A new report by the Conflict Intelligence Group (CIG) has used mobile phone tracking data to establish what it calls the first certain proof of UAE involvement in Sudan's civil war, revealing a network of Colombian mercenaries deployed to support the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — a paramilitary group fighting Sudan's regular army since 2022. The investigators traced more than 50 devices with Spanish-language settings from Colombia through a UAE military training facility in Ghayathi, Abu Dhabi, to RSF-held areas of Sudan, including the city of el-Fasher (the capital of North Darfur state in western Sudan), which fell to the RSF last October after an 18-month siege marked by mass atrocities that international prosecutors have described as bearing the hallmarks of genocide. The UAE, which has previously denied backing the RSF, has not yet responded to the latest findings; the mercenaries are said to have operated as drone pilots and artillerymen under a unit called the Desert Wolves, led by a sanctioned retired Colombian army colonel based in the Emirates.