The Forgotten War That Shapes the Red Sea

Amid the world’s focus on Gaza and Ukraine, another devastating war continues to unfold in silence. Since April 2023, Sudan has plunged into a civil war between the Sudanese armed forces led by Mohammad Burhan and backed by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti. What began as a power struggle between two factions within Sudan evolved into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises: over 11 million people have been displaced, and tens of thousands have been killed, with many in Sudan reporting gender-based violence and massive violations of human rights. Reports from the United Nations are that Sudan is already facing famine in parts of the country, with the UN Secretary-General stating that the “situation in Sudan is a catastrophe of staggering scale and brutality.”

Beyond its humanitarian toll and crises, the war in Sudan has become a regional chessboard for influence and power. No longer is Sudan an irrelevant conflict; rather, it has become a battleground for foreign nations, each with competing interests. The Gulf states back sides in the conflict as they seek access to Sudan’s natural resources and its strategic position as a gateway to the Sahara and Sahel. The UAE is the foreign player most heavily invested in the region regarding Sudan, as it sees Sudan as crucial for its strategic location to expand across Africa and the Middle East. This is why they have been heavily supplying the RSF. Egypt, by contrast, has consistently supported the SAF diplomatically and politically, as it sees the partition of Sudan as a red line, as stated by Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, sees itself as a mediator with multiple attempts to end the war since 2023, and has recently coordinated with the Americans, which brought the war into the US spotlight to ensure that the war ends.

This growing Gulf rivalry has transformed Sudan into far more than a battleground between generals; it has turned the country into the epicentre of a new regional power contest. As these rival powers compete for ports, influence, and resources, their actions are reshaping the geopolitical balance of the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea — a region vital to Europe’s trade, migration control, and energy security. The war in Sudan, though largely absent from European headlines, is fast becoming a defining test of the European Union’s ability to act strategically in a world where its closest partners are also the architects of instability.

Sudan Proxy War – Competing Visions of Power

Sudan’s war has become a stage for regional powers to compete against each other, with each actor pursuing its own strategic vision rather than adhering to any ideological alignment. At the heart of this rivalry is the United Arab Emirates, whose support for the RSF is driven by a mix of commercial ambition and geopolitical projection. As early as January 2024, the Middle East Eye reported that the UAE uses a complex network of Supplies to supply arms to the RSF using routes through Chad, Libya, and South Sudan. Just in October 2025, U.S. intelligence services reported through investigations that the UAE has increased its supply of Chinese-made drones to the RSF and other weapons to the RSF. In November 2025, an RSF supply convoy was hit, and it was one of the many supply convoys hit that transported Emirate weapons through a complex route that goes through Libya to Chad and then Darfur, which is the RSF headquarters.

It was through these routes that the RSF was supplied with the munitions and weapons, which allowed them to take the city of Fasher after a 500-day siege and led to one of the worst massacres of the Sudan war, where the RSF took part in massacres against the civilian population. Early estimates put the civilian casualties at between 2,000 and 3,000, with around 30,000 fleeing the city.

For the UAE, there are two dimensions to supporting the RSF. The first one is that it’s an ideological reason for their support of the RSF. Between 1989 to 2019, Sudan was ruled by the military, which was backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, who had a strong influence within Sudan, and after 2019, with the fall of Omar al-Bashir, the Muslim Brotherhood backed the regime again as a way of regaining power in Sudan by overthrowing the civilian government. For the UAE, the Muslim Brotherhood has always been a threat to the regime, and therefore backing Hemedit is a way of defeating the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan.

The second reason for supporting the RSF is economic, with the Red Sea at its heart. Approximately twelve to twenty percent of the world’s commercial maritime traffic passes through the Red Sea, and for the UAE, this is crucial, as it aims to break the Egyptian and Saudi hegemony over the Red Sea, viewing it as the gateway to Africa. For the UAE, they have even outspent China in the Sudan. The U.A.E. sees Sudan as the gateway to Africa, and it sees Africa as the gateway to its financial domination as it’s looking to move beyond oil.

Egypt, in contrast, views Sudan’s fracturing through the lens of national security and Nile geopolitics. For Egypt, Sudan is seen as its extension of the Southern Border, and it sees the Sudanese Military as the guarantor of the security of its southern border. For Egypt, sources say, stability in Sudan is crucial for Egypt’s national security, and therefore, state institutions should be respected, and the integrity of the military must be safeguarded to prevent any further division of the country. The primary reason for this is that Sudan is weakening, and partition would render the country weaker overall, resulting in a strategic setback for Egypt, as it has long relied on Sudan to defend its Nile water rights. For years, both Sudan and Egypt have been allied on the Nile River, especially when Ethiopia decided to build the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which diverted lots of water from the Nile, which was going to Egypt and Sudan to benefit Ethiopia. A divided and weakened Sudan will mean Egypt is isolated against Ethiopia.

Then you have Saudi Arabia, which wants to play the mediator in the conflict. Early in the conflict, Saudi Arabia used its role as mediator and neutrality to facilitate the evacuation of thousands of foreigners via Port Sudan, an effort that garnered significant goodwill. Building on this, Saudi Arabia used its influence with the USA to host the Jeddah ceasefire talks in 2023, which turned out to be a failure as fighting continued, with commitments withering under continued fighting. However, with the RSF and its allies formalizing a chapter to take administration in Nairobi, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states formerly rejected this. Saudi Arabia now plays the role of the mediator to put pressure on the UAE, as it sees the UAE and its allies as a threat to the Kingdom. The widening gulf over Sudan, therefore, is not an isolated disagreement but symptomatic of a deeper strategic divergence between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, where at one point both Saudi Arabia and the UAE collaborated against the threat of the Muslimbrotherhood but now, due to economic and political rivalry, their paths diverge with Saudi Arabia placing its bets on the Sudanese army rather than the RSF. This is also the main reason why Mohammad Bin Salman informed Trump of the problems in Sudan and asked him to intervene to resolve the crisis. While Saudi Arabia will likely never intervene as the UAE has, it has consistently used its political influence to negotiate an end to the conflict.

In the midst of all this power play, you have other countries that want to influence the conflict in Sudan. Take Iran, for example. Between December 2023 and January 2024, Iran supplied drones to the Sudanese armed forces, which greatly helped the Sudanese armed forces retake Khartoum and areas around the capital city. For Iran, helping the current Sudanese government not only projects power and influence across the region, but it also helps Iran get an edge over its Gulf rival, which is the UAE. Then you have Russia, which needs a military base in Africa to get rid of its dependency on its Mediterranean base in Syria, which Sudan is willing to offer to Russia in exchange for weapons and arms. Turkey has quietly also been backing the Sudanese government, providing military drones, air-to-surface missiles, and command centres. What we have is a proxy war going on with each competing for vying interest while Sudan continues to be engufled in a civil conflict with civilians bearing the brunt of these casualties.

3. Europe’s Dilemma – Between Stability and Dependency

For the European Union, the war in Sudan exposes a profound strategic dilemma; The conflict directly threatens its core interests in migration control, terrorism, and regional influence, but at the same time, its dependency on the Gulf states for wealth constrains it. Due to its strategic location at the crossroads of North Africa and the Sahel, Sudan is a key country of both origin and transit for migrants directed to European shores via North Africa. The ongoing war and lack of government control have meant that there is a power vacuum, which has increased displacements but also made inward migration easier to Europe. The war has created a conducive environment for the proliferation of human trafficking activities and the opening of new irregular transit routes for migration towards Europe. In addition, the Red Sea which 40 percent of trade between Asia and Europe is conducted there is under strain and under the control of the Gulf allies, especially the UAE, making it harder for Europe to do anything about the conflict.

Europe’s ability to respond is sharply limited by a contradiction at the heart of its foreign policy. Both the UAE and the EU have existing trade deals, with the UAE being the EU’s second-largest global trade partner, sharing $67.6 billion in non-oil trade in 2024. At the same time, since the Russia-Ukraine war of 2022, where the EU has tried to move away from Russian gas and oil, Gulf gas and oil have replaced russian gas, with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait exporting more oil to Europe during the first 10 months of 2022 compared to 2021. This dependence has shaped a cautious, almost muted European response. An example of this can be seen recently, on 28 November 2025, when the EU approved a resolution calling an end to the conflict in Sudan without ever mentioning the UAE. Some amendments by Leftist political groups did mention the UAE’s involvement and their support for the RSF, but this was swiftly rejected, with the EPP and right-wing groups voting against.

The results are an EU foreign policy that acknowledges that Sudan is facing a “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis, with the commissioner acknowledging that RSF continues to block humanitarian assistance, further shrinking the humanitarian space in Sudan without ever mentioning the UAE. As the Sudan war conflict deepens and widens, evidence has shown us that it’s most likely that the EU would be left behind, with the Gulf states having a final say in the war in Sudan rather than the EU.

Conclusion – Europe’s Strategic Test

The war in Sudan isn’t just some far-off disaster—it’s a wake-up call for Europe, showing just how much ground it’s lost in the global power game. What started as a fight between Burhan’s army and Hemedti’s RSF has morphed into a proxy battleground. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, and even Russia are now elbowing their way in, each angling for a piece of the region. Europe once saw Sudan as part of its neighborhood, but now it’s on the sidelines while everyone else redraws the map. The war has shown that Europe cannot project hard power, which would be necessary to pressure the actors responsible for the violence to cease. However, for the EU, it doesn’t need to project hard power; rather, it can use its significant soft power to influence the UAE and Gulf states to make a peace deal.

If Europe keeps treating Sudan like it’s someone else’s problem, it’s basically handing over the Red Sea—and much of Africa’s future—to Gulf and Asian powers with very different agendas, without having any concern for Human rights as the EU does. The Red Sea trade corridor, where nearly half of EU-Asia trade travels, is turning into a battleground between competing powers that care more about securing their future and resources rather than actually fighting for viable peace. And the migration crisis? It’s not going to skip Europe. It’ll just add more fuel to the political chaos already rocking the EU, and with the continued conflict in Sudan and the degeneration of a central power, evidence has shown us that migration will continue to Europe and more if the conflict isn’t resolved soon.

In the end, Sudan’s war is a test for Europe. The conflict makes one thing clear: Europe can’t keep hiding behind statements, resolutions, and aid money while its so-called partners shape the outcome on the ground. If the EU wants to matter in the Horn of Africa and along the Red Sea, it needs to pull together, get serious, and see Sudan for what it really is, which is a major war between competing nations vying for power and resources, and without the EU influencing decisions in Sudan, the EU would be left behind geopolitically just like it was left behind in the Sahel and handed over to russia and china.