How Abu Dhabi Built an “Axis of Secessionists” Across the Region

How a small Gulf monarchy weaponized interdependence to fracture states and finance war economies

In 2025, Sudan’s government filed proceedings accusing the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of “complicity in genocide” for allegedly arming and funding the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan’s civil war. The charge illuminated a decade-long pattern: Abu Dhabi’s use of proxy militias, mercenaries, and breakaway movements to project influence far beyond its borders. From North Africa to the Horn of Africa, the UAE, a federation of just over a million citizens, has quietly assembled what analysts describe as an “axis of secessionists.”

This network, akin to Iran’s “axis of resistance,” ties together warlords, smugglers, and political factions under a counter-revolutionary banner. Its purpose is to suppress Islamist and populist movements that threaten Gulf monarchies, while simultaneously entrenching Emirati power across the region. But the strategy has left behind a trail of fractured states, war economies, and accusations of war crimes.

Origins of a Counterrevolutionary Ambition

After the Arab Spring of 2011, Abu Dhabi’s rulers led by Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) and his brothers, Mansour and Tahnoon watched the fall of dictatorships across the Arab world with existential dread. To them, the spectacle of street movements toppling entrenched regimes signaled not democratic awakening, but contagion a viral threat that could upend monarchic order at home and dismantle the regional architecture that guaranteed Emirati dominance.

The rapid collapse of Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s Tunisia revealed how brittle even long-standing police states could be when confronted with organized Islamist parties and mass mobilization. MBZ’s anxieties were deeply ideological. He viewed Islamism especially the Muslim Brotherhood not merely as a political force but as a civilizational rival. The Brotherhood’s model of participatory, populist governance clashed fundamentally with the top-down technocratic authoritarianism on which the Emirati system rests.

Thus, the Arab Spring became the crucible in which the UAE’s counterrevolutionary doctrine was forged. Abu Dhabi resolved that “revolution must be contained, not tolerated.” The strategy would rely not on overt conquest, but on financial dominance, information control, and proxy warfare a form of soft occupation conducted through banks, ports, and private armies rather than tanks.

The architecture of this doctrine was built around weaponized interdependence: a model in which the UAE made itself indispensable to regional elites through capital, logistics, and political cover. By controlling access to investment, trade corridors, and security contracts, Abu Dhabi turned dependence into leverage. In return for Emirati funding and diplomatic backing, foreign leaders and, in many cases, warlords absorbed Emirati priorities into their domestic politics.

In Egypt, this system found its first full expression. In 2013, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh financed and coordinated the military coup that ousted Mohamed Morsi, the Brotherhood’s first democratically elected leader. Billions of dollars flowed from Emirati sovereign funds to Cairo, stabilizing the new Sisi regime and cementing Egypt as the cornerstone of a regional counterrevolutionary bloc. For MBZ, the lesson was simple: money and networks could achieve what armies could not remaking political orders without formal annexation.

From there, Abu Dhabi exported the model to Libya, Yemen, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa relying on a blend of commercial interlocks, mercenary deployments, and information warfare. But one of the least acknowledged extensions of this architecture has been Pakistan, a state whose economic fragility and internal divisions made it ripe for quiet penetration.

In Pakistan, Abu Dhabi’s influence took a more sophisticated form: not militias and warlords, but financial entanglement and elite capture. The UAE became a vital lifeline for Pakistan’s remittance economy, hosting over 1.5 million Pakistani workers whose remittances exceed $6 billion annually. That dependency on labor access, Gulf employment, and Emirati capital gave Abu Dhabi significant leverage over Islamabad’s foreign policy.

During the late 2010s and early 2020s, this leverage deepened as the UAE began positioning itself as an investor in Pakistan’s privatization drive. Through holding companies such as ADQ, International Holding Company (IHC), and Abu Dhabi Ports Group, Emirati entities acquired stakes in energy, logistics, and telecommunications sectors often through opaque or politically brokered deals. The creation of Pakistan’s Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) in 2023, ostensibly to attract Gulf investment, effectively institutionalized this relationship. It allowed Emirati interests to bypass parliamentary scrutiny and negotiate directly with Pakistan’s military establishment—an arrangement that mirrored Abu Dhabi’s preference for transactional, elite-to-elite governance rather than democratic accountability.

The UAE’s financial presence was accompanied by soft-power infiltration: think-tank sponsorships, media acquisitions, and quiet funding of voices hostile to populist and Islamist politics. When Imran Khan whose government had resisted normalization with Israel, opposed foreign bases, and championed Muslim unity was ousted in 2022, many regional analysts identified his removal as aligning neatly with Emirati strategic objectives. Pakistan’s new leadership, more compliant toward Gulf and Western interests, facilitated UAE-linked acquisitions in state assets from Karachi Port to Pakistan International Airlines.

In this sense, Pakistan fits into the same ideological and structural framework as Abu Dhabi’s operations elsewhere. The instruments differ corporate control instead of militia alliances but the underlying logic is identical: suppress populist sovereignty, entrench economic dependency, and neutralize any movement that might fuse Islamic identity with democratic legitimacy.

By the mid-2020s, the UAE’s counterrevolutionary architecture thus spanned two continents. Its tentacles reached from Cairo’s barracks and Benghazi’s airbases to Karachi’s privatization boards and Gwadar’s port contracts. What began as a reaction to the Arab Spring had evolved into a global strategy one in which the preservation of autocracy abroad became inseparable from the projection of Emirati power at home.

Libya: The First Experiment

Libya became the proving ground for this strategy. Following Muammar Gaddafi’s fall, the UAE threw its support behind General Khalifa Haftar, an anti-Islamist strongman. By 2015, Emirati weapons, funds, and Chinese-made drones transformed Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) into the dominant force in eastern Libya.

Investigations by the New Arab and UN experts documented extensive Emirati violations of the UN arms embargo, with over 150 cargo flights ferrying munitions to Haftar between 2019 and 2020. Reuters later traced some of these flights to UAE-based private carriers. The Libya Observer further reported that billions of dollars in frozen Libyan assets were diverted through Emirati banks to bankroll Haftar’s campaigns.

Libya’s east today remains under LNA control a quasi-state financed by smuggling, Russian mercenaries, and UAE-linked companies. As analyst Wolfram Lacher put it, “The UAE has been the leading spoiler in Libya since 2015.”

Yemen: Divide and Rule

In Yemen, Abu Dhabi joined Saudi Arabia’s 2015 intervention against the Houthi rebels but soon diverged from Riyadh’s aims. After suffering heavy losses, the UAE pivoted from direct combat to proxy control. It formed the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a secessionist bloc led by Aidarous al-Zoubaidi, reviving South Yemen’s independence cause. The STC’s militias, funded and trained by Emirati officers, now dominate Aden and large parts of southern Yemen. Emirati companies, including AD Ports, have secured concessions over Aden’s port and surrounding trade infrastructure. Meanwhile, UAE-backed forces have been implicated in torture, assassinations, and secret prisons, according to human rights monitors.

Yemen’s fragmentation has deepened as a result. The UAE’s southern clients operate autonomously, often clashing with Saudi-backed government forces an outcome that mirrors Abu Dhabi’s “divide and conquer” strategy seen elsewhere.

Sudan: Gold, Guns, and Genocide Allegations

Sudan’s war has become the most revealing example of how the United Arab Emirates has turned proxy relationships into self-financing systems of conflict. Since April 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the country has descended into chaos. Tens of thousands have been killed, more than fourteen million displaced, and famine has taken hold across Darfur and Kordofan.

At the heart of the RSF’s resilience lies a war economy built around gold and external sponsorship. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, transformed the RSF from a paramilitary militia into a financial empire by controlling Sudan’s most lucrative gold mines. His family and associates established trading companies that exported gold to Dubai, converting bullion into hard currency that was recycled into weapons, vehicles, and logistics for his forces. The RSF’s financial networks were effectively plugged into the UAE’s commercial and banking ecosystem, allowing Hemeti to operate independently of Sudan’s central authorities.

Throughout 2024, multiple investigations documented how Emirati-linked cargo flights landed at an airstrip in eastern Chad, ferrying supplies to the RSF under the guise of humanitarian aid. Satellite imagery and eyewitness testimony confirmed the scale of these shipments. United Nations experts later verified that many of the weapons used by the RSF, Chinese-made drones and small arms had passed through Emirati intermediaries in violation of the arms embargo.

By early 2025, Sudan formally accused the UAE of complicity in genocide before the International Court of Justice, alleging that Abu Dhabi’s arms and financial support enabled the RSF’s atrocities in Darfur. While the case was later dismissed on procedural grounds, it exposed the deep links between the RSF’s battlefield endurance and Emirati supply chains. The United States and United Kingdom imposed sanctions on several UAE-based firms tied to Hemeti’s network, but enforcement within the Emirates has been minimal.

The crisis reached a new stage in mid-2025. Sudan cut diplomatic ties with the UAE, accusing it of violating its sovereignty and arming insurgents. In retaliation, Abu Dhabi quietly restricted Sudanese gold exports and imposed a de facto flight ban on Sudanese cargo, sending the Sudanese pound into free fall. By October, the economy had lost nearly forty percent of its value, while RSF forces tightened their grip over Darfur.

In November 2025, fresh massacres in El-Fasher reignited the debate over foreign complicity. Survivors described systematic killings and ethnic cleansing reminiscent of earlier genocides. Sudanese officials accused the RSF of using new weapons, long-range drones and guided munitions, allegedly supplied through Emirati re-export channels. Amnesty International confirmed that advanced Chinese weaponry routed through the UAE had been identified in RSF-controlled zones.

The pattern is unmistakable: gold finances guns; guns sustain war; and war enables further looting of resources that again flow through Dubai’s commercial system. For the UAE, Sudan represents both a strategic foothold in Africa and a lucrative conflict economy. For Sudan, it is a catastrophe. The humanitarian crisis deepens with every new shipment, and a nation once poised for democratic transition now stands hollowed out by a proxy war that benefits everyone but its people.Somalia: Patronage and Partition

The UAE’s influence in Somalia blends security interests with commercial ambition. It has financed regional militias in Puntland and Somaliland while sidelining the federal government in Mogadishu.

In Puntland, Abu Dhabi established and funded the Puntland Maritime Police Force, trained by private contractors. In Somaliland, DP World and the UAE military developed Berbera port and an adjacent base investments that reinforced Somaliland’s autonomy and aspirations for recognition.

Further south, the UAE has built a new base near Kismayo in Jubaland, arming local forces led by Ahmed Madobe. Emirati drone strikes against Al-Shabaab militants in 2023–24 demonstrated the UAE’s growing kinetic role in Somalia. Critics warn that this patronage of breakaway territories undermines Somalia’s fragile federal unity and risks perpetuating conflict.

Pakistan: Elite Capture and the Quiet Coup

Unlike in Libya, Yemen, or Sudan where Abu Dhabi’s hand is visible through militias and mercenaries its intervention in Pakistan has been far subtler, operating through the arteries of finance, elite networks, and political patronage. Yet the objectives remain identical: suppress populist or Islamist governance, cement the primacy of the military–bureaucratic order, and anchor Pakistan’s economy within the orbit of Emirati capital.

The relationship deepened in the aftermath of Imran Khan’s removal in April 2022, an event that many analysts regard as a watershed in Pakistan’s postcolonial politics. Khan’s tenure had unsettled Gulf capitals. He refused to normalize relations with Israel, rejected basing rights for American forces, opposed the Yemen war, and called for Muslim unity through platforms independent of Gulf monarchies. To Abu Dhabi, this posture mirrored the ideological tendencies it had worked to extinguish since the Arab Spring an assertive, democratic Islamism that challenged monarchic authority.

When Khan’s government fell, Abu Dhabi moved swiftly to fill the vacuum. Within weeks, high-level Emirati delegations began negotiating direct investment packages through Pakistan’s newly established Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) a hybrid body dominated by the military, deliberately insulated from parliamentary oversight. The SIFC became a conduit through which Emirati, Saudi, and Qatari funds could access Pakistan’s privatization pipeline.

Through sovereign vehicles like ADQ, Abu Dhabi Ports Group, International Holding Company (IHC), and Edge Group, the UAE targeted Pakistan’s strategic assets, ports, energy terminals, mining concessions, and telecommunications infrastructure. In mid-2024, Abu Dhabi Ports entered talks to take over operations of Karachi Port’s East Wharf, an agreement brokered not through civilian ministries but directly with Pakistan’s army-run Frontier Works Organization. Similar patterns emerged in the aviation and mineral sectors, where entities linked to the Emirati royal court explored stakes in Pakistan International Airlines, Reko Diq copper mines, and mineral-rich Balochistan districts.

This network of acquisitions mirrors Abu Dhabi’s model of weaponized interdependence: transforming economic lifelines into levers of political control. Pakistan’s chronic fiscal crisis made it acutely vulnerable. By providing dollars when Western lenders stalled and investing in privatization programs that the IMF encouraged, the UAE positioned itself as Pakistan’s financial guarantor of last resort.

But economic penetration was only one dimension. Abu Dhabi’s influence extended into Pakistan’s information and political ecosystems. Over the past decade, UAE-based media holdings and PR consultancies have supported narratives favorable to Gulf clients while smearing populist opposition as “radical” or “irresponsible.” Investigative journalists in Islamabad have traced flows of Emirati political funding to lobbying firms and think tanks shaping public discourse on foreign policy, defense, and “stability.”

The ideological alignment between the UAE and Pakistan’s entrenched elite is clear. Both view populist mobilization especially when infused with Islamic or nationalist rhetoric as a destabilizing force. Under the Sharif and caretaker governments, Islamabad’s policies increasingly reflected Emirati preferences: rapprochement with Israel quietly revisited under “trade facilitation” language; muted criticism of Gulf interventionism; and military-to-military cooperation framed as counterterrorism, but oriented toward securing Emirati commercial interests in the Arabian Sea.

At the same time, Pakistan’s working class over 1.5 million expatriates in the UAE remains a key pillar of this asymmetric relationship. Their remittances, exceeding $6 billion annually, underpin Pakistan’s foreign reserves and serve as a constant reminder of dependency. The UAE controls their labor mobility, residency rights, and visa quotas, using them as both economic and political leverage. When tensions rise, as seen during Khan’s tenure, visa restrictions and deportations are subtly employed to signal displeasure.

In effect, Pakistan represents Abu Dhabi’s experiment in non-military subversion: a model of influence exercised not through warlords or militias, but through boardrooms, bureaucracies, and backchannels. The Emirati approach fuses financial infiltration with political engineering an invisible coup that reshapes sovereignty without firing a shot.

By 2025, the contours of this control had become unmistakable. The same state that once championed neutrality in regional conflicts now defers to Gulf alignments. Its privatization pipeline reads like a catalog of Emirati assets-in-waiting, its ports and corridors folded into a larger map of Emirati strategic logistics stretching from the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea.

For Pakistan’s civilian population, the cost is the same as in every country drawn into Abu Dhabi’s orbit: diminished sovereignty, economic dependency, and the slow erosion of democratic accountability under the guise of investment and stability. The Emirates’ axis of secessionists thus extends not only across battlefields it now reaches into the bureaucratic and financial heart of a nuclear-armed republic once imagined as the standard-bearer of Muslim self-determination.

A Network of Influence

Across these theaters Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, the UAE’s approach follows a pattern: cultivate proxies, control supply chains, and monetize instability. Its model fuses statecraft with corporate logistics, using front companies, financial hubs, and mercenary contracts to sustain conflicts while maintaining plausible deniability.

Western governments, despite ample evidence of violations, have largely refrained from imposing serious costs. The UAE’s economic clout and strategic partnerships with the U.S., U.K., and France have shielded it from censure. In effect, Abu Dhabi has become both a broker of peace and an architect of war.

The Cost of Power

Abu Dhabi’s “axis of secessionists” has granted it unmatched regional leverage. Yet the consequences are stark: fractured states, proliferating war economies, and immense human suffering. The Emirati playbook has turned interdependence into a weapon one that trades stability for strategic depth.

As conflicts in Sudan and Yemen spiral on, the question for the international community is whether to continue tolerating this model. The UAE’s ascent as a power broker has come at the expense of the very state order it claims to defend.

References

1. Andreas Krieg, “How Abu Dhabi Built an Axis of Secessionists Across the Region,” Middle East Eye / andreaskrieg.com, March 28, 2025.

2. Reade Levinson & David Lewis, “Dozens of UAE Flights Head to Airstrip UN Says Supplies Arms to Sudan Rebels,” Reuters, December 12, 2024.

3. The New Arab, “UAE Weapon Deliveries to Libya’s Haftar Escalated After It Agreed to Uphold UN Arms Embargo,” September 30, 2020.

4. Abdulkader Assad, “UAE Used Libya Frozen Assets in Its Banks to Boost Military Grip of Warlord Haftar,” Libya Observer, March 15, 2018.

5. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Sanctions Sudanese Paramilitary Leader, Weapons Supplier, and Related Companies,” Press Release, January 7, 2025.

6. Yasir Zaidan, “U.S. Sudan Sanctions Won’t Work Without the UAE’s Help,” Foreign Policy, September 21, 2023.

7. Ido Levy, “Emirati Military Support Is Making a Difference in Somalia,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, March 18, 2024.

8. Emily Milliken, “Strategic Crossroads: Navigating the UAE’s Security Dilemma in Somalia,” Gulf International Forum, February 26, 2024.

9. Barran Press, “STC Leader Seeks Deal with Abu Dhabi Ports Amid Corruption Allegations at Aden Port,” June 17, 2024.

10. Harvard WCFIA Epicenter, “Allies at Odds: Tracking the Rivalry Between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,” 2024.

11. Saxafi Media, “Somaliland Courts Trump with Military Base and Critical Minerals in High-Stakes Bid for U.S. Recognition,” 2024.

12. Mereja Forum, “The Exodus of Ethiopia’s Frustrated Youth,” 2023.

13. EJIL: Talk, “Another Genocide Convention Case, Another Conundrum for Interventions,” 2024.