UK announces Sudan sanctions package targeting illicit gold and finance networks sustaining the war. UK calls for UN arms embargo to cover El Obeid

"The UK has sanctioned those suspected of being linked to financing, procurement, and commercial networks fuelling the Sudan conflict.

The sanctions come as the UK and international partners are on red alert, monitoring the deteriorating situation in El Obeid, where the RSF is building up surge forces around a city already under immense humanitarian pressure." See list of sanctioned below.

Press release

From Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and 

The Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP

Published Thursday 16 July 2026 - full copy:

UK sanctions illicit gold networks fuelling Sudan’s war amid crisis around El Obeid

The UK has sanctioned those suspected of being linked to financing, procurement, and commercial networks fuelling the Sudan conflict.

• UK announces Sudan sanctions package targeting illicit gold and finance networks sustaining the war
• UK calls for UN arms embargo to cover El Obeid as city on the precipice of major atrocity 
• Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper says UK will tackle those fuelling the conflict.

The UK has today announced sanctions targeting the conflict gold trade in Sudan, procurement networks and financial facilitators that are fuelling Sudan’s war.

Sudan’s booming gold industry is the engine of its war economy. While official gold exports were worth $1.5 billion in 2024 and 2025, the true value of the sector is estimated to be several times higher, with billions of dollars’ worth of gold smuggled out of Sudan each year through illicit channels, helping finance weapons procurement, military operations and the activities of armed groups.

These measures target eleven individuals and entities suspected of being linked to the financing, procurement and commercial networks supporting the RSF or the SAF and fuelling Sudan’s conflict. All are Sudanese but they trade internationally including in the gold markets in Dubai and Hong Kong. 

At the centre of the package is Sudanese national Abu Dharr, suspected of being a notorious RSF financier and procurement facilitator. He is suspected of having helped fund and sustain RSF operations from beyond Sudan’s borders through a web of real estate, conflict gold, and holding companies based in Dubai.

Vast quantities of Sudanese gold continue to be monetised before entering global markets, making it a critical gateway for revenues generated by Sudan’s illicit gold sector.

By targeting these companies and facilitators, the UK is exposing and disrupting key commercial networks that help convert Sudan’s gold wealth into revenue that sustains the conflict.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said:

“The people of Sudan continue to pay the price for a war fuelled not only by guns and fighters, but by illicit flows of gold and finance to fill the war chests on both sides. These sanctions are targeting Sudan’s war economy and they will shine a light on those who seek to profit from these illegal shadow networks. 

“As the world watches the deeply alarming build-up around El Obeid, we continue to call on the RSF to halt their assault. And we are making clear that those enabling atrocities, from the battlefield to the boardroom, will be held accountable.”

The sanctions come as the UK and international partners are on red alert, monitoring the deteriorating situation in El Obeid, where the RSF is building up surge forces around a city already under immense humanitarian pressure.  

The UK has warned that El Obeid is at risk of becoming the scene of another mass atrocity, following the horrors witnessed in El Fasher. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has called for the UN arms embargo to be extended to reach El Obeid.

Illicit gold will be a priority theme at the UK’s Illicit Finance Summit, due to take place in London in December 2026. The Summit will bring together governments, civil society and the private sector to build an international coalition to tackle flows of dirty money around the world, including the trade in illicit gold.

ENDS.

Notes to Editor.

• Foreign Secretary Statement to the House of Commons with UN arms embargo call to reach El Obeid.

• List of sanctioned.

· Abu Dharr Abdul Nabi Habiballa Ahmmed – RSF financier and procurement facilitator suspected of using a network of companies to secure funding, move money and support RSF operations.

· Prodigious Real Estate Management Supervision Services – Sudanese UAE-based company suspected of being part of Abu Dharr’s commercial network used to support RSF financing activities.

· Mazin Fadlalla – RSF-linked procurement operative suspected of being involved in acquiring funding, equipment and materiel for the RSF.

· Ahmed Hashim – RSF- linked procurement operative suspected of being involved in sourcing funding and supplies for the RSF.

· Natwest Logistics – Sudanese UAE-based company suspected of being used by Mazin Fadlalla and Ahmed Hashim to support RSF procurement and logistics activities.

· Aoun Commercial Brokers – Sudanese UAE-based company suspected of being used by Mazin Fadlalla and Ahmed Hashim to facilitate procurement and financial transactions for the RSF.

· Ahmad Abdalla – Procurement operative linked to the SAF and Defence Industries Systems (DIS), suspected of being involved in securing weapons, equipment and funding for the SAF.

·Portex Trade Limited – Sudanese Hong Kong-based company suspected of being used by Ahmad Abdalla to support SAF procurement activity and evade existing sanctions restrictions.

· Omdurman Mining – Sudanese state-owned mining company suspected of generating gold revenues that support the SAF’s war effort.

· Ariab Mining Company – Sudanese state-owned mining company suspected of involvement in illicit gold activities that generate revenue for the SAF.

· Sudamin Company Ltd – Sudanese state-owned mining company linked to Sudan’s gold sector and suspected of channelling revenue from conflict gold to both the SAF and RSF, including through past links to sanctioned company Al Junaid.

View original: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-sanctions-illicit-gold-networks-fuelling-sudans-war-amid-crisis-around-el-obeid

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The War the World Forgot: Why Aren’t We Talking About Sudan? Why Some Wars don’t Make Headlines

Article from The Rest Is Politics

By Alastair Campbell
Dated 23 April 2026 - full copy: 

The War the World Forgot: Why Aren’t We Talking About Sudan?

“It’s the worst war in the world right now,” said Alastair in his discussion with Rory in the main episode about the ongoing conflict in Sudan.

The scale of the deaths and displacement is “almost uniquely horrific” and yet, he said, “there is so little attention paid to it.” 

The conflict, which entered its fourth year this month, so rarely appears at the top of the news agenda that it is often called “the forgotten war”. 

For this newsletter, we interviewed Ashan Abeywardena, who works as an emergency response manager for the charity War Child in Sudan. We also spoke to top foreign correspondent Christina Lamb, who has been reporting on conflicts for 38 years - including Sudan - to understand what is happening in the country, and why it receives so little international attention. 

And finally… We had a call with actress Carey Mulligan, who campaigns for War Child and who visited a Sudanese refugee camp in Chad with the Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper in February. Alastair met her at an event on Monday and set up this interview.

Carey Mulligan in Chad in February 

with the Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper

What’s happening in Sudan?

Fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began in April 2023. Since then at least 150,000 people have died and 15 million have been forced to flee their homes in the northeast African country. 

“We often blithely refer to Sudan as the world’s ‘biggest humanitarian crisis’ without thinking what that actually means,” Christina Lamb, the Sunday Times’s Chief Foreign Correspondent, who reported on the war from a refugee camp in Chad in February, explains. 

“It actually means women gang-raped when they head up a road, girls hiding terrified under branches, young people who once dreamt of going to university, forced to scrape a living gathering firewood,” she says.

There is no decisive victory or durable ceasefire in sight as both sides, and their international backers, “battle it out for control of the country and control of its resources such as gold and oil,” Lamb adds.

Abeywardena, from War Child, has just returned to the UK after spending four weeks in Darfur, in the west of Sudan. He had been visiting the charity’s partner organisations which are supporting children living through the war.

“We speak to kids who don’t really know any alternative and are just numb to the sound of conflict and war - and that’s a continuous state of being for them,” he says.

More than 30 million people in Sudan are currently in need of aid, including an estimated 15 million children. Yet desperately needed care provisions have been hard hit by international aid cuts.

Last year, according to a report by Humanitarian Action, only 39.5 percent of funding required for humanitarian responses in Sudan was actually made available. 

“It’s almost ignored by the international community,” Abeywardena says.

War Child does what it can with its local partners to create “places for children to come together, play, and really be children,” Abeywardena says, but it’s not enough.

The British actress Carey Mulligan, who has worked with War Child since 2014 and has visited the charity’s projects in Lebanon, Uganda, and the DRC among other countries, visited a Sudanese displacement camp in Chad in February.

She described witnessing a level of trauma unlike anything she had previously encountered. 

“There was one mother I met almost immediately who had managed to get across the border [into Chad from Sudan], but had lost her husband and her three children and didn't know if they had lived or not,” she said. 

Mulligan met other mothers who had been forced to flee with only some of their children. 

“They had seven children but crossed the border with two,” she said, or “had nine children but crossed with five” - and they often could not bear to explain what had happened to the others.

She described the way survivors spoke with euphemisms. Women would refer to having had a “difficult journey”, she said, which was often “unspoken code for sexual trauma”.

When there are so many severe and immediate threats to survival, just staying alive becomes a success story. 

As Mulligan put it: “Physical survival has become an acceptable outcome for children. If you walk out of a conflict with your limbs intact then that’s meeting some new level of acceptability. A child deserves to have a normal life.”

Both sides in the war, the RSF and the SAF, have been accused of committing war crimes, with widespread reports of rape, sexual assault and child abuse. 

One report released last month by Doctors Without Borders recorded more than 3,396 cases of sexual violence in 2024 and 2025. In South Darfur, 20 percent of victims were under 18, including 41 children under five.

Sexual violence, the report explains, is now “part of everyday life” in most parts of Sudan, both during fighting and in its aftermath, on the roads, in markets and in refugee camps. 

One woman quoted in the report described her attack: “They took us to an open area. The first man raped me twice, the second once, the third four times.”

Mulligan described how one mother she met told her that her seven-year-old daughter couldn’t sleep at night because she was so terrified of a man who had attacked her. 

“[There are] no practical steps there for a parent to take to help their child,” she said. “You're interrupting the building blocks of their brain, you're tying a hand behind their back if you don't offer mental health support to a child who's been through something like that.”

Recovery from the trauma of war is possible, both Abeywardena and Mulligan say, having witnessed it first hand in other conflicts War Child has worked in. 

“We've met countless children over the years who've had really catastrophic trauma and who have, through working with a partner and with mental health support, been able to recover to a degree where they can have agency and choose their life for themselves,” Mulligan says. 

“But it needs peace and sustainable peace for that to happen,” Abeywardena explains.

Why does the conflict receive so little international media attention? 

“In its fourth year, it’s almost an abandoned crisis overshadowed by other world events,” says Lamb. 

There are too many other crises, from Gaza and Ukraine to Iran, she explains, for Sudan to be able to hold international focus for long. 

“In 38 years of reporting I have never known a time like the last four years, or the last three months in particular,” she says. “I never imagined covering a major land war in Europe.”

Research suggests there are also economic and political variables which influence which conflicts get more coverage than others. 

A report from the Reuters Institute released this month titled “Why Some Wars don’t Make Headlines” pointed to factors including the accessibility and safety for reporters, the nature of the conflict, and its perceived impact on readers’ lives. 

A 2025 analysis by Vision of Humanity found more than 1,600 articles for each civilian death in high income countries, compared to 17 in low-income countries. 

“Conflicts in regions with less economic influence are more likely to be overlooked, regardless of their severity or humanitarian consequences,” the report notes.

Relatively complex civil wars, like Sudan, also receive less coverage than wars between different countries, the report notes. 

Abeywardena finds it frustrating hearing the Sudan war described as “forgotten” in the wider media. He says: “It’s not forgotten by the millions of Sudanese who are affected.”

You can read Lamb’s piece about her experience reporting on Sudan here and more of her reporting here. 

View original: 

https://alastaircampbell.org/category/podcasts/the-rest-is-politics/

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Reuters Exclusive: Pakistan nears $1.5 billion deal to supply weapons, jets to Sudan, sources say

The deal includes attack aircraft and drones, sources say. Jets and drones could revive Sudan army's fortunes. Pakistan's weapons industry is on the rise. It was a "done deal", said Aamir Masood, a retired Pakistani air marshal who continues to be briefed on air force matters. Read full story.

From Reuters

By Saad Sayeed and Mubasher Bukhari

Published Friday 09 January 2026 1:35 PM GMT 

Updated 09 January 2026 - full copy:

Exclusive: Pakistan nears $1.5 billion deal to supply weapons, jets to Sudan, sources say

Pakistan Air Force's JF-17 Thunder jets fly past during the sea phase of Pakistan Navy's Multinational Exercise AMAN-23, in the North Arabian Sea near Karachi, Pakistan, February 13, 2023

Summary

• Deal includes attack aircraft and drones, sources say
• Jets and drones could revive Sudan army's fortunes
• Pakistan's weapons industry is on the rise

ISLAMABAD, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Pakistan is in the final phases of striking a $1.5-billion deal to supply weapons and jets to Sudan, a former top air force official and three sources said, promising a major boost for Sudan's army, battling the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Their conflict has stoked the world's worst humanitarian crisis for more than 2-1/2 years, drawing in myriad foreign interests, and threatening to fragment the strategic Red Sea country, a major gold producer.

The deal with Pakistan encompasses 10 Karakoram-8 light attack aircraft, more than 200 drones for scouting and kamikaze attacks, and advanced air defence systems, said two of the three sources with knowledge of the matter, who all sought anonymity.

It was a "done deal", said Aamir Masood, a retired Pakistani air marshal who continues to be briefed on air force matters.

Besides the Karakoram-8 jets, it includes Super Mushshak training aircraft, and perhaps some coveted JF-17 fighters developed jointly with China and produced in Pakistan, he added, without giving figures or a delivery schedule.

Pakistan's military and its defence ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A spokesman for Sudan’s army did not immediately respond to a message requesting comment.

Assistance from Pakistan, especially drones and jets, could help Sudan's army regain the air supremacy it had towards the start of its war with the RSF, which has increasingly used drones to gain territory, eroding the army's position.

Sudan's army accuses the RSF of being supplied by the United Arab Emirates, which has denied supplying weapons.

POSSIBILITY OF SAUDI BACKING

The sources did not say how the deal was being funded but Masood said it was possible the finances would come from Saudi Arabia.

"Saudi Arabia may favour and support all the favourable regimes in Gulf for procurement of Pakistani military equipment and training," he said.

One of the sources said the Saudis brokered the deal but added there was no indication they were paying for the weapons. Another source said Saudi was not providing funds.

Reuters has reported that Islamabad is in talks with Riyadh for a defence deal that could be worth between $2 billion and $4 billion.

Masood said the weapons for Sudan could be included in such an agreement, without confirming discussions with Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi government media office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are part of the U.S.-led quad grouping of nations that has tried to push Sudan's army and the RSF towards peace talks.

On recent visits, Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan requested Saudi assistance in the war, according to Sudanese and Egyptian sources.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are embroiled in a major feud sparked by recent events in Yemen.

The two most powerful countries in the Gulf have sharp differences on a range of volatile Middle East issues, from geopolitics to oil output.

Their difference burst into the open with an advance of UAE-backed southern Yemeni separatists in early December that brought them into conflict with Saudi-backed forces.

PAKISTAN'S DEFENCE AMBITIONS

The deal is another feather in the cap for Pakistan's growing defence sector, which has drawn growing interest and investment, particularly since its jets were deployed in a conflict with India last year.

Last month, Islamabad struck a weapons deal worth more than $4 billion with the Libyan National Army, officials said, for one of the South Asian nation's largest arms sales, which includes JF-17 fighter jets and training aircraft.

Pakistan has also held talks with Bangladesh on a defence deal that could includes the Super Mushshak training jets and JF-17s, as ties improve ties with Dhaka.

The government sees Pakistan's burgeoning industry as a catalyst to secure long-term economic stability.

Pakistan is now in a $7-billion IMF programme, following a short-term deal to avert a sovereign default in 2023. It won IMF support after Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies provided financial and deposit rollovers.

Reporting by Saad Sayeed in Islamabad and Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore; Additional reporting by Ariba Shahid, Khalid Abdelaziz and Ahmed Shalaby; Editing by Clarence Fernandez

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

View original:  https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/pakistan-nears-15-billion-deal-supply-weapons-jets-sudan-sources-say-2026-01-09/

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