Abu Dhabi’s global mercenary network deploys foreign fighters to crush dissent, pursue expansionist ambitions, and support Israel's regional geopolitical agenda.
AUG 19, 2025
Fleeing its notorious record and mounting international legal scrutiny, Blackwater, the world's most infamous private military company, found safe harbor in the Persian Gulf. There, the UAE opened its coffers, welcoming the mercenary firm with open arms. A new empire was forged on a brutal foundation: safeguarding monarchies and executing foreign agendas in exchange for cash, immunity, and impunity.
In 2009, Blackwater rebranded as Xe Services LLC after a string of war crimes in Iraq, notably the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad two years earlier. The cosmetic change masked a continuity of purpose, which is circumventing international law and orchestrating illicit operations from the shadows.
Founder Erik Prince officially stepped down but relocated to the UAE in 2010, where he launched Reflex Responses (also known as R2) and retained a 51 percent stake, ushering in a new era of industrial-scale mercenary recruitment.
City of Mercenaries
By 2011, the outlines of a covert UAE mercenary army had emerged, tasked with exerting influence across West Asia and Africa. This was no accident as Blackwater played a central role, with then-Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) serving as one of its chief patrons.
A host of enabling conditions made the project viable. Abu Dhabi had become a haven for fugitives and illicit finance. South America's Colombia became the recruitment bedrock through an agreement to build a mercenary force led by former FBI agent Ricky Chambers, a close Prince ally. These mercenaries received the “Rincón” designation, granting them immunity from prosecution under the UAE's military intelligence apparatus.
In May 2011, the New York Times (NYT) exposed details of 800 men who entered the Persian Gulf state disguised as construction workers but were swiftly transferred to Zayed Military City via a Prince-run company, forming part of a $500-million deal. By July 2017, LobeLog reported hundreds of foreign fighters had been deployed to Yemen, including 450 Latin Americans from nations like Panama, El Salvador, and Chile.
By 2022, the Washington Post revealed that over 500 retired US military personnel had been hired as contractors by Persian Gulf states, including the UAE, for salaries up to $300,000 per year. Colombian fighters continued to arrive via GSSG and A4S International, then were dispatched to frontlines across West Asia.
From internal repression to regional conquest
The UAE's first contract with Blackwater in 2010 focused on protecting the sheikhdom. MbZ, skeptical of his own army's loyalty, brought in foreign officers to secure palaces, oil infrastructure, and suppress dissent. These mercenaries tortured political detainees, maintained weapons systems, and served as a Praetorian Guard for the Emirati elite.
Erik Prince personally oversaw the training of 2,000 Somali fighters in 2011 as part of a US-backed, UAE-funded anti-piracy campaign. Simultaneously, Yemen became a testing ground for these mercenaries, particularly in resistant and hard-to-reach border areas like Saada and Najran.
UAE-aligned forces drew on contract soldiers from Chad, Chile, Colombia, Libya, Panama, Niger, Somalia, El Salvador, Sudan, and Uganda. Spear Operations Group, notorious for its Yemen assassination program, coordinated many of these missions. Meanwhile, Lancaster 6 DMCC and Opus Capital Asset Ltd FZE – both registered in UAE free zones – operated under the so-called “Opus Project” to back Khalifa Haftar's Libyan campaign.
As its regional footprint expanded, this military-corporate network played a prominent role in protecting a string of UAE-run ports, in efforts to establish a base in Eritrea in East Africa, and in plans to set up a base in the secessionist Somaliland.
Blackwater, which had transformed yet again into Academi, had recruited some 43,000 fighters across the region, becoming a major arm of Abu Dhabi's military adventures from the Persian Gulf to the Horn of Africa.
Sudan: Mercenary proxy war
In mid-2023, the war in Darfur escalated amid credible allegations that Abu Dhabi was arming and funding Libya's controversial Rapid Support Forces (RSF), accused of systematic atrocities. A January 2024 UN Security Council report confirmed Emirati networks were deeply embedded in RSF supply lines. In March 2025, the Sudanese government launched a case with the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Abu Dhabi of supporting these militias in committing crimes in Darfur and other regions.
Colombian newspaper La Silla Vacia documented a UAE recruitment network operating via the firm A4SI, led by retired Colombian Colonel Alvaro Quijano. These mercenaries, promised salaries of up to $3,000 per month and $10,000 bonuses, were equipped with drones, rocket launchers, and smuggled into Sudan via Somalia and Chad. Injured fighters were covertly evacuated to Emirati military hospitals.
On 10 August 2025, an Emirati plane crashed in Darfur, exposing the death of 40 Colombian mercenaries. Footage later confirmed an entire UAE-backed Colombian battalion fighting alongside the RSF near Al-Fasher mosque. The scale and brazenness of UAE involvement was undeniable.
These scandals prompted Colombian President Gustavo Petro to issue an official condemnation, declaring “no more merchants of death,” following reports of the killing of dozens of Colombians in Sudan.
Meanwhile, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry warned of a “cross-border mercenary war” that threatened the country's sovereignty, accusing the UAE of financing and deploying these fighters to support the militias.
Gaza: Mercenaries under the occupation's banner
In October 2024, reports surfaced that the UAE was financing the recruitment of African mercenaries to fight for the Israeli army in Gaza and Lebanon. Abu Dhabi leveraged its alliance with Addis Ababa to draw fighters from Ethiopia, contracting with firms like Raven and Global CST, which have long-standing ties to Tel Aviv.
Eyewitnesses have spotted tanks bearing both Israeli and UAE flags, and testimonies from Gaza detainees described interrogations by soldiers speaking in Emirati-accented Arabic. According to Western diplomatic sources, these movements are part of the UAE and Israel’s “day after” arrangements for an ethnically-cleansed Gaza Strip.
Further evidence emerged when a deputy commander of the Abu Shabab group, an Israeli-backed militia in Gaza with ISIS links, posted photos next to UAE-plated vehicles. Palestinian resistance intelligence confirmed an Arab intelligence agency was training and equipping pro-Israel mercenaries in Rafah who received funding, off-road vehicles, surveillance gear, and media tools to facilitate internal coordination.
‘Port-au-Prince’
Erik Prince has now signed a 10-year deal with Haiti's interim government to deploy nearly 200 foreign fighters under his new firm, Vectus Global. These forces, recruited from the US, Europe, and El Salvador are tasked with combating gangs and collecting tax revenue. They will operate with helicopters, drones, snipers, and naval units, echoing the same structure and impunity Prince perfected in the UAE.
This expansion into the Caribbean is not a deviation but a continuation of the same blueprint, which is to circumvent local sovereignty, deploy foreign troops under private command, convert collapsed states into private ventures of outsourced violence, and provide deniability for foreign interests funding these initiatives.
Port-au-Prince is merely the latest testing ground for a model cultivated under Emirati patronage. What began as palace protection has metastasized into a global enterprise. While Prince fronts the operations, it is the UAE that bankrolls, plans, and propagates this empire of outsourced warfare, now embedded in conflicts spanning three continents.
Today, the UAE has cemented itself as a global hub for mercenary warfare, weaponizing wealth to crush dissent, destabilize rivals, and assist Israel. From Yemen to Sudan to Gaza, each revelation strips away another layer of Abu Dhabi's shadow empire, an enterprise of covert violence and regional subjugation.
United Arab Emirates’ backs a genocidal militia in Sudan:Source: https://thecradle.co/articles/shadow-armies-uaes-covert-wars-in-sudan-yemen-and-gaza
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