Inside the RSF's Libya Supply Network
How Libya Became the Key Node in the Emirates-Darfur Pipeline
In the desert southeast of Kufra sits an old airbase from the Gaddafi era, its runway now receiving cargo planes from Benghazi and beyond. A Lighthouse Reports investigation reveals it as one node in a sprawling network supplying Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) with weapons, fuel, and fighters.
Equipment enters Libya by sea and air, through Benghazi's port and on cargo flights landing at several bases across the country's interior, before moving south toward staging areas near the Sudanese border.
The network operates within territory controlled by the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, which controls eastern and southern Libya. Sources said that RSF personnel were brought to Libya overland and by air, where they underwent training at Camp 17, an LNA facility, on drones and heavy weapons systems.
At another base in the city of Sabha in the Fezzan region, a sign displays portraits of both Haftar and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo — a declaration of an alliance that neither side publicly acknowledges.
An RSF defector who spent three months at Camp 17 outside Benghazi described training on heavy weapons systems: Dushka heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, and RPGs. He said the trainers were neither Libyan nor Sudanese; they were covered in tattoos, spoke English, and “had a special rank in that camp.” Among recruits, the consensus was that they were Colombian, and that the UAE had brought and paid for them.
Another defector described a different foreign presence at Jufra: Russian personnel in operational command of the base, with Libyan subordinates handling administration and coordination.
Cargo planes regularly arrived in Libya bringing weapons, vehicles, and boxes of ammunition, according to defectors. Though most were unmarked, their origin was not in doubt: “When the plane arrives, you can see clearly it’s Emirati,” said a defector interviewed in Benghazi. At least one type of armored vehicle bore explicit “Made in UAE” markings, he added.
The Emirati origin of RSF armored vehicles has since been corroborated independently. Open-source analysts assessed that a new batch of armored vehicles, filmed in Nyala, almost certainly were manufactured in the UAE — purpose-built for the RSF and its Libyan allies.
Researchers have also documented the flow of RSF fuel from eastern Libya into Darfur. A November 2025 investigation by The Sentry found that the Haftar coalition has been a strategic fuel supplier to the RSF throughout the war, diverting subsidized fuel via Kufra and other locations in eastern Libya. The investigation identified Saddam Haftar, son of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, as personally directing the operation at the behest of the UAE.
Overall, Libya gives the RSF something it lacks inside Sudan: a secure rear base, where training sites and logistics are protected from aerial attack, where food and fuel are more readily available, and where foreign trainers can arrive more easily from the UAE, without exposing them to the dangers and public scrutiny that would come with operating directly in Darfur.
In an interview, Dr. Alaa El-Din Nugud, a spokesman for the RSF-led Tasis Alliance, denied that the RSF has training camps in Libya. When presented with evidence from witness accounts, he questioned their credibility. Asked about UAE-provided armaments, he acknowledged “the Emirates gave it to us,” before pivoting to ideological justifications for UAE support.
Nugud pointed to the UAE's opposition to political Islamism, which the RSF also claims to oppose. In official statements, the RSF often denounces the Sudanese Armed Forces as the "terrorist Islamic Movement army" or the "Muslim Brotherhood army," though the RSF formerly fought alongside it.
Pushed to acknowledge the UAE supply chain through Libya, Nugud deflected with a medical analogy. He likened Sudan to a patient sick with malaria. Focusing on foreign weapons, Colombian trainers, or Emirati funding, he said, was like treating the symptoms — “the fever, the vomiting” — while ignoring the underlying parasite causing Sudan’s ills. In his telling, Sudan’s Islamist-backed military establishment needs to be purged completely before there can be peace.
In pursuit of this ostensible agenda, however, the RSF has left a trail of devastation in its wake, victimizing many who have nothing to do with the military or the Islamic Movement. One victim, Fatima, told Lighthouse Reports that she lost her husband, a merchant, during the RSF occupation of Khartoum. Detained at gunpoint at a checkpoint, he was never heard from again. Fatima found herself suddenly alone in the besieged capital, sick and struggling to take care of a newborn. “The situation was extremely difficult. My father told me to move to Libya, as there are NGOs there—so go.”
As weapons and fighters crossed the Libyan desert one way, Fatima crossed in the other direction — along with thousands of other Sudanese fleeing the brutality of the war. She sold all her valuables, including the jewelry that she had received as a dowry, to pay for the journey. It took 25 days across the desert to reach Libya. “When we reached Libya, we had nothing left.”
“It’s safe here,” she said, “but my mind is not at ease. Because we lost family and have been long separated from my parents… and all my siblings are displaced, each is in a different place. I have nothing left but my children and my honor. That’s the last thing I have left in life.”
Another victim had to flee Zamzam Camp in North Darfur when the RSF attacked it. Her husband was killed in a drone attack. Weeping, she described the terrifying experience of fleeing through RSF lines, where many women were raped, men were killed, and survivors were robbed. Asked whom she blamed for her pain, she said, “I blame all parties, all of them. There is no reason for this fight, I can’t see any reason for these problems. Because it is the civilians who are being harmed. The harm falls on the civilians.”
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