really robust network across Africa, including in Chad and in Libya, where we went, to funnel weapons, fuel, money into the RSF and into their fight for control of Sudan. And they’ve also established a training network, where they train RSF soldiers in Libya. Reuters did some reporting about an RSF training camp in Ethiopia. So, they’re providing training, as well as Colombian mercenaries to help train RSF troops, and in some cases even fight alongside RSF troops in Sudan. So we’re talking about a really extensive network of logistics and training and financial backing from the UAE.

AMY GOODMAN: For your investigation, you spoke to seven RSF defectors in Libya. In this clip from your documentary, we hear from one of the defectors, who spent three months at a training camp outside Benghazi. He said the heavy weaponry he trained on at the camp came from the United Arab Emirates.

RSF DEFECTOR: [translated] Only the plane coming showed it’s Emirati, but the ammunition boxes and the weapons, as well as the cars, none of which had anything to indicate it’s Emirati. Except for one type of armored car they sent, and it was Emirati. You can see “Made in Emirates.”

JULIA STEERS: Can you show me where the camp that you were at in Benghazi is?

RSF DEFECTOR: [translated] All the way to the camp, the camp is there.

JULIA STEERS: So, this road led all the way out?

RSF DEFECTOR: [translated] That’s the camp.

AMY GOODMAN: In this clip from the film, Julia Steers, you speak to RSF spokesperson Dr. Alaa El-Din Nugud, who repeatedly denies they got any support from the United Arab Emirates, UAE.

DR. ALAA EL-DIN NUGUD: There’s much of allegations that’s not true. And we defend it, and we wrote in our statements against.

JULIA STEERS: Mm-hmm. The U.N. Security Council said British small arms, both target systems and engines for armored personnel carriers, that were sold by the Brits to the UAE, were then found in Sudan to be on the RSF side.

DR. ALAA EL-DIN NUGUD: It’s exclusively sold for the Emiratis, and the Emiratis gave it to us?

JULIA STEERS: Correct.

DR. ALAA EL-DIN NUGUD: No.

JULIA STEERS: There’s also the report that European-made mortar shells also sold to an Emirati company and then transported through a convoy in Libya, where there’s a lot of evidence that you guys were moving stuff through Libya, that those also ended up on the RSF side.

DR. ALAA EL-DIN NUGUD: No. You know, Libya, this area became an open market for weapon. You can get weapon from wherever you want.

JULIA STEERS: Sure.

DR. ALAA EL-DIN NUGUD: And it’s a market, so you can get it. If you have money, you can get a weapon from there.

JULIA STEERS: He rejected the claims of our RSF sources about their training in Libya.

So, do you deny that there are any training camps for the RSF outside of Sudan?

DR. ALAA EL-DIN NUGUD: No, it’s all our stuff, training camps in our borders.

JULIA STEERS: There are no training camps outside of Sudan? What ultimately do you want to get out of this war? You’re saying it’s for all of these just causes, but what is the ultimate end game?

DR. ALAA EL-DIN NUGUD: We are looking for a new Sudan.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the RSF spokesperson. Julia Steers, talk about what he’s denying. What is the UAE’s interest here in perpetuating the civil war between the Sudanese army and the RSF? And then, what about countries like Britain and the United States, who are very close to the UAE?

JULIA STEERS: So, he, the RSF and the UAE vehemently deny the UAE’s role in the war, which at this point, you know, is a sort of ridiculous denial. It’s really the worst-kept secret of the war in Sudan. He is denying what we saw with our own eyes. He is denying what we documented, you know, a year’s worth of social media analysis of RSF presence in Libya at training camps in the desert, at training camps near the capital Benghazi. He’s denying very extensive documentation of the presence of UAE-backed Colombian mercenaries in Libya, in Sudan, traveling through Libya, into Sudan’s Darfur region. So, as I said, he’s denying this very extensive network that the UAE has established, including in Libya.

And, you know, as you mentioned, the role of the U.K. or the U.S. in pressuring, you know, a critical partner of theirs, the UAE, has been very minimal. So, you know, there has been very little pressure on the UAE to actually acknowledge their role or to stop the flow of weapons and troops into Sudan.

AMY GOODMAN: And what is the UAE’s interest here?

JULIA STEERS: So, the UAE’s interest, you know, in part, I think we have to recognize that they are a country with almost limitless resources, too. So, to a certain extent, we could just be seeing they have backed one side, and they’re going to continue dumping resources into that side until the end.

There has been some points of the war where analysts would wonder — you know, when the RSF was sort of on the back foot, and analysts would wonder: How long will the UAE keep backing a potentially losing horse? But now we’ve seen the RSF has taken all of Darfur. They’re putting up a very fierce fight in El Obeid. And there is absolutely no sign of UAE support slowing down.

In the long term, they have an economic interest in Sudan, in Sudan’s gold trade, in Sudan agricultural trade. They also do not want to see an Islamist-backed government installed in the Horn of Africa. And so, the Sudanese army is backed by Islamists, so they would obviously prefer that the RSF would be the party that eventually takes over Sudan.

AMY GOODMAN: This is a clip from your documentary that looks at how the UAE has brought Colombian mercenaries into the conflict.

AHMED: [translated] Well, they did talk about it, but the general consensus is that the Emirates brought and paid them.

JULIA STEERS: The UAE has sent hundreds of Colombian mercenaries to Sudan, many making stops in Libya to train and fight alongside the RSF. They’re contracted by Global Security Services Group, a UAE-based company with links to the Emirati government. With the help of Conflict Insights Group, we analyzed telephones located at Camp 17. Using publicly available phone data, we found evidence of one suspected Colombian contractor at the site. The phone was active at Camp 17 in June 2025.

AMY GOODMAN: Julia Steers, if you can talk about the significance of the Colombian mercenaries being brought in by the UAE, as we wrap up right now?

JULIA STEERS: So, the Colombian mercenaries are brought into train the RSF specifically on these new types of weaponry that are then being trafficked into Sudan. And they were considered to be really influential in the fight in El Fasher, which fell to the RSF a few months ago, both in terms of training, and there was some evidence of them being on the ground, actually, fighting alongside the RSF in El Fasher. And so, of course, there is a concern that in other battles the RSF will continue to get this training on specialized weaponry and that they could be backed up by the Columbian mercenaries.

AMY GOODMAN: Julia, in this last 20 seconds, the human toll, if you can address that?

JULIA STEERS: In El Obeid, there’s concern about hundreds of thousands of civilians, you know, and we have seen an utter lack of true care by the international community for the amount of civilians that are being targeted and killed in this war.

AMY GOODMAN: Julia Steers, award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, correspondent in the new Evident Media-Lighthouse Reports documentary, Inside the Secret Network Fueling Sudan’s War. Thank you so much for being with us. I’m Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.