December 15, Nairobi — At least 86 flights from the United Arab Emirates have landed at a small airstrip in eastern Chad — that has been known to be used for funneling arms across the border — since the war began in April 2023.
Three-quarters of the flights were operated by carriers accused by the United Nations of ferrying weapons to a warlord in Libya, according to a report by Reuters. The UAE has repeatedly been accused of supplying weapons to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) but has said it is sending aid for Sudan via Chad, not arms.
Video footage reviewed by Reuters from the the Amdjarass airstrip shows two pallets on the tarmac stacked with khaki crates — some of them labelled with the UAE flag. Weapons experts said the crates looked unlikely to be carrying humanitarian aid and instead looked like they were carrying ammunition or weapons.
In a statement to Reuters, the UAE government said it had sent 159 relief flights with over 10,000 tonnes of food and medical aid, partly to supply a field hospital it has established in Amdjarass. But officials from the Red Cross and UN said they were not aware of the hospital or used its operations. Other aid workers also told Reuters that aid deliveries to Chad were nowhere near the volume that the UAE said it has supplied.
Flight data also showed that many of the planes made stopovers in other African countries, including Kenya, Uganda and Somaliland — where allegedly a senior official said that flights from the UAE had carried military equipment.
The revelations come as Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered to meditate in the Sudan-UAE dispute in a telephone call with Sudan’s military leader, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan on Friday. The Sudanese army accuses the UAE of providing weapons to the RSF.