The Shadow Empire

UAE’s Silent Wars in Africa and the Arab World

(This is an AI generated image).

A War from the Shadows

On a moonless night in July 2019, migrants huddled in a Libyan detention hangar heard the distant whine of an aircraft. Moments later, the world around them exploded. In the rubble of the Tajoura camp, dozens lay dead – victims of a precision airstrike that bore the hallmarks of a foreign drone theguardian.com. In Sudan’s capital Khartoum, a young militiaman gazed at crates marked as humanitarian aid, freshly delivered from a cargo plane that had skirted the radar. Inside were rifles and munitions bound for the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary army turning the city’s streets into battlefields. Across the Red Sea in Yemen, on the island of Socotra, bewildered villagers woke one morning in 2020 to find separatist fighters raising the flag of a breakaway state, their weapons and salaries supplied by an outside patron. And in a quiet office in Abu Dhabi, a former NSA hacker launched a program code-named “Karma,” remotely piercing a BBC journalist’s iPhone without a single click independent.co.uk.

These disparate scenes share an invisible thread. In each case, the United Arab Emirates – a small Gulf nation of gleaming skyscrapers and outsized ambition – stood behind the curtain, orchestrating events from the shadows. Over the past decade, the UAE has emerged as a stealth empire-builder, wielding wealth, weapons, and technology to project power across the Middle East and Africa. From the deserts of Libya to the mountains of Yemen, from the Nile’s banks in Sudan to the highlands of Ethiopia, and through the boundless realm of cyberspace, the Emirates has pursued its interests via covert warfare and proxy conflicts. This is a new breed of empire: not one of colonies and formal domination, but of silent wars, deniable interventions, and alliances with warlords and hackers. It operates in the dark, yet its impact reverberates in shattered cities and reshaped nations. What follows is an immersive journey through the main theaters of the UAE’s shadow wars – Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, and cyberspace – each a chapter in Abu Dhabi’s quest for influence. Through scene and story, we explore how a country known for luxury malls and artificial islands became a master of proxy warfare, and what this means for a world where even the smallest states can play kingmaker in conflicts far from their own shores.

Libya: Drones over Tripoli’s Skies

In the spring of 2019, General Khalifa Haftar’s convoy cut across the Libyan desert under a relentless sun. As his self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) closed in on Tripoli, residents of the capital began to notice an eerie buzz in the air at dusk – an omen of what was to come. Haftar had launched a surprise offensive to seize Tripoli on April 4, 2019, determined to unseat the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) theguardian.com. His ranks swelled with local fighters and foreign guns-for-hire. But his deadliest weapon came from afar: Chinese-made Wing Loong II drones, guided by foreign hands. Stationed at the remote al-Khadim airbase in eastern Libya, these unmanned aircraft were operated by Emirati military personnel and contractors, giving Haftar a bird’s-eye view of the battlefield and a precision punch that his adversaries could scarcely match aljazeera.com.

Before Libya’s 2011 revolution, Tripoli’s skyline had rarely seen an aircraft, let alone a combat drone. Now, by mid-2019, the city endured what observers called “the largest drone war in the world” aljazeera.com. In the flat scrublands south of Tripoli, GNA militiamen hunkered in abandoned villas, afraid to step into open streets where any movement could invite a missile from an unseen predator hovering miles overhead. For Haftar’s men, the drones were guardian angels: directing strikes on rival troop convoys and supply lines in lightning flashes of fire. Civilians were not spared. As the fighting ground on, air raids pummeled dense urban districts in Tripoli. “Precision” was a grim euphemism – each blast pattern in a residential block told a story of lives lost. By the late summer, the siege had become desperate for the defenders. Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj’s GNA forces were pinned into an ever-tighter pocket near the capital’s center, short on heavy weapons and besieged from the sky aljazeera.com. It seemed only a matter of time before Tripoli would fall.

Behind Haftar’s blitz, a trio of foreign patrons pulled the strings: Egypt and Russia lent political and logistical backing, but the UAE provided the modern firepower. A United Nations investigation later found that the UAE (along with Jordan and Turkey) was routinely and blatantly violating the UN arms embargo on Libya, funneling in weapons and drones with hardly any attempt to disguise their origin theguardian.com. Over 800 drone strikes were carried out by Haftar’s side in 2019 alone, a scale of unmanned warfare unprecedented in any conflict at the time theguardian.com. In one notorious incident, the July 2, 2019 bombing of the Tajoura migrant detention center killed 54 unarmed migrants and aid workers; UN experts noted that the strike was executed with a guided bomb available only to a few states, strongly implicating the UAE’s airpower in what was widely condemned as a war crime theguardian.com. It was as if Libya’s civil war had been hijacked into a proxy air war – local fighters on the ground, foreign drones in the skies, and civilians caught in between.

For a while, the Emirati intervention nearly achieved its goal. By the autumn of 2019, Haftar’s LNA, reinforced by waves of mercenaries – Russians from the Wagner Group and guns-for-hire from Sudan and Chad – pressed to the outskirts of Tripoli’s downtown theguardian.com aa.com.tr. The distinctive whoosh of rocket fire and the buzz of drones became the city’s nightly soundtrack. “It felt like Tripoli was under siege by ghosts,” recalled one resident, describing how unseen drones would linger after midnight, striking any moving headlights. Indeed, many of Haftar’s ground troops were out-of-towners themselves: hardened Sudanese militiamen and Chadian fighters reportedly brought in via Emirati financing aa.com.tr. The Shadow Empire was living up to its name in Libya – fighting by proxy, spending lavishly, and remaining invisible to the naked eye. “The Emirates provided weapons, ammunition and mercenaries” to Haftar’s forces, a UN Security Council report confirmed, with entire arsenals of high-tech hardware flowing into eastern Libya aa.com.tr. On paper, the UAE’s role in Libya was deniable; in reality, it was decisive.

Yet the battle for Libya did not end as Abu Dhabi hoped. In January 2020, as Tripoli braced for its fall, an unlikely savior arrived for the besieged government: Turkey. Lured by a maritime deal and the chance to check Emirati influence, Ankara deployed military advisers, Syrian fighters, and a fleet of its own drones to the fray. Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 drones – smaller than the Wing Loongs but lethal in swarms – swiped the skies from Haftar’s air force aljazeera.com. In rapid succession, the tide turned. By May 2020, GNA troops, backed by Turkish airpower, broke the siege of Tripoli and overran Haftar’s forward airbase at al-Watiya aljazeera.com. In their retreat, Haftar’s forces abandoned charred hulks of Pantsir air-defense systems – advanced Russian-made units that the UAE had supplied to protect LNA positions aljazeera.com. Those too were knocked out, often by Turkish drones using jamming devices that rendered the Pantsirs blind aljazeera.com. The reversal was stunning. “It was a game changer,” a GNA commander said of the foreign interventions; one day they were on the brink, the next day the invaders were in disarray. By June, hundreds of Wagner mercenaries and LNA troops were fleeing east, and Tripoli’s fragile peace was restored aljazeera.com theguardian.com.

In the aftermath, Libya remained divided – a testament to external meddling from all sides. The UAE’s Libyan gambit had failed to install Haftar as the new strongman in Tripoli, but it achieved a different kind of victory: it made the Emirates an indispensable power-broker in Libya’s future. At peace talks in Berlin, the UAE was given a seat at the table alongside other major actors theguardian.com. Abu Dhabi’s investment in Haftar (estimated in the billions of dollars) had prolonged and escalated the war, yet also ensured that no resolution could ignore Emirati interests. Libya became a proving ground for the UAE’s doctrine of covert war. Drones, mercenaries, and petrodollars – this was the new Emirati way of warfare, honed in Libya’s deserts. And as the smoke cleared over Tripoli, one could trace a line from the ruined neighborhoods back to Emirati control rooms thousands of miles away. The shadow empire had left its footprint on Libya: a trail of drone wreckage and spent missile casings stamped “Made in UAE”, a warlord still in charge of the country’s east, and a populace grappling with the notion that their civil war had been used as a chessboard for Gulf monarchs and great powers. It was only the beginning. Having tested its playbook in Libya, the UAE would soon apply a similar formula to other conflicts – often with even quieter, more insidious methods.

Sudan: The War Chest and the Warlord

Khartoum, Sudan – April 15, 2023. At the crack of dawn, gunfire rattled the capital’s streets as a long-simmering rivalry burst into open warfare. On one side stood the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan; on the other, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a fearsome paramilitary led by Lieutenant-General Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo. Plumes of smoke curled above the city’s skyline as families cowered in their homes. To the world, Sudan’s implosion that day seemed a sudden descent into chaos. But in truth, the fuse had been lit long before – and the hands that lit it reached back to palaces in the Persian Gulf. As the first battles raged around Khartoum’s airport and military headquarters, outside players were already at work. Within hours, mysterious transport planes began touching down at airstrips in Libya’s desert south and Sudan’s remote west, delivering consignments that would fuel Hemedti’s blitz. These flights carried more than bullets and guns; they carried the imprimatur of the United Arab Emirates, the foreign power most invested in Sudan’s new civil war theguardian.com.

To understand why the UAE dove into Sudan’s conflict, one must rewind to the heady days after Sudan’s 2019 revolution. The fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir that year was greeted with hope by Sudanese democrats, but in Abu Dhabi it triggered alarm. Bashir’s ouster opened the door to a civilian democracy – and to the possible rise of Islamists or independent-minded reformers not beholden to Gulf monarchies. The UAE, positioning itself as guardian of the status quo against the Arab Spring’s tremors, moved swiftly to cultivate Sudan’s military figures. Enter General Hemedti, a onetime camel trader turned warlord from Darfur. Charismatic and ruthless, Hemedti had built the RSF from the remnants of the Janjaweed militias notorious for atrocities in Darfur. After 2019, he was Sudan’s second-most powerful man – and an ideal proxy for Emirati influence. Since at least 2015, the Emirates had been funneling money and material to both Hemedti’s RSF and Sudan’s regular army, effectively hedging its bets and hiring Sudanese fighters for its foreign adventures theguardian.com. Thousands of Sudanese troops – many of them Hemedti’s men – were deployed as mercenaries in Yemen, fighting on the UAE’s behalf against the Houthi rebels in a war far from their own homeland theguardian.com. The payment was generous, and Hemedti in particular grew fabulously wealthy, trading Sudanese blood for Emirati gold. By the time Sudan began its fragile transition in 2019, the RSF had essentially become a business empire, enriched by illicit gold mining and Gulf patronage. Hemedti shipped tons of gold from Sudan’s mines to Dubai’s gold souks, turning bullion into cash that further bankrolled his forces theguardian.com. The UAE, for its part, became Sudan’s biggest gold buyer and had grand designs to develop Port Sudan on the Red Sea, tying Sudan into its global trade network theguardian.com.

Thus, when tensions between Hemedti and General Burhan finally erupted into open conflict in 2023, the UAE was not a neutral bystander. It had long cultivated Sudan’s coup-makers and militias, and now it quietly chose a side. Within days of the war’s start, evidence mounted that the Emirates was serving as armorer and financier for the RSF’s war effort. Logistics hubs sprang into action: weapons flowed to Hemedti’s fighters through a complex web of routes spanning Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and beyond theguardian.com. Some supplies reportedly came through the vast deserts of southern Libya, where another UAE ally – Haftar’s Libyan forces – controlled smuggling corridors. Other materiel crossed from Chad and CAR, borderlands where Hemedti had allies and business partners. In effect, the Emirates activated an entire clandestine supply chain to sustain the RSF. It even disguised lethal aid as humanitarian shipments, according to reports, brazenly sending fuel, ammo and spare parts in the guise of relief donations theguardian.com. A United Nations panel in early 2024 found these accusations of UAE’s military support to the RSF to be credible, despite official denials from Abu Dhabi theguardian.com. Hemedti’s injured fighters, wounded in street battles in Khartoum or scorched by airstrikes in Darfur, were quietly airlifted to an Abu Dhabi military hospital for treatment – a favor the general would not forget theguardian.com. In one particularly telling detail, Hemedti was even said to have shuttled between African capitals on a private jet owned by an Emirati royal, using the UAE’s diplomatic clout to seek backing for his war theguardian.com.

As weeks turned to months, Sudan’s war metastasized into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with millions displaced and a nation on the brink of famine theguardian.com. Through it all, the UAE’s role remained an open secret. Diplomats would whisper about it in Nairobi and Washington, even as official statements tip-toed around naming names. “Without its direct and all-around support, the RSF would not have been able to wage war to the same extent,” one observer noted bluntly of the Emirates theguardian.com. Yet Western governments hesitated to cross Abu Dhabi. The UK and US condemned the violence in Sudan in generic terms, but stopped short of singling out the Emiratis for enabling Hemedti’s onslaught theguardian.com. When pressed, UAE officials furiously denied the allegations – even temporarily canceling meetings with British counterparts in April 2024 in protest at any hint of criticism theguardian.com. Such is the paradox of the UAE’s shadow empire: its influence is enormous but often unacknowledged, its proxy wars widely discussed but seldom confronted. Meanwhile, Sudanese civilians bore the brunt. In markets and neighborhoods reduced to cinders, people asked why a Gulf state thousands of miles away would pour gasoline on their country’s fire. The answer lay in a cold calculus of power and ideology. The UAE’s leadership – crowned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) – saw Sudan as a keystone in a regional strategy. By installing a friendly strongman in Khartoum, Abu Dhabi could secure access to resources (gold, agriculture, ports) and gain a geopolitical foothold at the crossroads of Africa and the Middle East. Equally important, it could snuff out the dream of democracy that Sudan’s 2019 uprising had kindled, a dream the Emirati royals viewed as a dangerous contagion. As one analysis put it, the UAE’s aim was “achieving political and economic hegemony while curbing democratic aspirations” in Sudan theguardian.com.

Hassan, a 34-year-old shopkeeper in Omdurman, described the war in bittersweet terms as he guided his family across the Nile to seek refuge: “Two generals are destroying our country, but it feels like there’s a third general in the background – the one with the deep pockets.” Indeed, Sudan’s conflict often felt like a war of three armies: the SAF, the RSF, and the invisible legion of foreign sponsors. As battles flared in Khartoum’s streets, there were accounts of RSF fighters wielding shiny new weapons stamped with markings unfamiliar to Sudan’s own arsenal. Observers noted that the RSF’s sustained offensives and seemingly limitless ammunition “wouldn’t have been possible” without outside help theguardian.com. The pattern of targeting civilians, torching villages, committing mass atrocities – hallmarks of Hemedti’s campaigns – marched onward in Darfur and Kordofan theguardian.com. By late 2023, Sudanese activists and some bold international voices explicitly accused the UAE of having “blood on its hands” in Sudan’s agony theguardian.com.

In the unforgiving logic of realpolitik, however, such accusations did little to change the facts on the ground. The RSF, buttressed by Emirati funds and arms, entrenched itself in parts of Khartoum and the vast expanses of Darfur, refusing to surrender. The SAF, for its part, also courted support from Egypt and other allies, turning Sudan into a playground for rival foreign interests. In this dangerous game, the UAE had picked a side – and thus far, had paid no price for it. As famine and disease stalked Sudan’s ruins theguardian.com, the world’s attention drifted elsewhere, and the UAE’s shadow war continued in silence. Sudan’s tragedy highlights the most troubling aspect of the UAE’s shadow empire: its willingness to undermine an entire nation’s hopes for freedom to advance its own regional agenda. In 2019, Sudan had a chance at democracy; by 2024, that chance was buried under rubble, spent cartridges, and mass graves. The cynical deals behind the scenes – from gold trade to mercenary rental – had paved the road to ruin. “We will never have peace if we don’t name the ones pouring fuel on the fire,” a Sudanese writer pleaded theguardian.com, referring to the Emirates’ role. Yet naming is one thing; stopping the arsonist is another. Sudan’s fate remains uncertain, but one lesson is clear: the shadow empire thrives where the world’s gaze is weakest, turning other people’s conflicts into its chessboard. What started in Libya and Sudan would not end there. Next, the UAE set its sights on the Horn of Africa, where a very different kind of war was unfolding – one fought with drones and diplomacy rather than militias, but where Abu Dhabi’s playbook would again leave a profound mark.

Ethiopia: The Drone Intervention

The highlands of northern Ethiopia are a patchwork of emerald fields and jagged mountains – a landscape that, for much of 2021, was scarred by the contrails of drones and the thunder of airstrikes. In November 2020, Ethiopia plunged into a brutal civil war when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent his army to crush the rebellious Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in the Tigray region. What began as a “law enforcement operation” spiraled into a full-scale conflict that ebbed and flowed over two years, leaving countless towns in ruins and untold civilians dead. By the autumn of 2021, Tigrayan rebel forces had shocked the world by mounting a counter-offensive that drove deep into the heart of Ethiopia – at one point advancing to within 200 kilometers of the capital, Addis Ababa africacenter.org. The government in Addis seemed on the verge of collapse. Amid panicked calls for citizens to arm themselves and reports of rebel columns moving south, Abiy Ahmed – a Nobel Peace Prize laureate now facing existential peril – found salvation from an unlikely quarter. Into Ethiopia’s skies appeared fleets of foreign drones, deal-makers from distant capitals having decided to tip the balance. Among those patrons, discreet yet crucial, was the United Arab Emirates.

One gray afternoon in late 2021, an airman at Harar Meda Air Base (just south of Addis Ababa) peered up as a hulking Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane groaned down onto the tarmac. The markings on its tail had been hastily painted over. Within hours, another cargo jet landed, and another – a flurry of mysterious flights delivering crates of military hardware. Satellite images later confirmed what Ethiopian soldiers on the ground had begun whispering: the UAE had established an “air bridge” of military support to Ethiopia’s government aljazeera.com. Between September and November 2021, more than 90 flights ferried arms from the UAE to Ethiopia, many cloaked in secrecy with their flight numbers and manifests obscured aljazeera.com. Two private logistics firms – one Spanish, one Ukrainian – were contracted to run this furtive resupply network aljazeera.com. As crates were unloaded under camouflage nets, evidence mounted of what they contained. In one satellite photo taken in November, analysts spotted the unmistakable profile of a Wing Loong drone on the tarmac at Harar Meda, parked near a hangar aljazeera.com. It was a Chinese-made combat UAV of the type the UAE had used to deadly effect in Libya – and now it was deployed for Ethiopia’s fight against Tigray. This was the first documented appearance of a Wing Loong in Ethiopia’s arsenal aljazeera.com. It would not be the last.

That same month, Prime Minister Abiy, dressed in fatigues, announced he was personally going to the frontline to lead the army. Whether or not Abiy’s Rambo-like gesture had any impact, the real tide-turner was playing out in the skies. In a matter of weeks, the cheap and precise airpower of foreign-supplied drones devastated the rebel advance africacenter.org. Tigrayan fighters, who had until then fought Ethiopian federal forces to a bloody standstill, suddenly found themselves facing an enemy with instant air supremacy. Convoys of rebel technicals (pickup trucks with mounted guns) were blown to bits on mountain roads by missiles fired from unseen predators circling above the clouds. Tigrayan units sheltering in village squares were caught in pinpoint strikes, often with horrific civilian collateral damage. A humanitarian worker in the town of Alamata recalled emerging from a bunker after a late-night drone strike in December 2021: “There was nothing left of the convoy – just charred vehicles. And around them, farmers from the nearby houses, cut to pieces.” Such scenes became common across the conflict zone as drones took on a central role.

Multiple countries contributed to Ethiopia’s newfound drone fleet. Turkey, keen to cement ties with Addis Ababa, sold Ethiopia a batch of Bayraktar TB2 drones – the same model that later earned fame in Ukraine. Iran reportedly supplied its own armed drones as well. China was a source of hardware, and the UAE acted both as an intermediary and direct supplier aljazeera.com africacenter.org. According to security analysts, “fleets of UAE, Iranian, Turkish, and Chinese-manufactured drones were deployed in a counteroffensive against the TPLF” when the rebels were at their zenith, marching towards the capital africacenter.org. The TPLF, lacking any air force or effective air defenses, was helpless against this onslaught. By early 2022, the Ethiopian National Defense Forces – rejuvenated and rearmed – managed to push the Tigrayan forces all the way back to their home region. They even encircled Mekelle, the Tigray regional capital, by the fall of 2022 africacenter.org. The war eventually ground into a ceasefire and a negotiated truce by November 2022, effectively sealing a government victory (albeit at an appalling humanitarian cost). Many factors led to this outcome, but one stands out. “Cheap airpower provided by drones helped enable the Ethiopian army to repel the TPLF offensive” that threatened Addis Ababa africacenter.org. In other words, it was the timely infusion of drone warfare – made possible by the UAE and its partners – that very likely saved Abiy Ahmed’s government from collapse.

For the UAE, backing Ethiopia in this conflict was a calculated move. Abu Dhabi had cultivated Abiy as an ally, extending loans and investments to Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa. During the Tigray war, the UAE officially called for peace, but quietly ensured that Abiy’s regime had the means to prevail. There were strategic reasons: the UAE had a longstanding military base in the neighboring state of Eritrea (Assab port), which was used originally to support the Yemen intervention. That base and Eritrea’s involvement in the war gave the UAE further leverage in the Horn of Africa. Moreover, by helping Addis defeat a regional insurgency, the UAE ingratiated itself with an emerging regional power and secured its reputation as a kingmaker in African conflicts. “I think they [the Emiratis] are a staging post for these weapons supplies,” observed Martin Plaut, a veteran analyst on the Horn of Africa, during the war. Some arms came directly, some indirectly, “but the UAE is clearly underwriting what is happening” aljazeera.com.

The human cost of the drone war in Ethiopia was enormous, even if it drew less global attention than other conflicts. The year-long fighting (2020–2021) had already killed tens of thousands and displaced over two million people aljazeera.com. The introduction of drones only amplified the carnage. Throughout 2021 and 2022, health workers in Tigray documented a string of deadly strikes on civilian targets – marketplaces, IDP camps, buses – which they suspected were caused by the new combat drones overhead pophealthmetrics.biomedcentral.com africacenter.org. In one particularly gruesome incident in January 2022, a drone strike hit a camp of displaced people in Dedebit, Tigray, killing at least 59 civilians, many of them women and children, as reported by international aid groups pophealthmetrics.biomedcentral.com. Such tragedies underscored that when external powers supply advanced weaponry to one side in a civil war, civilians often pay the price. Ethiopian government officials, for their part, hailed the drones as game-changers that dealt “surgical blows” to the enemy – a narrative eagerly echoed by state media. To Abiy’s administration, the UAVs were evidence of a modernizing military; to those on the receiving end, they were terror from the sky.

As peace slowly returned to Ethiopia, the role of the UAE remained shrouded in a degree of mystery. Unlike in Libya or Sudan, where evidence of Emirati meddling is copious and publicized, in Ethiopia the support largely happened behind closed doors. Neither Abu Dhabi nor Addis Ababa publicly acknowledged the arms deliveries. There was no need; the results spoke for themselves. By 2023, relations between the UAE and Ethiopia were warmer than ever. The Emirates courted Ethiopia with new investments, and Ethiopia – indebted in more ways than one – welcomed the partnership. The Horn of Africa had long been a theater of geopolitical rivalry, with Gulf states, Turkey, China, and Western powers jostling for influence. Through its intervention in the Tigray conflict, the UAE secured a seat at that table. It demonstrated that, just as in the Middle East, it could shape conflicts in Africa to its liking, using a blend of money, military aid, and strategic alliances.

In Ethiopia’s case, the UAE’s silent war had a paradoxical outcome: it helped end a conflict by helping one side win decisively. But this “victory” came at steep cost to the principle of African solutions for African problems. The precedent is sobering. As one African Union official lamented privately, “Today it’s drones in Ethiopia, tomorrow it could be something else elsewhere. Outside powers will always step in if it suits them.” For the UAE, Ethiopia was yet another canvas to project power and secure allies. And notably, it managed to do so without attracting the kind of global scrutiny or condemnation that, say, Iran or Russia might face for similar meddling. The shadow empire prefers to operate discreetly, earning goodwill from embattled governments and avoiding loud confrontations. If Libya was a bold, brash intervention, Ethiopia was the subtle counterpart – hardly talked about, yet deeply consequential. Together, they showed the breadth of the UAE’s new approach to influence: whether by brute force or quiet facilitation, Abu Dhabi was determined to be a player in any conflict that touched its interests.

Yemen: A War Within a War

Dawn broke over the port of Aden on a summer day in 2015 to the rumble of tank treads and the crackle of gunfire. Yemeni fighters, backed by Emirati armored vehicles and special forces, surged through the city’s cratered streets, flushing out Houthi rebels building by building. Operation “Golden Arrow” – the campaign to retake Aden – was the UAE’s grand entrance onto Yemen’s battlefield. The United Arab Emirates had joined the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in Yemen’s civil war in March 2015, ostensibly to restore Yemen’s internationally recognized government after Houthi militants seized the capital, Sanaa. In those early battles, the UAE earned a reputation for effectiveness and ruthlessness. Emirati Apache helicopters strafed Houthi positions on the coastline, while amphibious assault ships landed Leclerc tanks on Aden’s shores. By July 2015, thanks in large part to the UAE’s military prowess (and deep pockets), Aden was liberated from Houthi control. The UAE paid a heavy price – in September that year, a Houthi missile strike on a UAE base killed 45 Emirati soldiers in a single blow, a searing loss for the small nation reuters.com. But far from deterring Abu Dhabi’s rulers, such sacrifices only steeled their resolve. The Yemen war would go on, and the UAE would play a defining role, though not in the way anyone initially expected.

Fast-forward to August 2019. Four years of grinding war have passed. The Houthis still hold Northern Yemen, including Sanaa. The Saudi-led coalition, unable to score a decisive victory against the rebels, is bogged down in what many call a quagmire. In Aden – now the makeshift capital for Yemen’s exiled government – tensions are reaching a boiling point between ostensible allies. The UAE has armed and trained a southern Yemeni separatist force known as the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which seeks an independent South Yemen. The internationally recognized government, led by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and backed by Saudi Arabia, views the STC as a dangerous renegade. On the morning of August 28, gunmen from the STC and fighters loyal to Hadi exchange fire at checkpoints in Aden. By the next day, full-blown battles erupt in the city. In a shocking turn, UAE fighter jets roar overhead and begin bombing the very Yemeni government troops the Emirates once came to save reuters.com. Residents watched in disbelief as airstrikes pummeled convoys of Hadi’s forces trying to enter Aden, obliterating armored vehicles and sending plumes of smoke over the port. “It’s total chaos here… fighting in the city all day,” recounted a local Medecins Sans Frontières coordinator as hospitals filled with the wounded reuters.com. The government accused the UAE of a “full-fledged coup” in Aden, saying over 300 of its soldiers were killed or injured by the Emirati air attacks reuters.com. In a sense, they were right: the STC, with decisive Emirati help, seized Aden and ousted the Hadi loyalists. The very coalition that had united against the Houthis was now cannibalizing itself.

What led to this fratricide was a tale of diverging agendas. The UAE’s involvement in Yemen had always had two faces. On one hand, Abu Dhabi joined Saudi Arabia in fighting the Houthis (whom they saw as an Iranian-backed threat). On the other hand, the UAE was deeply suspicious of Yemen’s Islah Party (an Islamist faction within the Hadi camp) and sympathetic to the cause of southern autonomy. Over time, Emirati commanders came to view President Hadi as ineffective and too aligned with Islah. They began grooming southern strongmen and militia leaders as their clients – most notably Aidarous al-Zoubaidi, the figurehead of the STC. By 2017, the STC had formed with open Emirati backing, setting up a parallel administration in Aden. The UAE poured weapons and cash into training a constellation of southern militias: the Security Belt forces in Aden and Abyan, the Hadrami and Shabwani Elites in the east, and others. These units answered not to Hadi’s government, but directly to Emirati officers or their STC allies. The strategy was clear if unspoken: the UAE was carving out a sphere of influence in southern Yemen, building an allied statelet that could secure the Bab al-Mandeb strait and check both the Houthis and any Islamist influence. In 2018, the Emiratis even established de-facto control over Socotra, a remote Yemeni island of legendary biodiversity. Socotra’s seizure in June 2020 by STC fighters – who stormed the island’s capital and expelled the governor at gunpoint – symbolized this quiet takeover reuters.com. With its breathtaking Dragon’s Blood trees and strategic perch in the Arabian Sea, Socotra became “an Emirati possession in all but name” dawnmena.org. The UAE built infrastructure on the island, including an airstrip and communications facilities, without Yemeni permission. Local officials decried it as an occupation; one was quoted saying that the Emiratis were behaving “not as liberators but as an occupation power” – echoing Yemeni President Hadi’s own bitter remark in 2017 that the UAE had become an “occupier” rather than a liberator in Yemen dawnmena.org.

Seen in this light, the battle of Aden in 2019 was not a sudden betrayal but the culmination of years of divergence. Once the Houthis were largely contained and the initial mission stalled, the UAE pivoted to its longer-term interests. In late 2019, Abu Dhabi announced a “drawdown” of its troops in Yemen, giving the impression of exit. But this was not a full retreat; it was a handover. The Emiratis left behind well-armed proxy forces and shadowy networks of influence. So when conflict broke out between the STC and Hadi’s forces, the UAE did not hesitate to intervene decisively on its proxy’s behalf. Emirati warplanes struck “terrorist militias” at Aden airport – the Orwellian label it gave to Hadi’s army reuters.com. The message was unmistakable: Abu Dhabi would choose its local clients over its formal allies if forced to. The fallout strained UAE-Saudi relations (Riyadh was blindsided and furious at the Aden airstrikes), but ultimately Saudi Arabia had little choice but to accept a new status quo in the south. The Saudis brokered a shaky power-sharing deal (the Riyadh Agreement) between Hadi’s government and the STC, yet that accord never fully took hold. The STC remained the dominant power in Aden and surrounding provinces, acting with significant autonomy under Emirati patronage.

In the fog of Yemen’s war, the UAE quietly achieved many of its core objectives. It eliminated what it saw as Islamist threats – targeting Al-Islah leaders and even allegedly facilitating the assassination of some outspoken clerics and militia commanders deemed too “Islamist” (a campaign human rights groups found alarming). It secured critical maritime routes: the Emirati military and its contractors established outposts not just on Socotra, but also on Perim Island at the mouth of the Red Sea and in Eritrea across the Bab al-Mandeb, effectively giving the UAE control over one of the world’s most vital chokepoints for shipping. It built up local proxies who could guarantee that no unfriendly government would rule in Aden or the south. And it burnished a reputation at home of military might – the UAE’s rulers proudly declared their forces “had done their duty” in Yemen, portraying the partial withdrawal as victory. Yet the human toll in Yemen was catastrophic. By 2020, Yemen’s war had killed over 233,000 people (the majority through hunger and disease) and shattered the country into fragments. The UAE’s share in this tragedy is significant. Abu Dhabi’s airpower and trained militias were implicated in indiscriminate bombings and alleged abuses. Investigations by the Associated Press in 2018 uncovered a network of secret prisons in southern Yemen run by UAE-backed forces, where torture was systemic – a dark underside of the Emirati campaign that seldom reached headlines. In places like the city of Taiz, civilians caught between Houthi sieges and UAE-backed militia shelling developed a grim saying: “From the sky we get bombs, from the ground we get bullets.”

By mid-2020, as the STC cemented its hold on Aden (declaring self-rule, albeit briefly), Yemen essentially split into three realms: Houthi-controlled north, a Saudi-influenced Marib and eastern region under the nominal government, and an Emirati-influenced south under the STC and various warlords. It was a nation carved up by sponsors, each section flying different flags and currencies. In the south, murals of the UAE flag and the face of Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince (now President) Mohammed bin Zayed were not uncommon – a testament to local gratitude or dependency, depending on whom you asked. “They helped rid us of the Houthis and the Brothers [Islahis],” said a shopkeeper in Aden, using a colloquial term for Islamists. “But now they think they own our land.” When the Socotra governor complained of the UAE’s meddling, calling it a betrayal of Yemen’s sovereignty, he was promptly pushed aside as STC paramilitaries took control of the island’s institutions reuters.com. The quietude with which Socotra fell – no international outcry, just a muted statement or two – underscored the world’s fatigue and indifference to Yemen’s plight. And in that silence, the shadow empire of the UAE entrenched itself further. A Brookings Institution analysis noted that by the late 2010s, “the UAE exercised control over [Socotra] for several years… systematically separating it from Yemen and running it as its own territory” dawnmena.org. This was empire-building by proxy and patronage, not formal annexation but something not far off.

As Yemen’s war slowly moved from all-out combat to sputtering negotiations and uneasy ceasefires by 2022, the UAE reaped dividends from its long game. It had secured long-term leases on ports and islands, enhanced its regional military footprint, and eliminated or marginalized its enemies (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was significantly weakened in the south with Emirati help, and Islah was politically sidelined). But these gains came at the cost of fracturing Yemen irreparably. “The Emiratis have a strategy – ports, islands, influence – and they pursue it with a cold precision,” remarked a European diplomat in 2021 dawnmena.org. “Unfortunately, the ordinary Yemeni is not part of that calculus.” Indeed, for average Yemenis, the UAE’s involvement is a matter of bitter debate. Some credit the Emiratis for preventing a complete Houthi takeover and bringing a semblance of stability to the south. Others revile them for hijacking Yemen’s sovereignty and fueling a war within a war.

In retrospect, the Yemen conflict showcases the dual nature of the UAE’s shadow wars. Initially, the Emirates acted as a traditional ally in a coalition, openly deploying troops. But as the conflict dragged on, it shifted to a subtler approach: using proxies, influencing local politics, and intervening on its own terms, often unexpectedly (as in Aden 2019). The UAE managed to remain a part of the Saudi-led coalition on paper while simultaneously pursuing its own, often divergent agenda. Few other nations could pull off such a balancing act without severe reputational damage. The UAE did face criticism – human rights organizations and some U.S. lawmakers condemned its actions in Yemen, including the strikes on civilian targets and the support for separatists. But by and large, Abu Dhabi maintained its image as a modernizing, stable, and reliable partner in Western eyes. Part of this is due to savvy diplomacy and the UAE’s importance in other arenas (trade, counterterrorism, investment). Part is the world’s short attention span to a war as complex as Yemen’s.

As one Yemeni activist lamented, “Our country became the chessboard for others – Saudi, Iran, UAE, even the U.S. and UK supplying weapons – and we the pawns who die” aa.com.tr. In Yemen, the shadow empire operated in a dense fog – sometimes in plain sight, other times invisibly. But its imprint is clear across the south: in the blue camouflage uniforms of the Security Belt, in the flutter of the old South Yemen flag in Aden’s skies, in the emptiness of a once-unified country now broken apart. Yemen’s war is often termed a “forgotten war.” Perhaps that is exactly the kind of war a shadow empire thrives in – one where the world’s forgetfulness allows new realities to be shaped in silence, one island and one port at a time.

Cyber Operations: Hacking, Snooping, and Digital Dark Arts

In a windowless room in suburban Abu Dhabi, far from any battlefield, a 28-year-old American sat hunched over a laptop, eyes fixed on a digital “target package.” Let’s call him Kevin – a former NSA analyst drawn by the promise of tax-free pay and adventure in the desert. The list on his screen flickered with names and phone numbers: dissidents, journalists, even princes and emirs deemed threats to the UAE. Across the room, a supervisor gave a nod. Kevin executed the program. With a few keystrokes, a mysterious exploit—known as Karma—sprang into action. Thousands of miles away, in London, BBC Arabic host Giselle Khoury was unaware that her iPhone had just been infiltrated independent.co.uk. In Doha, Qatar, the chairman of Al Jazeera Media Network, Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer, was likewise oblivious that his phone too had been quietly compromised independent.co.uk. There were no phishing links, no telltale “click here” bait; the hack needed none. Karma allowed these UAE operatives to access iPhones with just a phone number or email, leaving the targets in the dark independent.co.uk. In the coming hours, the team in Abu Dhabi would silently siphon emails, contacts, messages, and photos from their high-profile victims’ devices – all in service of the Emirati state. This was Project Raven, perhaps the most audacious and far-reaching cyber espionage campaign ever run by a small nation.

The seeds of Project Raven were planted around 2014, when the UAE, increasingly paranoid about security threats, started hiring former Western intelligence experts to build a world-class cyber capability. By 2016, dozens of ex-NSA and ex-CIA operatives were on its payroll, lured by salaries sometimes triple what they’d make back home npr.org. They initially told themselves a comforting story: they were here to help an ally fight terrorism, to stop ISIS bomb plots or Iranian spy rings. Indeed, early missions of Raven (run out of a converted Abu Dhabi mansion) did focus on hard targets like Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the war in Yemen. But as one of these hackers later recalled, “then they get there, and they find that the culture of the UAE is that if you speak poorly of the monarchy, then you’re somebody they really want to look at” npr.org. The target list expanded. Soon it included peaceful critics, activists, even teenagers on Twitter who dared to lampoon the regime npr.org. The foreigners faced a moral crossroads – some left, but many stayed, seduced by high living and the sense of playing spy in a real-world sandbox. They rationalized that the U.S. government tacitly approved (their Emirati bosses claimed Washington had given a green light, though this was dubious at best) npr.org. And so the Raven operatives turned their considerable skills on a new set of enemies: journalists who offended the UAE’s rulers, outspoken dissidents at home and abroad, and officials of rival governments.

By 2017, Project Raven was in full swing and had notched some disturbing accomplishments. According to a Reuters investigation, Raven successfully hacked the iPhones of at least ten journalists and media executives, fishing for material that could link them (or the outlets they worked for) to Qatar – the UAE’s regional rival independent.co.uk. The timing was no accident: in mid-2017, a diplomatic feud erupted when the UAE and Saudi Arabia accused Qatar of supporting Islamists and fomenting dissent via media like Al Jazeera. Raven’s cyber-attacks on BBC and Al Jazeera figures were essentially a front in that Gulf crisis, an attempt to find or plant evidence that Qatar was “conspiring” through media channels independent.co.uk. They found none of the sort, but that hardly mattered. The hack itself was its own form of intimidation. Giselle Khoury, the BBC journalist targeted, was aghast when told of the breach. “They need to spend their time making their country better… not having Giselle Khoury as a hacking target,” she quipped in disbelief independent.co.uk.

Raven’s hit list didn’t stop at media. Among its victims were UAE’s own allies. For instance, Michel Medina, a British lawyer who had worked on a controversial case about torture in the UAE, found his emails rifled. Even U.S. citizens were spied on – three American journalists were caught in Raven’s net npr.org. This crossed a red line; when FBI investigators eventually found out, it triggered a rare rebuke. In 2021, the U.S. Justice Department charged three former U.S. intelligence operatives for their role as “mercenary hackers” for the UAE theguardian.com. Court documents laid bare how these operatives – Marc Baier, Ryan Adams, and Daniel Gericke – conspired to provide Emiratis with zero-click exploits and sophisticated malware to gain unauthorized access to protected computers in the U.S. and around the world theguardian.com. The charges were eventually settled in a deferred prosecution (with the men paying fines and agreeing to certain restrictions) theguardian.com, but the message was clear: Raven had gone too far, even compromising U.S. networks. Lori Stroud, one of Raven’s American recruits-turned-whistleblower, commented that investigative journalism was “the most significant catalyst” in exposing the issue and pushing authorities to act theguardian.com. Indeed, it was Reuters’ reporting in 2019 that first blew the lid off Project Raven theguardian.com, revealing to the world how the UAE – with Western help – had built a spy machine to rival that of far larger nations reuters.com.

Inside the UAE, these cyber operations produced a chilling effect. Activists and dissidents had long suspected they were surveilled. Now they had confirmation that no digital communication was safe. The UAE already had an iron grip on traditional media and public speech – political parties are banned, criticism of the royal family is a jailable offense. With Raven and similar efforts, that repression extended into the online realm globally. One telling case was that of Ahmed Mansoor, an Emirati human rights defender. Long before Raven made headlines, Mansoor was the target of repeated state-sponsored hacking attempts. In 2016, he received a text about “secrets” of tortured detainees in UAE prisons. Savvy and cautious, Mansoor sent the message to cybersecurity experts instead of clicking the link. It turned out to be a Pegasus spyware attempt – a now-infamous tool from Israel’s NSO Group – which could have turned his smartphone into a pocket spy device. That discovery by Citizen Lab not only thwarted an intrusion into Mansoor’s life, but also revealed a global industry of authoritarian surveillance. Mansoor, unfortunately, paid a price for his activism that no hack could exact: he was arrested in 2017 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for social media posts “insulting the status and prestige of the UAE.” The confluence of digital and physical repression in his story is emblematic. When hacking couldn’t silence a dissident, old-fashioned imprisonment did.

Project Raven itself was eventually shut down or rebranded after the public exposé and the subsequent U.S. legal action. But the UAE’s appetite for cyber prowess did not end. It had by then cultivated an array of tools: from commercial spyware like Pegasus (reports indicate the UAE was a major client of NSO Group, using Pegasus to hack hundreds of phones, ranging from Middle East activists to even allegedly the phone of Qatar’s emir), to its own in-house capabilities. It created companies like DarkMatter, a cybersecurity firm that acted as a front for government hacking operations. It even launched seemingly innocuous consumer apps with ulterior motives – the messaging app ToTok, which gained popularity in 2019 as a free WhatsApp alternative, was outed by the New York Times as a likely UAE spying tool recording user conversations and movements. In the digital domain, the UAE displayed the same strategic pattern as on the battlefield: identify a vulnerability, invest money and expertise to exploit it, and pursue your targets relentlessly, all while maintaining plausible deniability.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the UAE’s cyber operations is how they reveal the mentality behind the shadow empire. In the minds of the Emirati leadership, no threat is too remote or too minor to neutralize. Be it a scrappy Libyan militia or a London NGO’s blog, a Yemeni island or a critical tweet – all can be seen as pieces on a chessboard where the Emirates seeks checkmate against chaos and opposition. In pursuing absolute security and influence, the UAE turned to digital black arts that blurred the line between national security and personal vendetta. When asked about Project Raven, Emirati officials never formally acknowledged it, but privately some would say, “We do what we must to protect our home.” Indeed, one could argue the UAE’s obsession with surveillance and control is born from its own geopolitical fragility: a small nation of under 10 million (only a tenth of them citizens), surrounded by larger states and volatile neighbors. This vulnerability – combined with immense oil wealth – drove the UAE to become simultaneously one of the most connected, high-tech countries and one of the most closely monitored societies on earth.

A former Raven hacker described the operation’s ethos succinctly: “If you even criticized the government, you became a target” npr.org. One of their prime targets, for years, was Rori Donaghy, a British researcher who had once run a modest human rights website on the UAE. Donaghy’s only crime was speaking up about labor abuses and political prisoners. But for five or six years, Raven operatives tracked him relentlessly, infiltrating his communications and who knows what else npr.org. It’s a Kafkaesque picture – a wealthy futuristic monarchy marshaling world-class hackers to stalk a lone activist in London. Yet it epitomizes the UAE’s shadow empire ethos: no effort is too great to eliminate perceived threats to the regime’s image and stability.

As the 2020s progress, the UAE remains at the cutting edge of cyber operations among nations its size. It has even begun exporting some of these capabilities – offering surveillance tech and expertise to allied governments in the Middle East and Africa. In a way, this is the new face of intervention. Instead of sending tanks or funding rebels, why not supply a friendly autocrat with the tools to read his citizens’ private emails? It is cheaper, quieter, and creates a bond of dependency. The UAE learned from the best (Western agencies) and then outpaced the expectations of what a small state could do. Washington insiders were taken aback when they realized Americans had been spied on by an ally. That was a wake-up call: the student had become a master, perhaps even a frankenstein beyond the teacher’s control.

In the sprawling story of the UAE’s shadow wars, the cyber chapter stands out for its intimacy and invasive reach. Bombs and drones devastate landscapes; malware and spyware penetrate the most personal spaces of a target’s life. Together, they form a comprehensive arsenal through which the UAE extends its influence – hard power and soft power, kinetic and digital, all reinforcing each other. An Emirati diplomat once candidly told a Western counterpart, “Our size is small, so we must think big.” Thinking big, for the UAE, meant leveraging every domain of warfare and influence available in the 21st century, from the mud of Yemeni trenches to the zeros and ones of cyberspace.

The Empire of the Invisible Hand

In the early evening haze of Abu Dhabi, the sun sets behind the skyscrapers in a molten gold flourish. On the corniche, families stroll, enjoying the peace that pervades the UAE itself – a stark contrast to the turmoil in the regions where the country’s hand has reached. In a palace chamber, perhaps, sits Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the president of the UAE, architect of much of this grand strategy. He is sometimes called the most powerful man in the Arab world, not by population or landmass, but by influence crafted through wealth, willpower, and a keen understanding of power dynamics. It is a power he has wielded selectively and, more often than not, in the shadows.

Reflecting on the UAE’s adventures in Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, and cyberspace, a complex portrait emerges. This is no simplistic tale of aggression or malign intent. The UAE’s leadership sincerely perceives itself as forging order from chaos – a chaos left by collapsing states, revolutions, and extremism after the Arab Spring. In Libya and Yemen, they battled Islamists whom they view as existential threats to stable governance middleeasteye.net. In Sudan and Egypt, they bankrolled generals to prevent what they see as the Muslim Brotherhood’s creeping influence. In Ethiopia, they aided a government fighting a rebellious group to preserve national unity. Even in cyber space, their targets often included those they branded as troublemakers or terrorists (alongside peaceful critics). The through-line is the UAE’s driving philosophy of authoritarian stability: that the Middle East and North Africa are better off with strong rulers and secular (often military-led) governments, rather than messy democracies or Islamist-leaning coalitions. MBZ once reportedly remarked that the Arab world is not ready for Western-style democracy, fearing it would bring not freedom but religious extremists to power. In pursuit of this worldview, the UAE has not hesitated to undermine nascent democracies (as in Sudan’s short-lived civilian transition) or to violate international norms (as in the Libya embargo or the hacking of allies).

There is, of course, a hard realpolitik side too: the UAE’s interventions have secured its economic interests—control of ports, access to gold and resources, influence over trade routes. By placing client rulers in strategic spots, Abu Dhabi can ensure favorable terms for its businesses, from Dubai Ports World managing harbors on the Red Sea to Emirati firms winning mining concessions. The line between idealism (however authoritarian in bent) and self-interest blurs. Perhaps the most striking example of this was in Yemen: while the UAE professed to be liberating Yemen from Houthi “coup forces”, it was simultaneously advancing an expansionist agenda for itself on Yemeni soil dawnmena.org. It’s reminiscent of past empires that claimed to bring civilization or stability even as they seized land and treasure. Except the UAE doesn’t seek formal colonies; it seeks compliant networks.

The success of the UAE’s approach is a matter of perspective. By 2025, Abu Dhabi undeniably holds more sway across the Arab world than ever before. It plays an outsized role in Arab League and Gulf affairs, helped broker historic diplomatic moves like the Abraham Accords with Israel, and has become a hub for global business and tourism amid regional turmoil. Many foreign diplomats laud the UAE as a force for moderation against extremists and a savvy player that “gets things done.” Indeed, Emirati officials often contrast their efficiency with the perceived fecklessness of Western powers that bemoan problems but hesitate to act. “We have the courage to fill vacuums,” an Emirati academic once said, summarizing the national security doctrine. And fill them they did, whether in the battlefields of Sirte, the alleyways of Aden, or the chat rooms of dissidents abroad.

Yet the shadow empire’s legacy is also written in less triumphant terms: in the broken streets of Tripoli’s suburbs where unexploded ordnance lingers; in the mass graves of Darfur where genocidal violence flared while foreign sponsors jousted; in the starving villages of Yemen where the absence of war now is marked by the presence of hunger and secession; and in the fearful heart of an activist who wonders if every phone call is heard by unseen ears. For every strongman the UAE has propped up, a democratic movement was stifled or a civil society voice silenced. For every port secured, a principle of sovereignty was eroded. The UAE’s leaders have often spoken of creating a “tolerant, secure, prosperous Middle East.” But can such an order be built by covert wars and backroom deals? Or does that merely entrench the old cycle of authoritarianism and rebellion under a new guise?

Perhaps the story of the UAE’s shadow wars is a mirror to our broader world. It illuminates the new age we live in – one where might can be measured in megabits and mercenaries as much as in armies and aircraft carriers. A small nation with enough wealth and will can leverage technology and foreign manpower to play at a superpower’s game. It can strike its enemies without owning a single tank (renting Sudanese fighters, or hacking from afar). It can influence events without the burden of overt occupation (no flags to lower at a retreat, because none were ever raised). This is power with plausible deniability, war without declaration. And it raises difficult questions: How do we hold a nation accountable for actions it never formally claims? How do international laws and norms catch up to the use of private military companies or cyberweapons? The UAE is not the only player in this space – Russia, China, the U.S., and others engage in some similar tactics – but it has shown how far a relatively small state can go by adopting a hybrid approach to modern conflict.

In the end, the metaphor of a “shadow empire” is apt. Like a shadow, the UAE’s influence often falls where the light of scrutiny is faint. But the shape of that shadow traces the contours of something very real and substantial. For Libyans, Sudanese, Yemenis, Ethiopians, and others, the UAE’s actions have had life-and-death consequences. Some of those affected may never fully know who was behind a drone strike or an arms shipment, only that some foreign hand was at work. They might only see the shadow on the wall. But as this investigation has illuminated, if you follow that shadow, you find a sophisticated statecraft at its source – a fusion of wealth, ambition, and interventionist zeal in the United Arab Emirates.

As the world moves forward, the UAE’s model of exerting power will likely be studied by friends and foes alike. Its leaders have built an empire of influence without conquest, one that champions a vision of order and secularity even as it occasionally sows discord. In a region long weary of imperialism in all forms, this approach has not gone unchallenged – Turkey and Qatar, for instance, back opposing proxies and offer a rival Islamist-friendly vision, while local populations harbor their own agency and resent outside meddling. The UAE’s shadow wars thus form one part of a great game that will shape the future of the Middle East and Africa. Whether that future is more peaceful or more polarized may well depend on if the shadow empire continues to operate unchecked, or if sunlight and accountability can catch up to it.

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