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By Alexander Dziadosz and Giulia Paravicini
CAIRO/NAIROBI, Dec 22 (Reuters) – A remote airstrip in southeastern Libya has reshaped Sudan’s civil war by providing a lifeline to the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, according to more than a dozen military, intelligence and diplomatic officials.
The paramilitary group – which grew from the “Janjaweed” militia mobilised two decades ago by Sudan’s government to subdue its western Darfur province – has been fighting the Sudanese army since April 2023 when the two sides fell out over how to integrate their forces.
The conflict has since killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and spread famine across the vast country.
Military supplies sent via the airstrip in Kufrah, about 300 km from Sudan’s border, helped the RSF revive its fortunes after the Sudanese army retook the capital Khartoum in March, the officials said. The supply route was central to the RSF’s brutal capture of the city of al-Fashir in October, which allowed the paramilitary group to consolidate its control over Darfur and preceded a series of victories in Sudan’s south.
The vast desert region of Kufrah is controlled by a Libyan military commander allied with the United Arab Emirates – a Gulf nation that U.N. experts and the U.S. Congress have accused of sponsoring the RSF. The UAE denies backing either side in Sudan’s conflict.
The airport – largely unused before this year – has undergone extensive renovation and received dozens of cargo flights since the spring, coinciding with a growing RSF presence to its south, an analysis of satellite images, flight tracking data and social media shows.
A U.N. official familiar with RSF operations, who asked not to be named, said the group’s use of Kufrah had “changed the whole game” by providing a conduit for supplies and fighters to strengthen the 18-month siege of al-Fashir.
Justin Lynch, managing director of the Conflict Insights Group analysis firm, said he identified at least 105 cargo plane landings at Kufrah between April 1 and November 1 by correlating satellite images with flight tracking data. Reuters was not able to confirm his figure independently.
The “pattern, location, and aircraft” of the flights into Kufrah “correlate with UAE support to the RSF,” Lynch said. “Kufrah and southern Libya have become a significant logistics hub for the RSF.”
UAE has economic interests in Sudan, where it had planned billions of dollars in investments in a Red Sea port and Sudanese farmland before the war. It also has ties to the RSF’s commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who sent thousands of troops to fight for the UAE in Yemen.
The UAE did not respond to requests for comment. The RSF, which has denied receiving Emirati support, also did not respond to Reuters questions.
Sudan’s army has repeatedly accused the RSF of securing military cargoes via Libya. In September, it submitted a complaint to the United Nations alleging Colombian mercenaries had traveled via Kufrah to support the RSF.
The Libyan National Army, which is under the command of Khalifa Haftar, controls eastern and southern Libya where the airport is located. It has repeatedly denied backing the RSF and insisted it is not taking sides in Sudan’s conflict.
Reuters could not reach LNA leadership for comment. An LNA military official in Kufrah, who declined to be named, said the cargo flights into Kufrah had transported civilians, soldiers and police to and from other eastern Libyan airports. He denied there were RSF fighters in the area.
“We don’t have anything to do with conflicts in neighbouring countries,” the official said.
To determine the scale of the Kufrah operation, Reuters spoke to 18 diplomatic, military, intelligence and other officials from Western and African countries, and 14 experts on regional and military affairs.
In October, the Wall Street Journal quoted U.S. officials as saying the UAE had stepped up arms deliveries to the RSF via Libya and Somalia. The details of the airport’s role are reported here for the first time.
THE LIBYA ‘PIVOT’
Libya has been divided for years between rival factions which have both been accused of smuggling weapons, drugs and migrants. Local units of the LNA, which seized control of eastern Libya with UAE backing nearly a decade ago, have long-established trafficking ties with elements of the RSF, according to a Dec. 1 report from the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.
Shortly after Sudan’s war broke out, some LNA fighters helped move military cargo down to the border that had arrived to Kufrah by plane from Benghazi, according to a U.N. expert report. But army advances soon disrupted the route, and the airport fell back into disuse.
The RSF renewed its interest in Kufrah after political pressure last year complicated its use of a supply line through a remote airstrip in eastern Chad, significantly closer to the frontlines in Darfur, according to officials and experts.
By January, a camp about 80 kilometers south of Kufrah can already be seen forming in Copernicus satellite service images. The Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), a UK-based non-profit, said in a July report it had traced RSF vehicles and fighters at the camp to Darfur.
The RSF’s retreat from Khartoum moved the war’s center of gravity to Darfur, making the re-establishment of supply lines from Libya imperative, the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime report said.
After the RSF re-captured key border areas in June, the “Libya corridor” became “a key focal point” for RSF supply operations, according to a Western diplomatic cable sent to other Western countries in September, reviewed by Reuters.
KUFRAH’S ROLE GROWS
By May, Kufrah’s airport had already been revamped, with a new facade, fountains and lawn. Two local airlines began flights with Benghazi in June.
The number of large cargo planes on the tarmac also increased. None were visible in any of last year’s Copernicus images, available roughly every three to five days.
But in April, at least one appears in six out of seven images.
The numbers rose throughout the summer and in the weeks before al-Fashir’s fall as many as five were visible at a time.
Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24 shows at least some of the cargo flights to Kufrah were operated by airlines previously accused of involvement in trafficking weapons from the UAE.
One Ilyushin-76 with the tail number EX-76008, which flew to Kufrah from Dubai on June 5, was operated by a Kyrgyz airline, Sapsan Airlines LLC.
A May 2022 UN expert report on Libya said the airline had carried out flights “for the direct, and indirect, supply of military equipment and other assistance” as part of an airbridge to Haftar in the early 2020s.
The same plane flew to Kufrah on July 12 from Bosaso in Somalia’s Puntland region, where the UAE has trained and funded local security forces. The UAE has denied using the airport to supply the RSF.
Two Ilyushins operated by FlySky Airlines – another Kyrgyz operator accused in the U.N. report of trafficking weapons from the UAE to Haftar – have also landed in Kufrah, flight tracking data and social media posts show.
Both planes – EX-76017 and EX-76022 – had made at least a half dozen flights each from the UAE to Amdjarass, the airstrip in eastern Chad, according to a previous Reuters analysis. U.N. experts in a January 2024 report cited “credible” accusations the UAE was supplying the RSF with weapons via that runway, which Abu Dhabi denied.
FlySky did not reply to requests for comment. A Sapsan Airlines employee said by phone the airline was being shut down and directed questions to the airline’s UAE-based owner, Bu Shames FZE. Bu Shames did not reply to phone calls and emails seeking comment.
(Additional reporting by Eleanor Whalley, Gleb Stolyarov, Khalid Abdelaziz, Ahmed Shalaby, Milan Pavicic, Humeyra Pamuk and Reade Levinson; Editing by Daniel Flynn)
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