Ethiopia's secret RSF camp: A dangerous new phase in Sudan's war

A massive, well-fortified training facility in Ethiopia near Sudan's border has been revealed to host fighters from Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The camp in the remote Benishangul-Gumuz region, capable of housing up to 10,000 fighters, represents the first direct evidence of Ethiopian involvement in the conflict.

Eight sources, including a senior Ethiopian government official, confirmed that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) helped fund its construction and provided military trainers.

Analysts say the discovery highlights how the two-year civil war, which has already killed tens of thousands and displaced more than 11 million people, is being shaped as much by foreign actors as by two warring generals.

The RSF, Ethiopia's government, and its army did not respond to requests for comment, while the UAE denied involvement, saying it was not a party to the conflict.

The UAE faces widespread accusations of backing the RSF, supplying arms, drones, funding, and logistics to sustain the civil war. Despite vehement denials from Abu Dhabi, UN panels, intelligence reports, and media investigations point to UAE supply routes through Chad, Libya, and Uganda.

On the back of these accusations, Sudan has severed diplomatic relations with the Gulf nation.

Amid the conflict, Ethiopia has reportedly drawn closer to the United Arab Emirates, with allegations that the two countries have jointly backed the RSF through recruitment pipelines, military cooperation, and shared funding.

Satellite imagery shows activity at the camp picking up in October, with more than 640 tents erected by late November and trucks moving recruits through the nearby town of Asosa, 53 kilometres away.

Ethiopia's deepening role

Mohamed Hussein, a political analyst and the executive director of the Darfur Human Rights Network, said the establishment of training camps in Ethiopia falls within the broader pattern of support that the UAE has provided to the RSF and allied militias.

"Such backing has existed from early on," he told The New Arab. "Ethiopia's formal reception of the RSF commander in Addis Ababa as though he were a head of state reflected the depth of those ties."

The partnership has deepened in recent months. In November, the two countries signed an air force memorandum of understanding that includes drone basing rights, which analysts say could enhance aerial support for the RSF. 

A joint diplomatic initiative announced in January, framed around security in the Horn of Africa, has been widely seen as a counterweight to a rival bloc comprising Eritrea, Egypt, and the Sudanese military.

Internally, Hussein noted, Ethiopia remains politically fragile, with a faltering peace with the Tigray Front, which has recently escalated operations after its ambitions were unmet in the peace agreement.

In November 2022, the government of Ethiopia signed a peace agreement with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, formally ending a brutal two-year war that began in 2020 and at its height sent fighting to the outskirts of Addis Ababa.

But the accord has not quelled Ethiopia’s deeper fault lines, as tensions among Oromo, Amhara and Tigrayan communities persist over political power, resources and disputed regional boundaries. This reality has pushed Ethiopia to seek allies to consolidate control at home and expand influence over its neighbours.

Ethiopia is channelling weapons into Darfur, according to Hussein, despite the arms embargo imposed under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1591 in 2005.

Supply routes through Libya, Chad, South Sudan and Ethiopia have sustained a flow of arms and foreign fighters, expanding the conflict into new areas and compounding civilian suffering.

Dangers to the Horn of Africa

Mohamed Abdel Aziz, a political analyst and secretary of the Sudanese Journalists' Syndicate, said that if the reports are accurate, Sudan stands at a dangerous strategic turning point.

"Establishing camps beyond the country's borders, specifically in Ethiopia, marks a shift from a struggle for power in Khartoum to a regionally entrenched war," Abdel Aziz told The New Arab.

It is a move that risks destabilising a Horn of Africa already fractured by internal conflicts in Ethiopia, tensions in Somalia, and the continuing dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Direct Ethiopian involvement, he argued, would inevitably provoke a counterreaction from the Sudanese Army and its allies, including Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, risking further interventions by neighbouring states and turning the Sudanese-Ethiopian border into an active front.

Nahar Osman Nahar, director of the Sudanese Centre for Civil and Democratic Studies, said these developments cannot be treated as routine military movements.

"We are looking at a clear indicator of a structural transformation in the nature of the war," he said. Nahar stressed that external links are not confined to one side. While reports focus on cross-border support tied to the RSF, the Sudanese Armed Forces also receive military cooperation, equipment, and political backing from external partners.

"The danger for the Horn of Africa," Nahar argued, "lies in three converging risks, which include cross-border arms corridors becoming entrenched, opposing regional alignments hardening, and advanced military technologies, particularly drones, proliferating across a region already defined by fragility."

The worst-case scenario, Abdel Aziz warned, is Sudan's fragmentation into an open arena of international conflict, akin to Libya or Yemen. 

"The army controls the north and east, the RSF the west and south, while regional powers deploy aircraft and drones in Sudanese skies," he said. 

If the Sudanese government were to interpret Ethiopia’s move as a hostile military act and invoke its joint defence pact with Egypt, “the conflict could escalate from a civil war into a regional one,” warned Al-Fateh Osman Mahjoub, a political analyst and deputy director general of the Al-Rasid Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. 

“Such a shift,” he said, “would open the door to dangerous scenarios, including the possible targeting of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.”

Stalled negotiations and the road ahead

Hussein said that Ethiopia and the UAE have cooperated on multiple fronts, including Ethiopia's bid for Red Sea access through Eritrea, prompting a web of regional alliances and contradictions aimed at advancing expansionist goals.

He argued that negotiations held in Jeddah or Manama between the army and the RSF do not reflect the true decision-makers.

"The choice of war or peace is not fully in the hands of the two leaderships," he told The New Arab. 

Within the army, factions of the Islamic movement, notably the Ali Karti wing, retain influence, while the RSF's decisions remain tied, in his view, to the Emirati president, Mohamed bin Zayed.

Negotiations between the SAF and RSF remain stalled despite international mediation. The 'Quad' grouping of the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE proposed a three-month humanitarian ceasefire followed by a nine-month transition to civilian rule, which SAF leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan rejected as biased.

The RSF declared a unilateral three-month ceasefire in November 2025, but the SAF did not reciprocate, and fighting has continued. In its 12 February meeting, the African Union Peace and Security Council called for a truce leading to Sudanese-led dialogue, but so far, there has been no real implementation on the ground.

Cross-border training and sustained logistical support also undermine prospects for peace, Abdel Aziz said. 

“When the RSF feels it has strategic depth and a steady flow of fighters and drones, they lose motivation to make meaningful concessions at the negotiating table."

Mahjoub suggested that opening the camps may not so much derail negotiations as prolong the war, because without mercenary support the RSF would ultimately be compelled to surrender. 

Averting the worst outcome, Abdel Aziz added, would require unifying Sudan's civilian forces behind peace and coordinated international pressure, including targeted sanctions on the regional actors financing and facilitating the war.

Eisa Dafallah is a Sudanese journalist published in local and international outlets, whose coverage is mostly focused on Darfur

This article is produced in collaboration with Egab

Edited by Charlie Hoyle