UN details RSF supply routes as leaked report spotlights UAE-Chad flights

April 16, 2025( NEW YORK) – An upcoming United Nations report maps out increasingly sophisticated supply lines fuelling Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), including routes via Chad and Libya and potential airlifts into Darfur, while details from a separate, leaked U.N. document have reignited questions about the United Arab Emirates’ alleged role, according to reports and reviewed documents.

The soon-to-be-released U.N. Panel of Experts report, obtained by Sudan Tribune, reveal investigations centred on Am Djarass airport in neighbouring Chad between May and October 2024. While investigators identified land routes from the airport into Darfur, they noted they could not confirm any military supplies were transferred from Am Djarass at the time of writing.

These overland routes came under pressure starting June 2024, when forces loyal to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) launched a “Desert Front” campaign targeting RSF supply hubs, the extracts show. The report details how the RSF adapted, decentralised storage and established a new logistics base at Bir Mirgui in North Darfur. This hub reportedly received supplies flowing from eastern Chad and southern Libya, managed by commanders including Abdallah Tijani Chaghab.

The UN investigators also noted a potential shift in RSF logistics, with reported activity involving night flights at Nyala airport in South Darfur between September and November 2024. Using Nyala could provide faster resupply, bypassing contested land routes, the report suggests. SAF bombed the Nyala airport in November 2024.

Meanwhile, details emerged Tuesday via Britain’s Guardian newspaper from a separate, confidential UN document dated November 2023. This earlier report described a “consistent pattern” of cargo flights, often using Ilyushin Il-76TD aircraft, originating from UAE bases and flying to Chad, forming what those experts called a potential “new regional air bridge”.

That 2023 document highlighted flight path anomalies, like planes disappearing from radar, which raised “questions of possible covert operations,” the Guardian reported. It also noted links between some flight operators and past illicit arms transfers.

Crucially, however, the experts concluded within that Nov. 2023 leaked report that they could not verify the cargo contents and lacked sufficient evidence to prove arms transfers, calling it “premature to infer” an arms network based on the flights, according to the Guardian. These specific findings about the UAE-Chad flights are reportedly not included in the panel’s final, upcoming report.

These revelations surfaced as Britain hosted a conference on Sudan peace in London on Tuesday, and follow Sudan’s move to bring a case against the UAE at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alleging complicity in genocide through support for the RSF.

The UAE has consistently denied supplying weapons to any side in the Sudan conflict and has dismissed the ICJ case as baseless. On its side, the Sudanese government claim it provided the court with “irrefutable evidence”.

Although the UN Panel of Experts’ 2024 report, due soon, maps out RSF supply lines through Chad and Libya, it apparently stops short of naming the source of the weapons traversing these routes. This leaves persistent questions about external involvement unanswered, especially given the details of regular UAE-Chad flights documented in the separate, leaked 2023 UN report publicized by the Guardian.