The Sudden Rupture
When Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan addressed the nation from Port Sudan at dawn on 6 May 2025, he framed the decision to declare the UAE a “state of aggression” as an existential defence of sovereignty. Within hours, Khartoum ordered the closure of the Emirati mission and recalled its own ambassador, citing what it called incontrovertible evidence of Emirati cargo flights diverting military materiel to RSF-held enclaves via an airstrip near Tina on the Chad frontier.
A fortnight of escalating drone raids on Port Sudan preceded the announcement. Independent verification by The Washington Post confirmed footage of Turkish-manufactured Bayraktar TB-2 systems striking the city’s fuel depots, incidents Sudanese authorities insist would have been impossible without Emirati optical payloads and data-links.
The public mood in Port Sudan—already strained by displaced families and chronic inflation—hardened rapidly, creating rare political capital for the SAF leadership to act against a powerful Gulf patron.
Historical Trajectory of Sudan–UAE Relations
Khartoum’s engagement with Abu Dhabi is neither recent nor superficial. Emirati concessional loans in the late 1970s underwrote irrigation schemes in Gezira, while the 2015 Saudi-led intervention in Yemen saw Sudanese infantry brigades fight alongside UAE forces in Aden. In return, Khartoum enjoyed favourable fuel credits and tacit backing in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Yet tensions surfaced after the 2019 overthrow of President Omar al-Bashir, when Sudan’s civilian technocrats courted Qatar and Turkey, unsettling Emirati strategists intent on limiting Muslim-Brotherhood-aligned influence in the Horn.
Proximate Causes: External Military Support and Drone Warfare
Port Sudan’s relative calm shattered on 4 May 2025. Analyst imagery shows at least five confirmed drone strikes on the northern container terminal, disrupting World Food Programme corridors that had moved an average 1 200 tonnes of relief cargo weekly.
SAF spokespersons published manifests allegedly recovered from an RSF depot listing components forwarded from Jebel Ali. Abu Dhabi rejected the charges as “categorically false”, but Anadolu Agency noted the absence of any reference to dozens of flights previously tracked by UN monitors transiting the same corridor since late 2024.
Legal Dimensions: The ICJ Case and Normative Frameworks
One day before the diplomatic break, the International Court of Justice dismissed Sudan’s genocide petition against the UAE in a 14–2 ruling, citing Abu Dhabi’s 2005 reservation to Article IX of the Genocide Convention.
Separate opinions by Judges Xue and Gómez Robledo warned that accepting broad reservations risks gutting treaty accountability. Al Jazeera’s coverage highlighted Sudanese frustration at what officials perceived as an international double standard that indulges Gulf monarchies while condemning African governments.
Strategic Interests of the UAE in the Red Sea
For Abu Dhabi, Sudan is a keystone within a maritime belt extending from Berbera to the Suez Canal. Chatham House analysts stress that a logistics chain linking Port Sudan to Jebel Ali would diversify the Emirates’ trade routes away from the Strait of Hormuz, reduce food-security risk and secure influence over an emerging energy corridor.
Yet a permanent foothold also brings exposure: drone proliferation, increasingly affordable to non-state actors, blurs forward lines and renders deep-water ports newly vulnerable.
Sudan’s Internal Dynamics and Militarisation of Diplomacy
Domestically, the rupture enables the SAF to recast a grinding civil war in nationalist hues, portraying foreign subversion as the prime obstacle to peace. Sudan Tribune leaked balance-of-payments figures showing reserves hovering below three weeks of essential imports—an economic fragility for which pinning blame on external actors is politically expedient.
Yet risks abound. Remittances from 120 000 Sudanese workers in the UAE, totalling roughly US $1.2 billion annually, are imperilled, and mid-ranking officers with property interests in Dubai privately question the wisdom of alienating a key creditor.
Regional Reverberations
Cairo officials privately welcomed Khartoum’s démarche as a chance to dilute Emirati sway in Nile Basin politics, whereas Riyadh—broker of the stalled Jeddah talks—urged restraint but avoided mediation that might fracture Gulf Cooperation Council unity. Ethiopian diplomats, anxious over border disputes in al-Fashaga, fear a vacuum that could invite Eritrean opportunism. Crisis Group reporting warns that escalation threatens to collapse the Red Sea Forum, a nascent security dialogue linking littoral states.
Multilateral Responses
The Arab League’s emergency session issued a perfunctory statement of “deep concern”; the African Union invoked Article 4(h) to denounce external destabilisation but, mindful of donor politics, declined to name the UAE. At the United Nations, a draft British-Mozambican resolution calling for a monitored arms embargo on non-state actors encountered resistance from Russia and China, both wary of setting precedents for interference elsewhere.
Humanitarian Repercussions
The closure of Port Sudan’s airport after successive strikes forced Médecins Sans Frontières to evacuate surgeons and delayed UNICEF vaccine consignments destined for Darfur and Kordofan, raising fears of impending measles outbreaks. The Washington Post observed that the blasts also severed the city’s main desalination conduit, forcing 600 000 residents onto rationed water deliveries.
International Crisis Group forecasts that, absent rapid repairs, regional food-price inflation could reach 70 percent above pre-war baselines by August.
Economic Fallout
Suspension of a US $4.5 billion Emirati concession to modernise Port Sudan’s petroleum terminal has chilled investor sentiment. Chatham House research suggests RSF-facilitated gold smuggling already bleeds Sudan of up to US $1 billion in annual revenues, flows likely to accelerate as law-enforcement cooperation with Dubai is frozen.
Lloyd’s List Intelligence reports that insurers widened “breach-of-sanctions” clauses for Red Sea charters, raising freight premiums by 18 percent and compounding pressure on an already battered Sudanese pound, which fell from 1 120 to 1 470 per US dollar on informal markets within forty-eight hours.
Prospects for Mediation
Saudi Arabia has offered proximity talks, but Khartoum demands Emirati disengagement from the RSF, while Abu Dhabi seeks guarantees for its assets and personnel. Norway has floated a tripartite committee—Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the African Union—mirroring the 2018 Eritrea–Ethiopia border formula, with maritime patrols under a strengthened Red Sea Forum. Western naval commitments are unlikely; nonetheless, discreet technical talks on prisoner exchanges—reportedly facilitated by Oman—suggest neither party desires irreversible antagonism.
Sudan’s severance of ties with the UAE epitomises a wider trend whereby domestic conflicts become theatres for transnational contestation. The episode underscores the inadequacy of treaty regimes that permit sweeping reservations, the dangers of proliferating armed drones and the fragility of humanitarian corridors. Yet mutual economic interdependence and nascent back-channel contacts reveal that détente remains conceivable. Whether regional diplomacy can graduate from crisis management to conflict transformation will determine if the Sudan–UAE split marks a transient aberration or a deeper fragmentation of the Red Sea security architecture. Either outcome will shape the strategic calculus of actors far beyond the Horn, from Brussels to Beijing, affirming the global stakes at play.
