In an investigation conducted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) titled “From the Andes to Darfur: Colombians Lured to Sudan’s Killing Fields,” by Valentín Díaz and Bahira Amin, with contributions from Patricio Arana, Yann Schreiber, and AFP teams in Port Sudan and Nairobi, the agency uncovers a transnational recruitment network that funneled hundreds of former Colombian soldiers into Sudan’s war.
The AFP investigation details how Colombian ex-soldiers were lured with promises of lucrative Emirati salaries, only to find themselves deployed into a conflict defined by mass killings, rape, starvation, and child recruitment. Drawing on interviews with mercenaries and their families, corporate records, satellite imagery, flight-tracking data, and geolocated battlefield footage, the report traces how these fighters ended up reinforcing the ranks of the Rapid Support Militia, a paramilitary group accused of genocide in Darfur.
According to AFP, recruitment began through direct WhatsApp messages targeting retired Colombian military personnel. Recruits were initially flown to the United Arab Emirates, where they underwent brief training, before being transferred into Sudan through carefully structured routes designed to evade detection.
One route passed through eastern Libya, territory controlled by Khalifa Haftar, whose forces are backed by the UAE and whose region has since become a key corridor for weapons, fuel, and fighters supplying the Rapid Support Militia. Another route ran through Bosaso in Somalia, via an airbase hosting Emirati military officials.
Geolocation analysis conducted by AFP of videos filmed by the mercenaries themselves places Colombian fighters at the sites of some of the fiercest fighting in Darfur, including areas around El-Fasher and locations later associated with mass atrocities. Verified footage shows Colombians inside and around the city prior to its capture, directly contradicting attempts to downplay their operational role.
The investigation also reveals the intended scale of the operation. The former partner of a retired Colombian colonel, later sanctioned by the United States, stated that the mission aimed to place up to 2,500 men into the Rapid Support Militia’s ranks. On December 9, the United States imposed sanctions on four Colombian nationals and their companies for their role in this transnational network.
However, US authorities did not publicly name the Emirati corporate node at the centre of the operation, Global Security Services Group, a private security contractor based in Abu Dhabi that has previously listed several Emirati government ministries among its clients.
Beyond logistics and financing, AFP highlights the severe human cost of the operation. In Colombia, families of the mercenaries suffer largely in silence. One widow told AFP that her husband’s body has never been returned home. He was 33 years old and died within months of arriving in Sudan. Another family confirmed that the remains of a 25-year-old Colombian fighter killed in Sudan last year were returned only as ashes.
While the Rapid Support Militia reportedly commands tens of thousands of fighters, AFP notes that most are poorly trained foot soldiers, more associated with looting and sexual violence than with complex military operations. Colombian mercenaries, by contrast, were specifically sought for their expertise in drones, artillery, and long-range tactical warfare, capabilities that later coincided with decisive battlefield shifts.
The investigation further documents the role of Bosaso as a transit hub. Local residents reported seeing groups of light-skinned foreign men in their thirties and forties, with military builds, escorted through restricted airport sections used by Emirati officials and flown onward in cargo aircraft. Satellite imagery reviewed by AFP repeatedly shows Ilyushin IL-76D cargo planes, the same aircraft type identified at UAE and Libyan airbases and linked to Rapid Support Militia supply lines through Chad.
Despite repeated denials by the UAE that it supports the Rapid Support Militia, AFP cites reports by UN experts, US lawmakers, and international organisations indicating that Emirati support has continued in violation of the UN arms embargo on Darfur. Diplomats and analysts interviewed by AFP link this involvement to Sudan’s gold reserves, fertile agricultural land, its long Red Sea coastline, and its strategic position between the Horn of Africa and the Sahel.
In response to mounting public outrage, Colombian lawmakers have recently passed legislation banning the recruitment of mercenaries, following years in which Colombian fighters appeared in conflicts from Afghanistan to Ukraine. For those already deployed to Sudan, however, the law came too late.
This investigation adds new evidence that the war in Sudan was never an internal affair, but a transnational, organised crime. The Rapid Support Militia did not wage a conventional war, but unleashed a campaign built on genocide, mass killing, torture, rape, systematic sexual violence, enslavement, and the destruction of entire communities across Darfur and vast areas of Sudan.
These crimes did not occur in a vacuum they were enabled through networks of recruitment, trafficking, and financing, where interests, weapons, and silence converged, and where the UAE emerges as a central actor accused of providing the routes and political and logistical support that kept the militia capable of killing. What AFP has uncovered is not merely the story of mercenaries, but further proof that Sudanese suffering is the direct result of international complicity that allowed the Rapid Support Militia to carry out some of the gravest contemporary crimes, while victims are left without protection, without justice, and without accountability to this day.
Source: Sudanese Echo/ AFP
