Ethiopia expels six Sudanese diplomats as rights groups press the Emirati supply line

Human Rights Watch, in a piece published 11 November, stated that the United Arab Emirates has provided the Rapid Support Forces with weapons and supplies and facilitated the hiring of private military contractors, and that Colombian contractors trained at UAE military bases were deployed alongside the RSF on the front lines of El Fasher, operating drones and artillery. The stronger instrument HRW cites is not its own: the UN Fact Finding Mission concluded that individuals and entities with links to the UAE “played a significant role in the recruitment, financing, transportation and deployment of foreign military contractors.” HRW notes the European Parliament criticised the Emirates in a resolution adopted in July 2026. Africa Defense Forum, writing on 10 November, reported that the UAE launders gold smuggled out of RSF-held territory and supplies the group with drones and other weapons, at least once through an airstrip in Chad, citing a United Nations report; ADF is funded by US Africa Command, and the underlying UN Panel of Experts material is the document that matters.

The eastern border has moved faster. On 4 November, Sudan’s foreign ministry accused Ethiopia of hosting multiple RSF drone launch sites and alleged the resulting attacks had killed hundreds of civilians and disrupted essential services — a ministry figure with no stated methodology, and an allegation that remains unestablished independently. Ethiopia responded the same day by ordering six Sudanese diplomats to leave the country, reported by Reuters and logged by the Council on Foreign Relations; that expulsion is the confirmed fact in the sequence. Khartoum has filed parallel complaints to the UN Security Council and the African Union Peace and Security Council. The precipitating incident, on 20 October, was a drone attack and fires at Alneam market in the disputed Abyei region. The Sudanese border affairs specialist Abdul Kareem Al-Almin Ahmed told Al Jazeera that Ethiopia’s alleged support for the RSF has opened differences within the armed forces over how to respond.

Assessment: Keep the two halves of this apart. A UN mission’s finding on Emirati-linked contractor recruitment and a foreign ministry’s unsourced claim about launch sites are not the same class of evidence, and Khartoum benefits from their being read together. What connects them is the mediation architecture: the Quad that has been drafting Sudan’s truce texts since 2025 includes the state most credibly accused by a UN body of supplying one belligerent. That is the mechanical reason the army’s rejection of the Quad truce has held for a year, and nothing this week changed it. Watch instead whether Addis Ababa’s expulsions draw a reciprocal move — that is how a proxy war acquires a second interstate front.