The UAE’s Media Laundering: How Sky News Arabia Whitewashed RSF Crimes in El-Fasher
In the midst of Sudan’s brutal civil war, a media operation funded and directed from Abu Dhabi is working to obscure the atrocities of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Dark Box investigations reveal that Sky News Arabia, owned by the UAE’s International Media Investments (IMI) and chaired by Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is executing a deliberate whitewashing campaign to rebrand the RSF as a stabilizing force rather than a militia accused of genocide.
The controversy erupted after Sky News Arabia’s reporter Tsabih Mubarak travelled to El-Fasher, a city recently seized by the RSF following months of siege and mass killings. Mubarak’s access to the city—impossible without RSF coordination—was immediately suspect.
Her reports, framed as humanitarian coverage, featured staged interactions with residents, while omitting evidence of the RSF’s atrocities. Mubarak was even filmed expressing solidarity with Shiraz Khalid, an RSF officer previously filmed inciting sexual violence against women in northern Sudan. In the video, Mubarak smiles beside Khalid and says: “This is our country, we are with you.”
Two weeks before Mubarak’s visit, Khalid appeared in another video calling on RSF fighters to “cleanse” the women of Sudan’s northern regions—an explicit incitement to rape. Yet instead of confronting these crimes, Sky News Arabia turned her into a human-interest figure, granting legitimacy to one of the perpetrators of mass sexual violence.
A Coordinated Whitewashing Strategy
Leaked internal notes obtained by Dark Box reveal that Sky News Arabia’s editorial team in Abu Dhabi received direct guidance from UAE media advisors to “counter the narrative of RSF brutality” and to frame its campaign as a “war on Islamist militancy.” The leak indicates that UAE media strategy units coordinated with Emirati digital influencers to amplify Mubarak’s coverage while portraying Sudan’s regular army as aligned with the “Muslim Brotherhood.”
This aligns with a broader UAE information operation: shifting the narrative from war crimes to ideological warfare, portraying the RSF as a bulwark against political Islam.
Dark Box has verified that Mubarak’s trip was facilitated through RSF channels controlled by Emirati intelligence intermediaries operating between Chad, Libya, and North Darfur, a network previously tied to the UAE’s logistical support for the RSF.
Her presence in El-Fasher served a dual purpose — propaganda for the RSF and plausible deniability for Abu Dhabi, which continues to deny arming or funding the militia despite mounting evidence.
From the Studio to the Battlefield
Sky News Arabia’s general manager, Nadim Koteich, released a video days after Mubarak’s broadcast, dismissing reports of UAE involvement in Sudan as “baseless political noise.”
Behind the scenes, however, production memos instructed correspondents to highlight “stability narratives” in RSF-held areas, portraying the militia as capable administrators.
Multiple media insiders confirmed that IMI executives have been in direct contact with Hemedti’s office since early 2024 to coordinate media access, messaging, and security arrangements. This partnership mirrors earlier UAE propaganda tactics in Libya and Yemen, where Emirati media platforms humanized local proxies while suppressing reports of civilian atrocities.
A Systematic Erasure of Atrocity
What makes this campaign particularly dangerous is its systematic erasure of evidence.
Satellite imagery and eyewitness accounts show that RSF fighters executed hundreds in El-Fasher, sealed escape routes with earthen barriers, and used starvation as a weapon of war. Yet Sky News Arabia’s coverage inverted this reality — framing RSF occupation as a “return to order.”
In one leaked email reviewed by Dark Box, an IMI editor wrote:
“Our mission is to show that RSF control brings stability and humanitarian access — not chaos.”
This narrative manipulation coincides with parallel UAE diplomatic efforts to block condemnations of the RSF in regional forums. Media, diplomacy, and funding have converged into one apparatus of denial.
The Real Objective: Protecting Abu Dhabi’s Proxy
At its core, the UAE’s media operations serve to sanitize a militia that remains its most important proxy in the Horn of Africa.
By controlling the story of El-Fasher, Abu Dhabi seeks to deflect attention from its direct logistical and financial ties to Hemedti’s forces, exposed in earlier Dark Box investigations.
The presence of a Sky News Arabia team in a sealed war zone is not journalism — it is state propaganda disguised as reporting. It reflects a pattern of Emirati information warfare, where controlling the narrative is as vital as arming the fighters.
In El-Fasher, that control now extends from the battlefield to the newsroom — from Hemedti’s command tent to Mansour bin Zayed’s media empire.
