Phone Data Points to Colombian Mercenaries and UAE Role in Sudan's RSF, Research Group Says

Mobile phone location data analyzed by a London-based research organization points to a sustained Colombian mercenary presence operating alongside Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, according to a report published on 22 April 2026 by the Conflict Insights Group.

The finding adds another layer to an already complex picture of foreign involvement in a war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than ten million people since fighting erupted between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces in April 2023. CIG, which specializes in geospatial and communications analysis, said its research also documented what it described as extensive logistical and financial ties between the RSF and the United Arab Emirates — an accusation Abu Dhabi has previously denied.

A Dataset Built From Device Locations

The Conflict Insights Group built its analysis around anonymized mobile phone location records sourced from commercial data brokers, a methodology that conflict researchers have increasingly turned to as a way of corroborating troop movements and contractor flows that official channels leave undocumented. By tracking device pings against cell tower coverage in areas where fighting has been most intense — including Darfur, Khartoum, and the greater Kordofan region — CIG said it identified clusters of devices whose SIM card registration data pointed to Colombian-origin subscriptions.

The devices, according to CIG's analysis, were consistently present at RSF forward operating positions and logistics hubs from approximately mid-2023 through early 2026. The report does not claim that every device corresponds to a Colombian national, or that all such contractors were armed combatants. But it does argue the data pattern is inconsistent with the civilian contractor explanations the RSF has offered when prior reports of foreign fighters surfaced.

The BBC reported the findings on 22 April 2026, making CIG's work the primary source for this story in the English-language wire.

What Abu Dhabi Says

The question of Emirati involvement in Sudan has been a persistent point of dispute between Western governments and UAE officials. The UAE has said it provides humanitarian aid through established channels and denies funneling weapons or personnel to either side. Sudanese army commanders and their allies in the paramilitary structure have repeatedly accused Abu Dhabi of backing the RSF; UAE has rejected those accusations as politically motivated.

CIG's phone-tracking data, if it holds up to independent scrutiny, would constitute some of the more granular evidence yet presented for the scale of Emirati material support for the RSF. The report stops short of claiming the data proves weapons transfers directly, but it does map device patterns at supply depots and fuel points that RSF forces used during their offensives in western Sudan.

It is worth noting that commercial phone-location data has known limitations. Anonymization can fail; SIM card registration data can be incomplete or outdated; devices change hands. Researchers using this method typically acknowledge a confidence interval rather than treating the output as definitive forensic evidence. CIG's report does include such caveats, according to the BBC's summary of the findings.

The Broader Mercenary Economy

The Sudanese war has drawn an unusually wide range of foreign actors. Russian military contractors from the Wagner Group — now folded into a structure under the Russian Defense Ministry — have been documented in Sudan by UN panels and Western intelligence assessments. Ukrainian intelligence has acknowledged conducting strikes on Wagner positions inside Sudan, in what Kyiv described as an effort to degrade Russian operational capacity in Africa.

The presence of Colombian contractors, if confirmed, would suggest the RSF has sought muscle from a wider labor market than is typical for African conflicts, drawing on private military networks with roots in South American counter-insurgency. Colombia's own internal conflict produced a substantial pool of trained security contractors, many of whom have taken employment across the Middle East and Africa in the years since the 2016 peace agreement with FARC rebels reduced demand at home.

This is not the first allegation of South American mercenaries in Sudan. Reporting from 2024 cited accounts from former RSF fighters who described encounters with Spanish-speaking personnel at forward positions. CIG's data offers a different evidentiary basis — device-level patterns rather than witness testimony — but it points in the same direction.

Stakes for Accountability and Ceasefire Talks

The war in Sudan has resisted several rounds of ceasefire negotiation, most recently talks hosted in Jeddah and later in Cairo under African Union auspices. International mediators have struggled to produce agreements that both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF honor in full. The persistence of external funding and personnel, whatever its ultimate scale, complicates any agreement premised on the combatants being genuinely willing to wind down their operations.

For Western governments that have pushed for a negotiated end to the conflict — and that have imposed sanctions on RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and his inner circle — the CIG findings may sharpen the question of whether financial pressure alone is sufficient when the RSF's operational capacity is partially underwritten by foreign contractor labor. The UAE, for its part, has sought to position itself as a constructive actor in the peace process, hosting diplomatic discussions and pledging humanitarian support. If phone-location data corroborates the deeper supply role that Sudanese army allies have long alleged, it complicates that positioning.

Several questions remain open. CIG's report covers a specific time window and specific geographic clusters; it does not claim comprehensive coverage of foreign contractor activity in Sudan. Whether the Colombian contractors identified through phone data are present in sufficient numbers to affect the military balance — or whether they represent a marginal presence inflated by the methodology's imprecision — is not yet clear from the data made public so far.

What the report does offer is a granular, device-level account of the patterns that underlie the broader accusation. That in itself is unusual in a conflict where much of the evidence for foreign involvement has come from satellite imagery, prisoner accounts, or intercepted communications shared selectively by governments with a stake in the narrative. Phone-location analysis adds another strand — one that is harder to dismiss as politically motivated, and equally hard to verify without the raw dataset.

The research group said it has shared its methodology with academic reviewers and is prepared to make its data available to UN panels investigating the Sudan conflict. What those panels do with it — and whether the UAE or the RSF responds to the specific findings — will determine whether this report reshapes the diplomatic pressure or becomes another contested data point in a war where the facts themselves have become a battleground.

This publication's coverage of Sudan's conflict has emphasized the accounts of Sudanese civilians and local humanitarian workers alongside official briefings from all parties. The wire landscape around this story has centered on CIG's methodology and the UAE denial; this piece has sought to present both with equivalent structural weight, and to note where the evidence thins.