PNN – In recent years, the European Union, despite warnings from international circles about European military equipment reaching Rapid Support Forces has continued to export weapons to Sudan.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, citing Al Jazeera, Sudan was on the verge of a prolonged crisis even before the public outbreak of war in April 2023. Decades of authoritarian rule under Omar al-Bashir had left the country with a fragile economy, fragmented security forces, and deeply entrenched paramilitary structures.
After Bashir’s ousting in a 2019 coup, the transitional arrangements between civilians and the military failed to unite rival factions. As a result, political instability, local uprisings, and intense competition between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) escalated into a full-scale war.
Despite the geographical distance, the European Union has played an influential role in these developments. For nearly a decade, the EU pursued a strategy of “internationalizing” migration management, providing aid, training, and equipment to African countries under the pretext of reducing illegal migration to Europe.
This approach had unintended and destructive consequences in Sudan, as resources allocated for “migration management” and “capacity building” became entangled with arms trafficking and weak oversight.
European governments, especially the United Kingdom, continued their aid practices while knowing that these funds would be converted into equipment reaching the Rapid Support Forces.
Between 2014 and 2018, the EU injected over €200 million (approximately $232 million) into Sudan through the “European Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF)” and the “Better Migration Management” program. These funds effectively strengthened cooperation between the EU and Sudanese security structures, including units later integrated into the Rapid Support Forces.
The Enough Project, in an early 2017 report titled “Border Monitoring from Hell,” warned that “the most dangerous aspect of Europe’s role in Sudan is that the Rapid Support Forces may benefit from European funding.”
Two years later, the EU had to suspend several migration control activities in Sudan due to concerns that resources might be diverted for repressive purposes, as revealed by Deutsche Welle using an official EU document.
These contradictions raise a fundamental question: if the EU was aware of the risk of resource diversion, why did it continue to inject hundreds of millions of euros into Sudan under weak oversight of spending?
European Weapons in the Sudan War
As the conflict deepened, foreign weapons and ammunition, primarily European, were found among the Rapid Support Forces. Verified images, open-source analysis, and serial number tracking confirmed the presence of European-made weapons in the Sudan war.
In November 2024, Amnesty International published an investigation showing that “Nimr Ajban” armored personnel carriers were equipped with defense systems made by the French company Galix. The organization released images and videos from multiple locations in Sudan, concluding that the deployment of these systems in Darfur violated the UN arms embargo that has long applied to the region.
Field investigations conducted by France 24 and Reuters in April revealed that 81mm mortars used by the Rapid Support Forces in northern Darfur were of Bulgarian origin, with markings matching mortars produced by a Bulgarian company.
In October, The Guardian disclosed that British military equipment, including light weapon targeting systems and armored engines, was in the hands of the Rapid Support Forces.
Collectively, this evidence indicates that European-made weapons, despite bans and assurances, have ended up in the hands of conflict parties in Sudan. Nevertheless, European governments, particularly the United Kingdom, continued to issue new export licenses even while knowing that their equipment had reached terrorist elements within the Rapid Support Forces.