Bogotá (AFP) - Hundreds of Colombian ex-soldiers have been drawn to Sudan with the promise of bumper Emirati paychecks. What many found instead was death in a faraway war marked by mass killing, rape, famine and child recruitment.

An AFP investigation has uncovered how Colombian mercenaries ended up on the other side of the world through a network of profit and silence stretching from the Andes to Darfur.

Using interviews with family members and mercenaries, corporate records and geolocation of battlefield footage, AFP can reveal how they came to bolster the ranks of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), accused of genocide.

Here are some of AFP’s main findings:

+ Initially recruited via WhatsApp, they were brought to Sudan via the UAE, where they underwent brief training missions

+ They then traveled into Sudan via at least two routes: one through UAE-loyalist eastern Libya, and another through an airbase in Bosaso, Somalia that houses Emirati military officials

+ Geolocation of footage shot by the mercenaries themselves places them at the scene of some of the worst fighting in Darfur

+ The former partner of a retired Colombian colonel, sanctioned by the United States, says the mission was to place 2,500 men in the RSF’s ranks

Since it erupted in 2023, Sudan has been torn apart by the war between the RSF and the army, fueled by competing regional interests including from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Foreign mercenaries have appeared on both sides of the war, mostly from African countries such as Eritrea and Chad.

But none have conducted as sophisticated an operation as the Colombians, sought after for their expertise in drone and artillery warfare.

In return, they were paid $2,500 to $4,000 a month, according to one former soldier, up to six times their army pension.

On December 9, the United States sanctioned four Colombian nationals and their companies for their role in the transnational network.

But it did not name the Emirati node of the operation: a private security contractor named Global Security Services Group, which is based in Abu Dhabi and boasts a client list including several Emirati government ministries.

The UAE has repeatedly denied backing the RSF. In response to AFP queries for this story, a senior official said the UAE believes “there is a pattern of disinformation surrounding this war that helps no one”.

- Training children in Darfur -

Back in Colombia, families of the mercenaries suffer in silence. “They still haven’t brought his body home,” said one widow, too afraid to give her name.

Her husband, 33, a former soldier, died within three months of arriving in Sudan in mid-2024, when the paramilitary campaign to seize western Darfur was faltering. For months, fighters had besieged the army’s last stronghold, El-Fasher.

Though the RSF reportedly commands tens of thousands of fighters, most are low-skilled foot soldiers, better at rape-and-pillage offensives than the long-range sophisticated operations of the Colombians.

“Supported by Colombian fighters,” according to the United States, the RSF finally captured El-Fasher in October, amid evidence of mass killings, abductions and rape.

Videos verified and geolocated by AFP show Colombians in and around the city before the takeover.

In one clip, they drive past the charred ruins of Zamzam camp, listening to reggaeton. “It’s all destroyed,” says a man with a Colombian accent.

The camp was overrun in April; more than 400,000 people fled and up to 1,000 were killed in what survivors said were ethnic massacres.

Other images show the same man posing with boys holding assault rifles. In another, his comrades teach a fighter to fire a rocket launcher.

A militia allied with the army says up to 80 Colombians joined the siege from August.

Images provided by Joint Forces spokesman Ahmed Hussein – who was himself later killed during the RSF attack on El-Fasher – show the bloodied corpse of the same man, identified by his facial features and dental braces, labelled as the “commander” of the platoon.

Sudanese army-aligned authorities claim at least 43 were killed.

Colombia’s foreign ministry says an unspecified number were “tricked” by trafficking networks into going to Sudan.

- Bait and switch -

A year into his retirement, a Colombian military drone specialist received a WhatsApp message.

Speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, he said it read: “Any veterans interested in working? We’re looking for reservists from any force. Details via direct message.”

The 37-year-old was told by a man who identified himself as a former air force colonel that the job was in Dubai. He accepted.

Every year, thousands of Colombian soldiers retire, relatively young and with low pensions.

Many have found opportunities on Abu Dhabi’s payroll in the past, guarding oil pipelines and fighting in Yemen against Houthi rebels.

But on a follow-up call, the veteran was told that Dubai would, in fact, be only a stopover for a few months of training.

Then he would be deployed to “Africa” to undertake tactical reconnaissance.

Suspicious, he contacted a friend already working in the Emirates, who warned him he would likely end up in Sudan. He passed on the opportunity.

Many of his compatriots took it, however, embarking on journeys apparently designed to evade detection.

But some fighters were more careless than others.

One mercenary, Christian Lombana, documented his 2024 travels to Sudan via France and Abu Dhabi on social media.

A TikTok video he posted placed him in the desert of southeast Libya, according to investigative collective Bellingcat.

Eastern Libya is controlled by military strongman Khalifa Haftar, who rose to power backed by the UAE.

Since the Sudan war began, his territory has been a vital corridor for the RSF, providing weapons, fuel and fighters.

Days after his last TikTok post, Lombana’s convoy was ambushed in the Darfur desert.

Footage recorded by a rival fighter went viral, showing Lombana’s documents and family photos scattered in the sand. His passport showed an entry stamp to Libya.

- Somalia stopover -

Documents and testimonies obtained by AFP point to retired Colombian colonel Alvaro Quijano as the figure behind the recruitment.

AFP spoke to his former business partner, ex-major Omar Rodriguez, who said that after a few desert ambushes last year, Quijano “paused” the operation.

This year, mercenaries began transiting through Bosaso in Somalia, where local sources told AFP a UAE-run section of a military base has hosted platoons of uniformed foreigners, transported in cargo planes.

Bosaso is in Somalia’s semi-autonomous state of Puntland, where Abu Dhabi has trained, armed and funded the Puntland Maritime Police Force since 2010, according to UN experts and security analysts.

Security sources told AFP that Emirati military officials are stationed in a sectioned-off area of the airport.

In November, reports emerged of a massive data leak of Somalia’s e-visa system, exposing personal data of at least 35,000 people, allegedly including Colombians transiting to Sudan.

In response to the allegations, Somali National Security Advisor Awes Hagi Yusuf told AFP “we have to investigate, and we are on it,” but stressed the need for firm evidence and good relations with the Emirates.

The senior United Arab Emirates official told AFP the UAE “rejects any claim that it has supplied, financed, transported, or facilitated the delivery of weapons to any of the warring parties, through any channel or corridor. These assertions are false, unsubstantiated, and contradict the available evidence.”

The official said: “The UAE is committed to achieving a ceasefire in Sudan.”

Accounts from Somalia appeared to indicate that country was being used as a stopover.

Somalia’s Defence Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi told parliament that planes were flying from Bosaso “to Chad and Niger, reaching western Sudan”.

One local who frequents the airport for their job told AFP that between March and July, he saw groups of light-skinned male foreigners “in their mid-thirties and forties, with military builds, lined up and transported in cargo planes”.

He said they were often escorted to the section of the airport housing Emirati officials.

Ali Jama, another Bosaso local, said he saw foreigners in tactical gear transported on a cargo plane in April.

Satellite imagery of the airport obtained by AFP regularly shows multiple Ilyushin IL-76D cargo planes, identical to others identified by AFP in airbases in the UAE and Libya. Flight tracker data analysed by AFP also shows intense activity of the same plane type in the airport.

The same model has been linked to RSF supply lines via Chad.

- Paper trail -

Last week, the United States sanctioned Quijano and his wife Claudia Oliveros as key nodes of a “transnational network recruiting Colombians” to fight in Sudan.

“Since September 2024, hundreds of former Colombian military personnel have traveled to Sudan to fight alongside the RSF,” the US Department of the Treasury said, adding that some trained child recruits.

AFP spoke to two former mercenaries who said Quijano’s International Services Agency, also known as A4SI, has sent recruits first to the UAE, then eastern Libya, and then into Sudan.

His now estranged business partner Major Rodriguez founded A4SI – ostensibly an employment company – in 2017. He partnered with Quijano, who Rodriguez says had better connections in the UAE.

In 2022, riddled with debt, Rodriguez sold his shares to Oliveros, who is still the firm’s owner according to legal records.

He spoke to AFP in what he said was an attempt to clear his name, accusing Quijano of trying to “place 2,500 men” in Sudan.

AFP obtained 26 documents signed by Colombians in eastern Libya, authorising an Emirates-based company, Global Security Services Group (GSSG), to pay their salaries.

One contract seen by AFP, including a confidentiality clause, showed a Colombian hired as a “security guard.” The salaries were routed through a Panama-registered firm.

Emirati corporate records dated to 2018 show GSSG is owned by businessman Mohamed Hamdan Alzaabi. Its website lists it as the “only armed private security services provider for the UAE government.”

GSSG recently removed a section of its website that listed three of its clients: the UAE’s interior ministry, foreign ministry and presidential affairs ministry.

None of the companies listed responded to AFP requests for comment.

In response to questions for this investigation, an Emirati official told AFP: “We categorically reject any claims of providing any form of support to either warring party since the onset of the civil war, and condemn atrocities committed by both combatting parties.”

The UAE has long denied accusations of backing the RSF.

But reports from UN experts, US lawmakers and international organisations say the Gulf state has supported the paramilitary, in violation of a UN arms embargo on Darfur.

According to diplomats and analysts, the UAE is interested in Sudan’s gold deposits, fertile farmland, long Red Sea coast, and strategic position between the Horn of Africa and the Sahel.

Colombian lawmakers recently passed a law banning the recruitment of mercenaries, after outrage at compatriots popping up over the years in conflicts from Afghanistan to Ukraine.

But it was too late for another Colombian fighter, who died in combat in Sudan last year at the age of 25.

“His ashes have arrived in Colombia,” a woman who identified herself as his cousin told AFP.