Egypt appears to have shifted from diplomatic broker to covert combatant in Sudan’s war, in what may be the center of a widening regional proxy struggle, with new evidence pointing to drone and air strikes launched from a secret base in the Western Desert and rising tensions with the UAE over support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Investigations by international and regional outlets indicate that Egypt has moved well beyond political support for Sudan’s Armed Forces (SAF). Satellite imagery, flight logs and interviews cited by The New York Times and others point to a covert airbase embedded in the East Oweinat agricultural reclamation project, roughly 65 kilometers from the Sudanese border, being used to launch drone strikes against RSF targets deep inside Sudan.
A Middle East Eye investigation, drawing on the same body of evidence, reports that drone sorties from the site have been underway for at least six months, targeting RSF convoys and positions in an effort to blunt the group’s rapid territorial expansion. The operations mark Egypt’s evolution from cautious mediator to active, if deniable, belligerent on the side of the SAF.
El‑Fasher as a turning point
The RSF’s capture of El‑Fasher, capital of North Darfur, is the point at which Cairo’s calculus changed. The fall of the city and reports of mass atrocities there were treated in Cairo as a strategic and moral “red line,” given Egypt’s concerns over border security and refugee flows.
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), in its first visit to El‑Fasher since suspending operations, described the city on January 15 as “largely destroyed” and “emptied,” calling it a “ghost town” with only a small fraction of civilians remaining or returning after the RSF takeover. MSF stressed that its four‑hour, tightly supervised assessment could only offer a limited glimpse, but still concluded that the scale of destruction and depopulation implied that many residents had been killed or displaced.
Proxy alignments around Sudan’s war
The Sudan conflict now sits at the intersection of several overlapping regional rivalries. Multiple investigations and diplomatic sources identify the UAE as the RSF’s principal external patron, accused of channeling weapons, funds and fighters via air and land routes through eastern Libya, Chad and increasingly Ethiopia, though Abu Dhabi flatly denies providing military support.
By contrast, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar are broadly aligned with the SAF, albeit with differing approaches and levels of visibility. The fall of El‑Fasher pushed Egypt and Turkey to deepen coordination with the SAF, including Turkish drone support and quiet Egyptian logistical backing along the Sudanese border. There is also a looser Saudi‑Turkish axis emerging around support for the Sudanese army, with Turkish‑made drones and other systems integrated into a wider Saudi‑led effort to prevent paramilitary fragmentation of Sudan.
Pressure on Haftar and the Libya–Sudan corridor
One concrete manifestation of this contest is the mounting pressure on Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar, whose eastern forces control airbases and territory central to the RSF’s logistics. Egypt and Saudi Arabia summoned Haftar’s son and deputy, Saddam Haftar, to Cairo in January and presented intelligence on Emirati‑supplied arms, drones and fuel moving via eastern Libya to RSF units in Darfur.
Egyptian officials warned that continued facilitation of such flows could force Cairo to reconsider its long‑standing security partnership with Haftar, and signaled a willingness to interdict convoys crossing the Libya–Sudan–Egypt border triangle. There are reports of at least one Egyptian strike on a suspected RSF‑bound convoy near the al‑Uwaynat area served as a clear message that future movements along that corridor would be at risk.
Saudi–UAE rupture spills into Sudan and Yemen
The contest over Sudan coincides with an unusually public rupture between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, driven in large part by their diverging strategies in Yemen. The 2025–2026 Southern Yemen campaign saw UAE‑backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces seize territory in Hadramaut and al‑Mahra before being pushed back by Saudi‑aligned units and Saudi air strikes, triggering open diplomatic and media clashes between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.
Saudi officials increasingly view the RSF as an extension of Emirati attempts to project influence across the Red Sea and into the Sahel, in ways that cut against Saudi security priorities. Commentaries and investigative pieces link this perception to Saudi willingness to cooperate more closely with Egypt against RSF supply lines, and to a broader Saudi effort to constrain Emirati security ventures from Yemen to Sudan.
These trends mean that Libya’s southeast, Sudan’s Darfur region and Egypt’s Western Desert have become a single, contested strategic space. Evidence of an Egyptian drone hub at East Oweinat, Emirati supply chains running through Libya and Ethiopia, and joint Egyptian‑Saudi pressure on Haftar all point to a conflict that is no longer confined to Sudan’s borders, and that will continue to shape security dynamics across the region.
