The horrifying reports of the massacre of hundreds of Sudanese civilians after the Darfur city of El Fasher was captured by the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) last week were the latest chapter in a brutal conflict that has killed more than 150,000 people over the past two and a half years.

But while the war in Sudan has most often been portrayed as an internal conflict between two warring generals, the murky involvement of several foreign powers makes the conflict far more complex – and deadly.

Sudan is seen by many as strategically important within the wider region. A bridge between the Middle East and Africa, Sudan controls some 500 miles of Red Sea coast along a major shipping route. It has plenty of agricultural land and significant gold deposits. It is the world’s top producer of gum arabic, a food, pharmaceutical and cosmetics ingredient. It also plays a key role in water diplomacy in the region, with some 400 miles of the Blue Nile flowing through its territory.

On Thursday, facing mounting international pressure over the reported massacre in Darfur, the RSF said it had agreed to enter a humanitarian truce proposed by four countries, known as the Quad: the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. A US State Department spokesperson said the US continued to engage directly with the RSF and the rival Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) “to facilitate a humanitarian truce.” It urged both sides to accede to it, “given the immediate urgency of de-escalating the violence and ending the suffering of the Sudanese people.”

Three of the same countries involved in brokering the potential truce – the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – have, along with Russia, been accused by experts, human rights watchdogs and several Western governments of trying to influence the conflict in Sudan by various means, including by supplying weapons, financial and logistical support and by offering diplomatic backing.

All four initially supported the Sudanese military when it ousted long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and when it consolidated its power over the country in a coup in 2021.

But when the two leading figures behind the coup – RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in charge of the SAF – began fighting each other, the foreign powers had to choose whom to support – and their involvement became even murkier.

Much is at stake. “Whoever controls Sudan is in a position to have influence in the broader region, in the Horn of Africa, as well as sub-Saharan Africa,” said Charles Ray, a retired US diplomat who served as the US Ambassador to Cambodia and Zimbabwe and is now chair of the Africa Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Here is what we know about some of the alleged players.

United Arab Emirates

The UAE has been repeatedly accused of supplying weapons to Dagalo’s paramilitary RSF.

Experts and human rights campaigners have traced weapons found in Darfur back to the UAE, and under the Biden administration, the United States – a key ally of the UAE – outlined links between a number of companies based in the Gulf nation and the RSF rebels.

The UAE has vehemently denied the allegations, even though an expert panel appointed by the United Nations Security Council said last year they were “credible.”

Several US lawmakers have repeatedly tried to block US arms sales to the UAE over the allegations, and last week the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee called for the RSF to be officially designated as a terrorist organization. In the same statement, the committee said that “foreign backers” including the UAE have “fueled and profited from the conflict.” The committee did not specifically call for the US to stop arms sales to the UAE.

Khalil al-Anani, a professor of politics and visiting researcher at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, told CNN that while the UAE was involved in Sudan “primarily for economic objectives — to control its natural wealth, including agriculture and gold,” there were other reasons too.

He said the UAE “does not want to see a successful democratic transition in Sudan.”

“This fits into its broader regional campaign against the Arab Spring movements; for more than a decade, (the UAE) has been a main sponsor of counter-revolutionary forces across the Arab world,” he said.

The links between the UAE and the RSF militia date back beyond the current conflict. RSF chief Hemedti is well connected in the UAE through some of his family members, who US officials say control a web of companies based in the Gulf state.

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned several of these companies, saying they were involved in supplying weapons to the RSF and in financing the force by selling gold sourced from mines in RSF-controlled areas to merchants in Dubai.

OFAC said these companies were controlled by Hemedti, his brothers Algoney Hamdan Dagalo Musa and Abdul Rahim Dagalo, or other people closely linked with him.

When announcing the sanctions against Musa, OFAC specifically said he resides in Dubai and is involved in “RSF efforts to procure weapons and other military materiel.”

Anwar Gargash, the top diplomatic adviser to the UAE leader, called the reports about UAE’s involvement with the RSF “fake news.”

“Unfortunately… with fake news, with all sorts of media campaigns, there are attempts to really picture us in a different light. But this is what we want: We want negotiations, we want transition to civilian rule and most importantly we need a ceasefire,” Gargash said.

Separately, the UAE’s embassy in Washington, DC, reached out to CNN this week following publication of an earlier CNN report mentioning its alleged involvement in Sudan, rejecting the claim and saying it has “consistently supported regional and international efforts to achieve an immediate ceasefire, protect civilians, and ensure accountability for violations committed by all warring parties.”

“We categorically reject any claims of providing any form of support to either warring party since the onset of the civil war,” a UAE official said in the note sent to CNN.

The official pointed to a report published by the UN expert panel on Sudan this April, which does not include allegations of UAE involvement, unlike previously published iterations of this report.

But a source with knowledge of the situation told CNN that UN experts did find what they believed was credible evidence of the UAE supplying weapons to the RSF, including tracing munitions previously exported to the UAE from Bulgaria in Darfur. This evidence was not included in the April report. CNN has reached out to the UN for comment.

The Bulgarian government told CNN it did not issue any permits for the export of defense-related products to Sudan.

Separately, Amnesty International published a detailed report earlier this year alleging that Chinese weapons, including AH4 howitzers, had been found in Darfur. The UAE is the only country confirmed to have imported these specific weapons from China, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

CNN has asked the UAE government for comment on these specific allegations.

The country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the howitzers in question “have been available on the international market for nearly a decade.”

“The assertion that only one country has procured or transferred this system is invalid,” the ministry told CNN, despite the records showing otherwise. CNN has reached out to the Chinese manufacturer of the weapons for comment. (BBC)