Security assistance to surrogates – how the UAE secures its regional objectives

Abstract

Amid a relative withdrawal of western, liberal states from the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates have taken over some of the burden of regional security assistance – doing so redefining norms and practices of security assistance. Unlike western counterparts, the UAE are investing into security assistance in Libya or Yemen, not so much as a means of state and nation-building overseas, but as means of building networks allowing the small state to project influence and power with few normative strings attached. More so, the UAE deliver security assistance via surrogates as discrete means of statecraft allowing Abu Dhabi to compete overseas with plausible deniability. Many of these surrogates do not only challenge the state’s monopoly over violence but ultimately undermine legitimate government institutions by creating alternative forms of security sector-based governance. Ultimately, the UAE’s approach to security assistance is based on divide-and-rule, ripening particularly potent networks of surrogates over others to ensure that competitors are unable to secure their interests.

Keywords:

• United Arab Emirates
• Yemen
• Libya
• surrogate warfare
• security assistance

Introduction

The past two decades have witnessed the United Arab Emirates (UAE) developing from being a traditional small state in the Gulf into a regional power in the Middle East and North Africa, projecting influence far beyond their immediate neighbourhood. Although plagued by chronic capacity shortages in their security sector, the UAE has often been hailed as a key strategic partner for the United States in the region. Despite its often-cited near-peer status in Washington.¹ however, at a closer look Abu Dhabi’s military presents a range of inherent limitations to sustain its growing regional ambitions from Yemen over Somalia into the Mediterranean. Much of its power projection in the region relies on the Emirates effectively outsourcing warfare to local surrogates to achieve limited objectives. It allows the Gulf state to punch above its conventional weight but empowers complex networks of surrogates on the ground in the region that while also doing the UAE’s bidding, become increasingly actors in their own right who disrupt post-conflict resolution and state building. The case study of the UAE highlights how security assistance has evolved to become a tool of small state power projection and influence. The cases of Libya and Yemen are consciously selected to highlight how Emirati security assistance to surrogates helps advance its grand strategy connecting logistical hubs and maritime infrastructure strategically from the Persian Gulf over the Red Sea to the Mediterranean – a strategy that is geared towards projecting power and influence beyond the UAE’s immediate neighbourhood all the way to the Mediterranean.²

Abu Dhabi’s loss of effective control over its surrogates means that over time its security assistance to non-state actors in Libya and Yemen does not contribute to building institutions in recipient states but exacerbates conflict polarization and division. The reason is that the UAE’s understanding of security assistance is not tied to the same idealist liberal standards, norms and values of its western partners. Occurring in a conflict environment where state institutions have disintegrated or are weak, Abu Dhabi’s assistance to non-state actors is not tied to objectives of building responsible, transparent and accountable security sectors. Instead, in all cases, Emirati security assistance relies on both vertical and horizontal practises that help develop networked assemblages as means of small state Realpolitik in what Abu Dhabi perceives to be a regional competition over influence.

This article will shed light on the motivations for and practises of the UAE’s security assistance to non-state actors in Libya and Yemen arguing that its strategy of building surrogate forces to advance its own interests in these conflicts, undermines conventional liberal development goals of building inclusive and representative security sectors that support a legitimate central government. In contrast to liberal ideals of security assistance, this article will demonstrate that surrogate warfare is a partisan undertaking further polarizing conflict environments and empowering some parties to the conflict over others. More so, surrogate warfare as a means of security assistance creates instability as it incites competition and polarization at the expense of creating inclusive political and security institutions.

The article will commence by outlining how security assistance has evolved through surrogate warfare. Outlining the UAE’s motivation to engage in surrogate warfare highlights that security assistance is more tied to advancing Abu Dhabi’s security vision than building sustainable governance and security sectors in these countries. The article will continue by demonstrating how the UAE conduct warfare by delegation highlighting how Abu Dhabi selects its surrogates and provides them with the necessary support to help achieve limited UAE objectives while retaining a degree of autonomy. Emirati security assistance is analysed on basis of three activities: (a) the procurement of capability; (b) the generation of capacity; and (c) deploying Emirati servicemen to conduct training missions and direct surrogates on operations. All three activities correspond to vertical and horizontal practises in equal measure.

The evolution of security assistance to surrogates

From a liberal normative point of view, security assistance programs executed by the United States and its western partners have traditionally been provided government to government, in an effort to strengthen a state’s security sector through defence procurement, military education, training or other defence-related services – all with the aim of creating stability.³ Security assistance in the liberal understanding of the concept often ties into security sector reform (SSR) especially when assistance is provided in a more fragile context. The normative ideals of security assistance have often been guided by the same principles as security sector reform, i.e., norms of civilian control, principles of good governance, inclusion and representation.⁴ Thus, instead of merely increasing a security sector’s capacity and capability, security assistance in the liberal interpretation has a strong normative ambition to support efforts to create responsible, transparent and accountable security forces that are able to provide security inclusively for all local communities. The belief is especially within the SSR community, that only accountable and responsible security forces can create sustainable security and stability within any state and thereby lay the foundation for sustainable institutional development.⁵ In reality, there is a gap between the liberal ambition and practice by western governments when providing security assistance. Not only has western security assistance empowered and enabled authoritarian institutions,⁶ but it has especially in Iraq and Afghanistan allowed the creation of patrimonial and nepotistic networks to emerge that undermined liberal ambitions of creating transparent and inclusive security institutions.⁷

Looking at the Emirati model of security assistance, there appears to be an evolution in both norm and practise of security assistance implemented in an international normative environment that is far less optimistic about altruistic humanitarianism and intervention than it was in the immediate post-Cold War years. The retreating liberal order in the global periphery such as the southern Mediterranean, the Middle East and Arabia, has created opportunities for non-liberal states such as the UAE to redefine norms and practises of security assistance.

Emirati security assistance to surrogates has to be understood as a means of competition and influence in a regional environment defined by the relative withdrawal of liberal powers, first and foremost the United States. Amid the relative reduction of US security commitments to the region, the perception in Abu Dhabi is that the regional security burden must be increasingly borne by local actors creating a widening gap between security ambitions and needs on one hand and the capacity and capability to provide for it.⁸ Especially a small state such as the UAE must look for innovative ways to close the capacity gap that stems from its relatively small size. Therefore, security assistance is not so much a means of liberal state and nation-building as much more a means to build networks that allow the small state to project influence and power with few normative strings attached. Apart from that, like major powers the UAE’s tendency to delegate security assistance to surrogates is driven by the need to develop discrete means of statecraft that allow Abu Dhabi to compete overseas with plausible deniability.⁹

Unlike the context for conventional state-to-state provision of security assistance, the context for the Emirati delivery of security assistance is complex, competitive and most often defined by the absence of effective state institutions in the recipient country. The delegation of the burden of warfare to local surrogates, often armed non-state actors, occurs within in a conflict environment where the authority of local government is either challenged or already failing.¹⁰ Instead of investing into the development of strong civilian institutions that could exercise effective oversight over those forces receiving security assistance, the UAE’s practise appears to prioritize the development of potent surrogate forces who are free to use their eventual oligopoly over violence to develop competing civilian institutions. In the complex 21st century conflict environments, security assistance delivered through surrogates more often than not props up non-state actors that either challenge legitimate government authority or compete with other armed non-state actors where a legitimate government is absent. In this context security assistance is unlikely going to comply with liberal principles and practises to create responsible, transparent and accountable security forces under civilian control.¹¹

While western security assistance in practise might have deviated from these liberal ideals of creating accountable and transparent security institutions, they were nonetheless guided in principle by the aim of creating inclusive institutions that can provide stability. In the case of the UAE, however, security assistance is a means of statecraft by surrogate that is supposed to allow the patron to compete in polarized conflict environments. Looking at competition through the lens of a zero-sum game, the UAE’s objectives for conducting security assistance in Libya and Yemen are guided by the need to develop a potent competing force, which even if unlikely to dominate the conflict theatre, is powerful enough to stop competitors from being able to fully secure their interests.¹² Delegating competition to surrogates means that the UAE’s security assistance policy is preoccupied with the struggle for controlling fragmented security sectors in both countries, rather than actually developing robust institutions that could deliver stability through inclusion.¹³ Security assistance as means of regional competition thereby prioritizes partisan patron and surrogate interests over inclusive local stability in an effort to generate an advantage over competitors. Especially in multipolar conflict environments, the UAE’s approach takes a divide-and-rule approach, ripening particularly potent networks of surrogates over others to ensure that competitors are unable to secure their interests – an approach to security assistance that stems from the colonial approach to western empire building.¹⁴ In so doing, unlike western providers of security assistance, Abu Dhabi does not appear to look at influence in conflicts overseas in absolute but in relative terms. That is, the UAE is not preoccupied in achieving outright victories in complex environments,¹⁵ but achieve relative influence gains vis-à-vis direct competitors in the region as well as, at times, vis-à-vis external great powers.

Controlling the surrogate receiving the security assistance is therefore not a priority, as the influence gains vis-à-vis competitors do not require effective control of the surrogate. The UAE’s approach to its surrogates is one that allows surrogates to retain degrees of autonomy through the creation of networks between provider and recipient that are looser than in conventional SSR.¹⁶The emerging networks are more heterarchical than hierarchical and suggest a horizontal rather than vertical cooperation between the UAE as the patron and local actors as the surrogates. Contrary to great power practices in the realm of security assistance, Abu Dhabi is not trying to dominate the surrogate, but is more interested in partnership and cooperation whereby control is more strategic than necessarily tactical or operational.¹⁷ That is to say that while the UAE is interested in ensuring surrogates achieve strategic outcomes that provide the Emirates with leverage vis-à-vis other competitors, tactical and operational control over surrogate activities is exercised inconsistently at best.

The UAE’s security assistance programs are thereby built around vertical as well as horizontal practises. The three main activities of Emirati security assistance provision are a) the procurement of capability; (b) the generation of capacity; and (c) deploying Emirati servicemen to conduct training missions and direct surrogates on operations. These activities correspond with vertical practises as they lead to knowledge generation and transfer as well as amount to material practises to increase surrogate trust, loyalty and dependency. Lastly, these activities lead to the development of networked assemblages between a variety of different actors who are directly or indirectly tied into the Emirati security assistance effort. At the same time these activities also relate to horizontal practises as the developed assemblages between patron and surrogate are held together by a shared horizontal experience of learning, emulating and adapting from one another. Finally, the core objective of UAE security assistance of small state power projection and influence is closely related to the horizontal practice of leverage, i.e., translating the local gains of surrogate engagement into geo-strategic currency when engaging with peer-competitors and great powers. In particular amid the U.S. pivot towards the Asia-Pacific, Abu Dhabi is using its surrogate networks to fill the geo-strategic void Washington has left in the region and present itself as a near-peer partner.

Understanding the UAE’s motivations for surrogate warfare

The appeal of projecting hard power by delegation in the United Arab Emirates can be primarily traced back to the growing discrepancy between Abu Dhabi’s regional ambitions and the military capacity it has at its disposal as a traditional small state. The federation of the seven tribally based monarchies under the leadership of Abu Dhabi’s royal family has been transformed from a regional backwater to a global brand increasing the country’s confidence and ambitions. Immense hydrocarbon wealth has helped the country’s hyper-development first into a leading regional soft power and then in a country willing to experiment with hard power. With the ascent of Abu Dhabi as the federation’s undisputed centre of gravity, its President Mohammad bin Zayed al Nahyan (MbZ) redirected the country’s outlook from bandwagoning and hedging to a more assertive foreign and security policy. Especially when the old powerhouses of the Middle East collapsed under the weight of popular revolutions during the Arab Spring, MbZ as a military man prioritized the hard power lever to shield not just the homeland from revolt but embark on an ambitious regional strategy to roll back the achievements of the revolutions to restore the old order of ‘authoritarian stability’.

In contradiction to traditional small state thinking, the UAE, although small in territory and population, were willing to develop and implement an independent foreign and security policy that was often at odds with both regional and extra-regional partners. Based on deep-seated security paranoia of regime survival among Abu Dhabi elites, the UAE – wedged between Saudi Arabia and Iran – envisages itself as a middle power in the region able to secure and advance its national interests at whatever cost and risk against competitors.¹⁸ The assertiveness with which the Emirates intervened in countries like Egypt, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen in an effort to restore the old order earned it the name ‘Little Sparta’.¹⁹ And, while the interference in Egypt in 2013 was relying on information power, its interventions in Libya, Somalia, and Yemen were reliant on military hard power.

MbZ’s pessimistic and securitized vision for the region thereby appears to deviate from the more soft power-centric regional outlook from his father who is often been referred to as the ‘father of the nation’.²⁰ While his father and other Emirati royalty had prioritized the power of appeal as the region’s financial and business hub, MbZ fostered the reform and transformation of the entire security sector in parallel to the country’s hyper-development in other areas. For Abu Dhabi’s President, the UAE’s growth in the 21st century’s global environment depends on its ability to secure its neo-mercantilist ambitions, namely securing access to vital regional trade routes, choke points and logistical hubs.²¹ The self-perception of a middle power between East and West is thereby underlined by Abu Dhabi’s influence and control of important ports from the Persian Gulf over the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. Both Yemen and Libya are important pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of controlling access to supply chains and logistical corridors²²: in Yemen, it is mostly about access to the maritime domain around the Bab El Mandab Strait while in Libya, it is also about the country’s corridor to the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa, where Abu Dhabi has been developing local networks with communities and policymakers as well as Russian actors such as Wagner Group.²³ Thus, the UAE’s ideological war against political Islam in the region and the creation of authoritarian surrogates of the likes of Sisi in Egypt, Haftar in Libya and Al Zubaidi in Yemen, is not an end itself but generates access and influence in key strategic theatres vis-à-vis key competitors such as Qatar, Turkey, or at times even the United States.

Despite its immense material wealth, however, the UAE’s expansive ambitions in the region remain chronically challenged by capacity shortages that will remain for the foreseeable future. While the outcome of military transformation might have been unprecedented by regional standards,²⁴ it has not been able to overcome the fact that the military can only draw from a limited pool of roughly one million indigenous Emiratis. Traditionally, the Emirati military like militaries in neighbouring Gulf states, tried to compensate for the lack of human capacity in the security sector with loan and contract solders. Rank and file were augmented by contract soldiers from other Arab or South Asian countries, while the officership was supplemented with professionals from western militaries.²⁵ However, with the professionalization of the military and an increased demand for effective joint operations, the capacity available for hire or loan, was no longer sufficient to fill the capacity gap. Delegating warfare to local surrogates therefore appears to be an effective way to translate financial power into hard power projection while bridging the gap between the UAE’s expeditionary regional policy and the inherent shortage in manpower.²⁶ Relying on armed non-state actors, trained, equipped and directed, has therefore become a means for the UAE to compete in complex, multipolar environments with near-peer competitors for influence.

Further, the externalization of the burden of warfare to surrogates appears to be also driven as is the case with other patrons such as the United States, Turkey, or Russia, by Abu Dhabi’s need to operate both discreetly and with plausible deniability. As the war in Yemen in 2015 turned out to be more deadly for the UAE than expected – with 45 soldiers killed in a day by a Houthi missile strike²⁷ – domestic opposition to the war effort starting to emerge, particularly in the northern emirates where most Emirati rank and file come from.²⁸ While the western literature looks at casualty sensitivity mostly as a phenomenon in liberal democracies, the case study of the UAE demonstrates that even in an authoritarian monarchy, the images of soldiers returning back home in body bags could not be ignored – a phenomenon also authoritarian Russia had to grapple with in Syria.²⁹ Especially since the expeditionary nature of the UAE’s foreign and security policy appears to be conceived in Abu Dhabi while other emirates bear the human costs of these deployments, the externalization of casualties was an important factor in driving the UAE’s resort to surrogates.

Finally, surrogates offer Abu Dhabi a degree of plausible deniability when projecting power in contested conflicts. Despite the fact that funding streams can often be traced back to Abu Dhabi, the surrogates it sponsored have retained a minimum level of dissociation from their patron in the UAE. Especially, when committing human rights abuses and war crimes, as has been the case in both Libya and Yemen, Abu Dhabi can at least nominally distance itself from these activities without being directly implicated. Surrogates have allowed the UAE to conduct controversial operations and outsourcing war crimes, while avoiding direct blame from partners in the West.³⁰ The reason is that surrogate wars and competition take place in the grey-zone of conflict.

Executing the UAE’s surrogate wars

Undoing the Libyan revolution

The UAE’s post-revolutionary interventions in the wider region date back to the Libyan uprising, when Abu Dhabi joined the NATO-led campaign to enforce UN Security Council resolution 1973 in March 2011. Under the banner of the Responsibility to Protect, NATO was looking to increase the campaign’s legitimacy by bringing on board Gulf partners – most notably Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. What started as a support operation for NATO to buy credit in western capitals, quickly generated into the so-called ‘Gulf moment’³¹ where the tribal monarchies were all punching above their weight to fill the void left by the disengaging United States. Instead of cooperation, however, Libya paved the way for an intra-Gulf competition between Doha and Abu Dhabi over how to deal with the fallout of the Arab Spring. For the UAE, the prospect of competitor Qatar and later Turkey empowering civil society and providing platforms for both secular and Islamist influencers, was unbearable making Libya a key flag to be captured in the competition for a new post-revolutionary order.³² More than that, Libya offered a strategic location in the direct neighbourhood to Europe with a corridor to sub-Saharan Africa and direct access to the maritime hubs of the Mediterranean. For Abu Dhabi, having their own, mostly secular rebel groups win in Libya became a zero-sum game that would determine the trajectory of the Arab Spring. While Qatar appeared to secure key institutions, influencers and decision-makers in the direct aftermath of Gadhafi’s death, the UAE subtly continued to build networks across the emerging revolutionary divide in the country. By 2014, it allowed Abu Dhabi to take an assertive stance backing a rogue general who had appeared as a self-styled saviour of the country: Khalifa Haftar.

Following on from the UAE’s success in ripening the post-revolutionary environment in Egypt in 2013, Abu Dhabi felt emboldened that Haftar could be an equally potent vehicle to build an ideological partnership in Libya under an aggressively pushed ‘counter-terrorism’ narrative.³³ More so, Haftar promised to be able to unite many of the warring rebel factions in the country under tight authoritarian control plugging into the UAE’s strategic narrative of advancing ‘authoritarian stability’ in North Africa. Haftar had staged a coup in February 2014, which went widely unnoticed domestically lacking external support and any media savviness – but it got him the attention of the UAE’s leadership who realized the untapped potential of the renegade military leader offering a counter model to the political infighting in post-revolutionary Tripoli.³⁴ His hostility towards Islamism and political pluralism made him a natural ally for Abu Dhabi. Under the pretext of ‘countering terrorism’, Haftar had a second attempt at a military coup in May 2014 through Operation Dignity. With Emirati financial and information support, Haftar was able to broker a set of deals with tribal forces and militia groups most from Libya’s East who had grown disenfranchised and alienated with the elected parliament that Haftar’s militias were eager to topple.³⁵ The loose network of militias that followed Haftar’s call for a ‘counterterrorism operation’ against political rivals in the country’s west, would start to call itself the ‘Libyan National Army’ (LNA) or Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) – a key recipient of UAE security assistance in the years to come.

Over the summer of 2014, the LNA consolidated its power over East Libya’s Benghazi creating a parallel government that would answer to Haftar.³⁶ In the course thereof the LNA instigated a political crisis that would lead to Libya’s Civil War and effectively split the country in two. Through accommodation, coercion and the forging of tribal alliances Haftar – strengthened by the UAE’s political, financial, military and international support – was able to grow the loose militia network of the LNA to seize control of the country’s East under the powerful narrative of standing united against ‘terrorism’. Political parties, NGOs and elected municipal councils were framed as terrorists and disbanded using LNA militias to coerce civil society in eastern Libya into submission.³⁷ However, as the civil war moved further into western Libya, the LNA had to be propped up to become not just a praetorian guard of the Haftar regime emerging in Benghazi but a military fighting force. The UAE’s assistance proved to be vital to give the LNA the operational edge.

On the strategic level, the UAE’s sponsorship was instrumental in providing Haftar with legitimacy domestically, helping him to develop networks with rivals and competitors in eastern Libya. Securing the support from Abu Dhabi meant that Haftar could tap into the UAE’s international networks to build ties externally in Russia, France, Jordan, and Egypt among other players. This provided Haftar with important leverage politically, transforming him from renegade Gadhafi-era officer whose call to arms fell on deaf ears in February, to the main rallying point for the opposition in the East against the Tripoli-dominated political process. UAE support allowed Haftar to build military-driven patronage networks in eastern Libya that would be tied to him personally and were nurtured through a material-driven transactionalism.

Procurement of capability

Abu Dhabi’s material and logistical support has been key to the franchise model of the LNA that allowed Haftar to co-opt and accommodate competing brigades and commanders into followership. Material support instilled trust, loyalty and a degree of dependability between LNA leadership and UAE elites. In return for loose integration into the LNA network and loyalty to Haftar, brigades would get access to financial support as well as material and logistical support from Haftar’s sponsor in the UAE.³⁸ In a country under a strict arms embargo, the Emirates provided Haftar and the LNA with a means to bypass the arms embargo and receive material support that was hard to come by. Haftar’s monopoly over access to the UAE, meant that he could use material support to accommodate competitors.³⁹ Sophisticated technology delivered cutting-edge capability to the LNA that gave an immense boost to the morale of Haftar’s militia network in their ongoing war with rivals in western Libya. These activities transformed the LNA into a vehicle for Abu Dhabi to cultivate networks in the country as a vertical security assistance practice.

Most importantly, the UAE was able to provide the LNA with air power superiority against forces in western Libya who until the intervention of Turkey in Libya in 2019 had no noteworthy air force of its own.⁴⁰ In a land warfare environment dominated by small, mechanized infantry units, the UAE’s provision of armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) of the homemade Yabhon type and the Chinese Wing Loong II type, constituted an operational game changer for the LNA. Equipped with Chinese missiles,⁴¹ the UAVs were able to penetrate deep into rival territory striking formations loyal to Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) who were widely defenceless against strikes from the air. UAE-sponsored helicopter gunships and fixed wing fighter jet aircrafts were further able to provide the LNA with strike capability against infantry units. Logistically, Abu Dhabi was able to provide the LNA with helicopters and transport aircrafts allowing Haftar’s forces to move manpower and material swiftly across large stretches of territory – keeping vital lines of communications intact over greater geographic space. Further, the air power provided by Abu Dhabi added to the LNA’s ability to gather intelligence as well as conduct surveillance and reconnaissance operations that proved vital for the situational awareness of Haftar’s forces. In 2017 credible reports emerged about air tractors being flown out of Al Khadim air base in eastern Libya to bomb GNA targets.⁴² Images suggested that the pilots flying planes with Emirati callsigns were western contractors likely operating for a private military company linked to Eric Prince – the infamous pioneer for contract soldiering acting as an advisor to Abu Dhabi’s President MbZ.⁴³

On land, the UAE was able to increase the mechanization of the LNA. UAE-made armoured personnel carriers provided the LNA with new platforms to increase operational tempo while also improving force protection. Mounted machine guns and mortar systems increase the attack capability of the LNA’s mechanized infantry. In 2020, Abu Dhabi financed several Russian-made Pantsir S-1 air defence systems that would prove to be critical for the LNA’s ability to defend against Turkish-made UAVs provided by Ankara to the opposing GNA.⁴⁴

Capacity generation

Given the LNA’s lack of experienced fighters, Abu Dhabi has been able to prop up the LNA’s capacity shortages by facilitating deals between Haftar and its wider surrogate network in the region. Especially as the LNA expanded their reach beyond the strongholds in eastern Libya, it required more capacity to hold and administer seized territory. Here, the UAE actively build assemblages between its primary Libyan surrogate, the LNA, and militias as well as mercenaries loyal to Abu Dhabi. In 2014, the Emirates facilitated the entry of its Darfurian surrogate, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA-MM) to the Libyan theatre, augmenting LNA capacity in its operations in southern Libya. Tied into Haftar’s patrimonial network through his son Sadam Haftar, the SLA-MM became an important force multiplier on the front lines around Libya’s oil crescent.⁴⁵ Loyalty to the cause of the LNA was secured by Haftar’s inner circle through the distribution of military aid and support procured from the UAE.

Since 2020 the assemblage between the LNA and Sudanese militia groups has become more formalized as the UAE have shifted towards a more commercial relationship between itself, the LNA and Sudanese fighters. The commercialization of Sudanese fighting outfits was advanced by the UAE through the creation of private military companies in the UAE that would hire Sudanese mercenaries to then deploy in Libya alongside the LNA.⁴⁶

The use of mercenaries as force multipliers providing critical capability to the undertrained and unprofessional LNA, became critical in the battle for Tripoli in 2019 where Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries embedded alongside the LNA. Russia’s 2000 battle-hardened Special Forces operatives provided an essential morale booster for the LNA, while advising the LNA tactically on how to improve manoeuvrist approach.⁴⁷ Networks between Wagner Group and Haftar were facilitated by the UAE who has become the most important ally of Russia in North Africa. More importantly, Abu Dhabi is believed to have provided the financial means to pay for the Wagner operation⁴⁸ that although unable to win the battle for Tripoli, made it possible for LNA brigades to advance quickly, seizing and holding ground in face of enemy fire. Wagner was further used to hire Syrian pro-regime fighters as mercenaries into the Libyan theatre – again believed to be paid for with funds from Abu Dhabi.⁴⁹ The UAE actively worked as a facilitator between Haftar and the Assad regime who agreed to provide capacity in the common fight against ‘terrorism’.⁵⁰ Thereby, the UAE’s engagement with Wagner helped with geo-strategic leverage vis-à-vis Russia increasing Abu Dhabi’s profile as a near-peer player.

Training and direction

With its own boots on the ground, the Emirates have had direct eyes on the ground in Libya at least ever since the beginning of Haftar’s Operation Dignity in 2014. Al-Khadim airport had become the most important UAE base in the country, hosting manned and unmanned UAE aircrafts as well an Emirati forward operating base in Libya’s East.⁵¹ From there it is believed that Emirati officers piloted the UAE’s drones against targets in western Libya.⁵² Much of the UAE’s operations in Al Khadim since 2014 and later after the seizure of Al Jufra airbase in 2017 remain difficult to trace. Occasional sightings of Emirati officers on site including Emirati air power platforms suggest that larger contingents of UAE air force officers were operating in and from these bases. In June 2020, videos started to emerge allegedly showing Emirati officers in a Pantsir-1 air defence system in Libya instructing LNA fighters on how to use the system against Turkish drones.⁵³ Whether this was part of a wider UAE training program for the LNA or an effort of directing LNA air defence operations in combat remains cannot be determined. It is, likely, however, that with a larger Emirati presence in the bases, ad-hoc training programs have taken place to transfer operational and technical knowledge instructing the LNA in how to use some of the more sophisticated capability it was provided with by the UAE. Apart from being a vertical practice of knowledge transfer, training and direction provided by Emirati servicemen to Libyan surrogates created levels of integration based on shared horizontal experiences of learning, emulating and adapting from one another.

More extensive training programs for the LNA were procured by Abu Dhabi through its ally Jordan with which the UAE cooperated to facilitate arms transfers, material support, and training since at least 2017.⁵⁴ Running training programs through its extensive regional network of partners, here Jordan, meant that the UAE could maintain a necessary level of dissociation.

Securing access to the Bab al Mandab

The UAE’s surrogate war in Yemen started as a much more direct engagement by Emirati forces in March 2015 when Abu Dhabi decided to support the Saudi-led coalition to push out Houthis insurgents from Yemen’s capital. The disruptive mass protests during the Arab Spring in 2011 left an already fragile country on the brink of collapse with the decade-old strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh unable to keep the various secessionist factions under control. Especially the Houthi movement in Yemen’s north had benefitted from state failure seizing ever more ground in the country’s north and eventually taking the capital Sanaa in 2014. By 2015 Saudi Arabia and the UAE looked at their southern neighbour in fear as the Houthis increasingly receiving support from Iran would become an ever more potent fighting force, while other contenders for domestic power like the Islamist Islah movement were able to increase their civil societal support – a situation that left Abu Dhabi with unease. However, beyond the counterrevolutionary objective to contain the influence of Islamist groups and contain the reach of the Houthis, the UAE saw Yemen as a key piece in their maritime grand strategy due to its strategic location around the region’s most important maritime choke point, the Bab al Mandab Strait.⁵⁵ Influence or even control of southern Yemen’s shorelines would establish Abu Dhabi as one of the most important powerbrokers in the region. Therefore, a key objective of the UAE was to establish a presence in southern Yemen that would be unchallenged by the Houthis in the north, the Saudi-backed central government of Mansur Hadi, Al Qaeda on the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) or other Islamist movements such as Al-Islah.

Emboldened by foreign policy successes in Egypt and Libya, the UAE committed more than 5,000 troops to the conflict in Yemen becoming Saudi Arabia’s most important partner on the ground.⁵⁶ Very early on, Abu Dhabi relied on local surrogates to increase the capacity of its own forces drawing upon mercenaries from its home-grown private military industry⁵⁷ and local militias. More than in Libya, the Emirati effort in Yemen was geared towards building a surrogate from the bottom up through training, equipping and directing local forces under the umbrella of a socio-political institution. While in Libya, the UAE was drawing on ideological synergies over the opposition to Islamism with the east Libyan Haftar camp, in Yemen the surrogate forces were almost exclusively drawn from the nexus of the long-standing secessionist Southern Movement.⁵⁸ The grievances of southerners over disenfranchisement from northerners in Sanaa allowed for natural synergies to emerge between these groups and the UAE effort to delegate the burden of war against the Houthis and southern Yemeni competitors gradually to local forces while withdrawing its own boots on the ground. From Emirati nurturing the Security Belt Forces emerged as one of the most potent security actors in southern Yemen, which would later become the quasi-security sector of Southern Transition Council (STC) – the political umbrella the UAE built around its surrogates. With the political, operational and human burden on the Emirati military increasing in Yemen, especially after 45 Emirati soldiers were killed in a single Houthi missile strike in September 2015,⁵⁹ Abu Dhabi increasingly fostered a strategy of externalizing the burden of warfare. This strategy relied on nurturing military-driven patronage networks locally that would be trained, equipped and oftentimes paid by the UAE.⁶⁰

Like in Libya, the UAE’s support allowed key interlocutors on the ground – of which Aidrous al-Zubaidi, now leader of the STC, emerged as the most powerful one – to build their own patronage networks to not only fight the Houthis but increasingly also political competitors and rivals in Yemen’s South.⁶¹ These leaders would be able to tap into Abu Dhabi’s international networks helping them to gain political legitimacy domestically. As the leader of the STC, al-Zubaidi has been promoted as the quasi-leader of southern Yemen by the UAE in third-party engagements with Russia or Saudi Arabia.⁶² Like in Libya, the UAE’s security assistance engagement in Yemen has been an important horizontal practice of increasing geo-strategic leverage by gaining recognition by great powers as a near-peer partner in the region.

Training and direction

Unlike the UAE effort in Libya, the surrogate warfare strategy in Yemen relied from the beginning on building indigenous capacity through extensive training programs. The vertical transfer of both technical and operational knowledge has been an integral part of the UAE’s loose control over the surrogates it helped to nurture in Yemen. Emirati Special Forces are believed to have trained over 90,000 fighters from Yemen in the UAE and Egypt, over the past six years mostly on matters of tactical warfare, combat and counterterrorism.⁶³ The most significant training programs have resulted in the establishment of the Security Belt Forces in Aden, Lajih and Abyan, the Shabwani Elite Forces in Shabwah province and the Hadhrami Elite Forces in the Hadramawt province. In Al Anad air base, the UAE started in 2015 to train Yemeni pilots on the same air tractors Eric Prince later provided to the LNA in Libya. The air tractors supplied by the Emirates would be used to provide close air support and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability.⁶⁴

Recruiting from local tribes especially in the Hadramout, Emirati trainers have developed their own force multipliers raising units from the bottom up who are trained and equipped to operate alongside Emirati forces. Under Emirati direction surrogate forces have been able to capture strategic locations in the South both from AQAP and the Hadi government.⁶⁵ UAE forces would provide armour, close air support and infantry direction on the ground creating hybrid forces that would operate as tactical and operational extension of the Emirati military. The assemblages between Emirati servicemen and local surrogates have been the result of horizontal security assistance practices relating to how patron and surrogate learn, emulate and adapt on operation together in the Yemeni environment.

In areas captured by UAE surrogates, these groups do not operate within the legal umbrella provided by the central government of Yemen but answer directly to operational commanders from the UAE.⁶⁶ However, with the Emirati military withdrawing from the Yemeni mainland since 2019, these operational command and control relationships between Emirati commanders and surrogate forces on the ground have disappeared, providing STC-linked forces with a far greater degree of autonomy to exploit their newly gained monopoly over violence in an effort to expand their political power base.⁶⁷

Procurement of capability

In comparison to the war in Libya, the war in Yemen remains widely a low-tech war, in particular between the STC and its southern Yemeni rivals. While the Houthis have received substantial Iranian support to develop a ballistic missile and drone capability, this capability has mostly been directed against high-value targets in Saudi Arabia and not against STC infantry units. Without a potent air force in Yemen, military operations are sustained by mechanized infantry and armour. Abu Dhabi’s security assistance mostly relied on the delivery of different types of armoured personal carriers and fighting vehicles that would allow its surrogates to manoeuvre swiftly and with increased force protection against small arms fire. Some of the US-made fighting vehicles were equipped with TOW anti-tank missiles that proved to be effective against enemy armour.⁶⁸ Infantry units were further equipped with small arms such as machine guns and mortar systems that provided cheap solutions to augment the capability of Yemeni forces in the South.⁶⁹ Material factors, albeit less sophisticated as in the Libyan context, nonetheless, shaped the relationship between patron and surrogate as much of the relationship between Abu Dhabi and the STC is still upheld remotely via the delivery of military supplies even after the UAE military formally withdrew most of its forces in 2019.⁷⁰ In a conflict environment that is awash with small arms, anti-tank missiles and armoured personnel carriers from the UAE provides its surrogates with a competitive edge – a reality a grateful STC repays in trust and loyalty.

Capacity generation

As the war-torn, failed state of Yemen provides very little in terms of economic opportunities, UAE-paid salaries never struggled to attract fighters volunteering to join the Emirati surrogate units.⁷¹ Training and equipping manpower was never a major issue for the UAE in Yemen. However, Abu Dhabi found it difficult to generate capable manpower effective enough to operate without Emirati direction and support. While STC-linked forces are able to hold territory on their own, they found it difficult to seize territory with external support from more potent Houthi or AQAP forces. Therefore, like in Libya, the UAE early on started to bring in experienced Latin American mercenaries working for Abu Dhabi-based PMCs who would operate alongside local forces, freeing up capacity of an increasingly overstretched Emirati military.⁷² Over the years former soldiers from Sudan and the Horn of Africa were recruited by the UAE to fight alongside the STC to augment its local surrogate’s capacity and capability.⁷³ In operations against STC rivals from Al Islah, Abu Dhabi’s surrogates could count on specialist mercenaries from the United States and Israel who were hired by the UAE to run death squads to assassinate leaders of the Islamist group – all under the banner of countering ‘terrorism’.⁷⁴ What emerged in Yemen was an intricate assemblage of commercial and local surrogates that would allow Abu Dhabi to gradually scale back its own footprint in the country while maintaining an indirect presence through delegation.⁷⁵

The drawbacks of Emirati security assistance

Abu Dhabi’s authoritarian model of security assistance provided the small sate with middle or even great power influence in regional conflicts. Unlike western counterparts, the provision of material and training support, capacity building as well as knowledge transfer, has neither followed a clearly defined strategy of security sector reform nor necessary institutional support that could have helped translate the operational success of security assistance into strategic effect in post-conflict stabilization. UAE-sponsored surrogate warfare in both Libya and Yemen has purely been geared towards achieving Emirati influence on the ground at the expense of competitors,⁷⁶ which often did not go beyond disrupting the socio-political status quo. Without an endorsement of the idea of civilian control, Abu Dhabi’s approach to providing support has focused on developing an extended military lever of power that can be used to influence and shape conflict outcomes – while not necessarily winning a conflict, it can nonetheless, disrupt the objectives and operations of competitors. Thereby, the UAE’s approach to security assistance as a means to compete in multipolar conflicts, is not dissimilar to Russia’s use of surrogates as means of great power competition.⁷⁷ The UAE’s investment into the LNA and STC can be seen as a long-term networking opportunity for Abu Dhabi where political influence via surrogate in Libya and Yemen took precedence over long-term stabilization. The creation of a sustainable institutional framework around the surrogate forces has been entirely disregarded in Libya while having resulted in the creation of a quasi-state actor in Yemen, the STC, that further challenges the territorial and socio-political integrity of the country.

One of the most concerning drawbacks of security assistance being provided to non-state actors that do not cooperate but compete with government authority, is that it creates new fault lines in already polarized conflicts.⁷⁸ Rather than offering avenues for the integration of conflicting parties into an inclusive national framework that could assist with reconciliation, the UAE’s support for the LNA and the STC-aligned forces has added additional layers of conflict to already conflict-torn countries. In Libya, the rise of the LNA has exacerbated already existing fault lines between western and eastern Libyans creating a deepening divide that will be ever harder to bridge in an eventual reconciliation effort. More so in Yemen, the UAE’s network of surrogate militias tied to the southern cause, has reinforced the divide between northern and southern Yemenis.

On top of growing polarization of the conflict environment, the UAE’s surrogate warfare approach severely undermines the states’ already strained monopoly over violence. Without sufficiently trained capacity of its own to maintain effective control over surrogates, the UAE’s training program in Yemen led to the generation of a complete parallel security sector that is either not or only insufficiently integrated into the civilian command and control framework of the Hadi government. Thus, instead of contributing to disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of non-state actors, the UAE’s security assistance to its surrogates has created security sectors that operate widely without civilian control or accountability – both in Libya and Yemen. In the absence of effective oversight and control from either the patron or the governing authority in the country, surrogate warfare actively undermines stabilization operations as surrogate networks become Frankenstein monsters that pursue their own, often diverting interests. In both Libya and Yemen, UAE surrogates have proliferated material support and arms to unvetted non-state actors, fuelling conflict. In Yemen, Emirati arms ended up in the hands of Al Qaeda-linked tribes.⁷⁹ Moreover, the UAE’s vast surrogate networks exploited their gained autonomy after seizing territory to create effectively ungoverned spaces where they would commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.⁸⁰

The UAE’s polarization of conflict and the weakening of government authority through the support to non-state actors has paved the way in both Libya and Yemen for political fragmentation. Without a clear submission of the surrogate to civilian rule or political oversight, both the LNA and the STC operate in a vacuum they have been trying to fill. Armed coercion and communal mobilization have nurtured new loyalties between local stakeholders, civil society and UAE surrogates, whose gained relative political autonomy they are unwilling to surrender.⁸¹ The divide between those forces in the country who have benefitted from Emirati support and those you have has created a divide whereby status-quo actors either tied to the GNA in Libya or the Hadi government in Yemen find it ever more difficult to compete with the insurgent actors backed by Abu Dhabi. As a result, both the LNA and the STC act as quasi-state actors paving the way for political secession in the country. In both countries the UAE have created immensely powerful contenders of political power whose edge in capacity and capability make them impossible to be reined in. In particular in Yemen, embedding its surrogate network into the southern cause for independence has exacerbated an existing dynamic that already created de-facto areas of self-rule where the central government has no control. But also in Libya, the fear of political secession of eastern Libya is real, as over the years Haftar has been able to build personalized institutions of patronage that govern the territory the LNA has seized.

These newly created patronage networks of governance retain their loyalty to Abu Dhabi but do not offer inclusive and representative platforms for governance. These networks help augment the UAE’s standing from a traditional small state to a middle power in the region at the expense of regional security and stability. Haftar in Libya and Al Zubaidi in Yemen run personalized governance systems that are exclusive and are not subject to any form of popular accountability. Thereby, post-conflict stabilization is under threat as popular grievances remain unaddressed as civilian institutions are eroded and replaced by security sector-based institutions developing around the UAE’s surrogate forces who disregard norms of liberal governance.

However, for an aspiring regional power such as the UAE, its security assistance practices have delivered a key horizontal effect: influence and leverage. Local networks of armed groups on the ground do not only provide Abu Dhabi with limited yet significant reach and depth into geo-strategically important conflict zones far beyond its shores, these networks have also transformed the UAE into an important broker. This has transformed the traditional small state into a near-peer regional stakeholder not just for major regional powers such as Turkey and Iran, but even extra-regional powers such as the United States and Russia who are drawn to engage with the Emirates. Especially as extra-regional powers are less inclined to directly engage in regional conflicts, the UAE appear to provide additional avenues for remote regional engagement through its networks curated through security assistance.

Conclusion

The UAE’s provision of security assistance to surrogates in Libya and Yemen has become an integral part in the foreign and security policy projection of a what would conventionally be defined a small state. The lack of capacity and capability as well as the need to project power and influence discreetly and plausibly deniable meant that Abu Dhabi was only able to build its regional posture on the back of delegating the burden of conflict to local non-state actors. Thereby, the achievement of Emirati national security objectives has taken precedence over conflict resolution and stabilization. Much more, the UAE’s strategy of working by, with and through locally nurtured surrogates has been driven by the prerogative of solidifying Abu Dhabi’s reach from the Gulf over the Horn of Africa to the Mediterranean.

As such, Emirati security assistance does not conform with liberal norms and practices of security assistance as the UAE has actively supported insurgent non-state actors who do not only operate outside the state-regulated security sector but also compete with it. Instead of using security assistance as a means of stabilizing states and their security sectors, Abu Dhabi has consciously pursued a policy of divide-and-rule nurturing patronage networks that eventually undermine the territorial integrity of states and the authority of government. In the absence of an external security guarantor to the region, the UAE’s surrogate warfare in Yemen and Libya helped security assistance practices to evolve to become a tool of small state power projection and influence. Network building and the triangulation of security assistance activities with great power ambitions in the region, have become a powerful means for the UAE to gain recognition as a near-peer partner in Washington and Moscow.

The Emirati obsession with hard security and the military lever of power has thereby shaped a military-only approach to complex conflicts in Libya and Yemen that require inclusive political solutions. Although both the LNA and STC have become quasi-state actors governing territory once empowered by Emirati security assistance, they do not represent inclusive and representative forms of governance that can provide security as a public good to the communities they rule over. Instead, Emirati security assistance has created security assemblages of diverse armed non-state actors that operate in a vacuum of control and accountability. In absence of effective civilian institutions to exercise oversight over these groups – in both the patron and host state – Emirati surrogates have become states within states in both Libya and Yemen further polarizing the conflict environment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Kenneth Pollack, Sizing Up Little Sparta: Understanding UAE military Effectiveness (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 2020):7.

2. Rohan Advani, ‘Constructing Commercial Empire: The United Arab Emirates in the Red Sea and the Horn’, The Century Foundation, December 9, 2019 https://tcf.org/content/report/constructing-commercial-empire-united-arab-emirates-red-sea-horn/?agreed=1&agreed=1.

3. Nina M. Serafino. Security Assistance and Cooperation: Shared Responsibility of the Departments of State and Defense. (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2016): 5.

4. OECD/DAC.‘Security issues and development co-operation: a conceptual framework for enhancing policy coherence’, The DAC Journal, vol.2, no.3, (2001). pp. II-35.

5. Mark Sedra. Security Sector Reform 101: Understanding the Concept, Charting Trends and Identifying Challenges. (Geneva, CH: DCAF, 2010):3.

6. Sarah von Billerbeck, Oisin Tansey. Enabling autocracy? Peacebuilding and post-conflict authoritarianism in the Democratic Republic of Congo. European Journal of International Relations. 2019; 25(3).

7. Sedra, Mark, ‘Diagnosing the Failings of Security Sector Reform in Afghanistan’, Sicherheit Und Frieden (S+F)/Security and Peace, vol. 28, no. 4, 2010, pp. 233–38.

8. Andreas Krieg, ‘The UAE’s “dogs of war”: boosting a small state’s regional power projection’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, (2021): 8.

9. Ibid.

10. Andreas Krieg & Jean Marc Rickli. Surrogate Warfare: The Transformation of War in the 21^st Century. (Washington, DC: Georgetown UP, 2019):58.

11. Nicole Ball, J. Kayode Fayemi, Funmi Olonisakin, Rocklyn Williams, with Martin Rupia, ‘Governance in the Security Sector’, In Beyond Structural Adjustment, Nicolas van de Walle and Nicole Ball (eds.) (London: Palgrave, 2003).

12. Peter Salisbury, ‘Risk Perception and Appetite in UAE Foreign and National Security Policy’, Chatham House Research Paper, July 2020: 18.

13. Yezid Sayigh, ‘Crumbling States: Security Sector Reform in Libya and Yemen’, Carnegie Middle East Center Brief, June 2015.

14. Roger Owen, State, Power & Politics in the making of the Modern Middle East (London: Routledge, 1992):18.

15. David Keen, Complex Emergencies, (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press): 14.

16. Matthew Hedges. Small state security engagement in Post-Arab Spring Mena: the case of the United Arab Emirates, Asian Affairs, 52:2 (2021): 11.

17. Derek Reveron. Exporting Security: International Engagement, Security Cooperation, and the Changing Face of the U.S. Military. (Washington, DC: Georgetown UP, 2010): 44.

18. Kevin Narizny. (2007) The Political Economy of Grand Strategy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. (p.11).

19. The Economist. (2017). The Gulf’s Little Sparta. The Economist, 6 April 2017.

20. Robert F. Worth. (2020). Mohammed bin Zayed’s Dark Vision of the Middle East’s Future. The New York Times, 9 January 2020.

21. Rory Miller & Harry Verhoeven, ‘Overcoming smallness: Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and strategic realignment in the Gulf’, International Politics, Volume 57, pages1–20 (2020): 3.

22. Mohammed Baharoon, ‘The keys to reading the UAE’s strategic map’, Middle East Institute, 5 April 2022 https://www.mei.edu/publications/keys-reading-uaes-strategic-map.

23. Amy Mackinnon, ‘Pentagon Says UAE Possibly Funding Russia’s Shadowy Mercenaries in Libya’, Foreign Policy, 30 November 2020.

24. David Roberts. (2020). Bucking the Trend: The UAE and the Development of Military Capabilities in the Arab World, Security Studies, 29:2.

25. The vast majority of contract soldiers in the UAE are Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Sudanese and Omani. In the Emirati War in Yemen, evidence suggests that Chadians, Chileans, Colombians, Libyans, Panamanians, Nigeriens (from Niger), Somalis, Salvadorans and Ugandans act as force multipliers. Moreover, there are a range of Western contract soldiers in senior roles, such as American, British and Australian officers who joined the UAE Armed Forces after retirement. For more details see Zoltan Barany. (2020). Foreign Contract Soldiers in the Gulf. Carnegie Middle East Centre, 5 February 2020.

26. Andreas Krieg, ‘The UAE’s “dogs of war”: boosting a small state’s regional power projection’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, (2021): 8.

27. Kareem Fahim, ‘Houthi Rebels Kill 45 U.A.E. Soldiers in Yemen Fighting’, The New York Times, 4 September 2015.

28. Matthew Hedges, Reinventing the Sheikhdom, (London: Hurst, 2021): 54.

29. Lionel Beehner, ‘Russia is trying to limit its casualties in Syria. Here’s why that is bad for Syrian civilians’, Washington Post, 28 March 2018.

30. Andreas Krieg, ‘The UAE’s “dogs of war”: boosting a small state’s regional power projection’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, (2021): 14.

31. Colin Simpson, ‘“Arab Gulf moment” is trend here to stay, says academic’, The National 22 November 2011, https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/arab-gulf-moment-is-trend-here-to-stay-says-academic-1.417606.

32. Usaama al-Azami, Islam and the Arab Revolutions: The Ulama Between Democracy and Autocracy (London: Hurst, 2021): 106 ff.

33. Ali Bakir. ‘The UAE’s Disruptive Policy in Libya’, Insight Turkey, FALL 2020, Vol. 22, No. 4 (FALL 2020): 162.

34. Anas El Gomati, ‘The Libyan Revolution Undone’, In Divided Gulf – The Anatomy of a Crisis, Andreas Krieg (ed.). (London: Palgrave, 2019): 189.

35. Ulf Leassing,‘Gunmen loyal to ex-general storm Libyan parliament, demand suspension’, Reuters, 18 May 2014.

36. Tim Eaton. The Libyan Arab Armed Forces A network analysis of Haftar’s military alliance. (London: Chatham House, 2021):11.

37. Anas El Gomati, ‘The Libyan Revolution Undone’, In Divided Gulf – The Anatomy of a Crisis, Andreas Krieg (ed.). (London: Palgrave, 2019): 194.

38. Tim Eaton. The Libyan Arab Armed Forces A network analysis of Haftar’s military alliance. (London: Chatham House, 2021):21.

39. Tarek Megerisi, ‘While You Weren’t Looking, General Haftar Has Been Taking Over Libya’, Foreign Policy, 1 April 2019.

40. Reuters, ‘Haftar’s ally UAE says “extremist militias” control Libyan capital’, Reuters, 2 May 2019.

41. Ali Bakir. ‘The UAE’s Disruptive Policy in Libya’, Insight Turkey, FALL 2020, Vol. 22, No. 4 (FALL 2020): 166.

42. Arnaud Delalande, ‘Erik Prince’s Mercenaries Are Bombing Libya’, Medium, 14 January 2017. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/erik-princes-mercenaries-are-bombing-libya-88fcb8e55292.

43. Matthew Cole, ‘Project Opus – Erik Prince and the Failed Plot to Arm a CIA Asset Turned Warlord in Libya’, The Intercept, 26 February 2021. https://theintercept.com/2021/02/26/erik-prince-jordan-libya-weapons-opus/.

44. Paul Iddon, ‘That Pantsir-S1 The U.S. Acquired From Libya Isn’t The First Russian Missile System Its Gotten Its Hands On’, Forbes, 31 January 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/pauliddon/2021/01/31/that-pantsir-s1-it-acquired-from-libya-isnt-the-first-russian-missile-system-the-us-has-gotten-its-hands-on/?sh=41403bf7371a.

45. Tim Eaton. The Libyan Arab Armed Forces A network analysis of Haftar’s military alliance. (London: Chatham House, 2021):27.

46. Bel Trew, ‘Sudanese men hired as shopping mall security guards “tricked” into fighting in Libya civil war’, The Independent, 3 November 2020.

47. US Department of Defence, “East Africa Counterterrorism Operation, North and West Africa.

Counterterrorism Operation”, Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress, 2020.

48. Amy Mackinnon, ‘Pentagon Says UAE Possibly Funding Russia’s Shadowy Mercenaries in Libya’, Foreign Policy, 30 November 2020.

49. Bel Trew & Rajaai Bourhan, ‘Inside the murky world of Libya’s mercenaries’, The Independent, 16 June 2020.

50. Ali Bakir. ‘The UAE’s Disruptive Policy in Libya’, Insight Turkey, FALL 2020, Vol. 22, No. 4 (FALL 2020): 170.

51. Ibid: 161.

52. Alex Gatopoulos, ‘“Largest drone war in the world”: How airpower saved Tripoli’, Al Jazeera, 28 May 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/5/28/largest-drone-war-in-the-world-how-airpower-saved-tripoli.

53. Al Jazeera, ‘Libyan TV airs video showing alleged UAE military involvement’, Al Jazeera, 9 June 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/6/9/libyan-tv-airs-video-showing-alleged-uae-military-involvement.

54. UN Security Council, ‘Letter dated 29 November 2019 from the Panel of Experts on Libya established pursuant to resolution 1973 (2011) addressed to the President of the Security Council’, UN Security Council S/2019/914 (2019): 30/376.

55. Andreas Krieg, ‘The UAE’s Tactical Withdrawal from a strategic engagement in Yemen’, Responsible Statecraft, 6 March 2021. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/03/06/the-uaes-tactical-withdrawal-from-a-strategic-engagement-in-yemen/.

56. Declan Walsh and David D. Kirkpatrick, ‘U.A.E. Pulls Most Forces From Yemen in Blow to Saudi War Effort’, The New York Times, 11 July 2019.

57. Andreas Krieg, ‘The UAE’s “dogs of war”: boosting a small state’s regional power projection’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, July 2021: 11.

58. Robert Forster, ‘The Southern Transitional Council: Implications for Yemen’s Peace Process’, Middle East Policy, Vol. XXIV, Fall 2017: 134.

59. Kareem Fahim, ‘Houthi Rebels Kill 45 U.A.E. Soldiers in Yemen Fighting’, The New York Times, 4 September 2015.

60. Eleonora Ardemagni, ‘UAE-Backed Militias Maximize Yemen’s Fragmentation’, IAI Commentaries 17 | 11 –.

August 2017: 2

61. Hedges, ‘SMALL STATE SECURITY ENGAGEMENT’, 11.

62. MoFA of the Russian Federation, ‘Press release on Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov’s telephone conversation with President of the Southern Transitional Council of Yemen Aidarus al-Zubaidi’, MoFA, 28 April 2020, https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4107592?fbclid=IwAR3wjF6c_RATIZUvzGGDUUIxQr2JT3JIC8Uisz4lbtOf85BjjFZX5K3qejE.

63. Imad Harb, ‘Why the United Arab Emirates Is Abandoning Saudi Arabia in Yemen’, Foreign Policy, 1 August 2019.

64. Emirates News Agency, ‘UAE provides aviation training to Yemeni resistance’, WAM, 29 October 2015, http://wam.ae/en/details/1395287283968.

65. Peter Salisbury, ‘Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council: A Delicate Balancing Act’, Istituto per gli studi di politica internazionale, 29 March 2021, https://www.ispionline.it/it/pubblicazione/yemens-southern-transitional-council-delicate-balancing-act-29793.

66. Eleonora Ardemagni, ‘UAE-Backed Militias Maximize Yemen’s Fragmentation’, IAI Commentaries 17 | 11 –.

August 2017: 2

67. UN Security Council, ‘Letter dated 27 January 2020 from the Panel of Experts on Yemen addressed to the President of the Security Council’, UN Security Council S/2020/70 (2020).

68. Nima Elbagir, Salma Abdelaziz, Mohamed Abo El Gheit and Laura Smith-Spark, ‘Exclusive Report: Sold to an ally, lost to an enemy’, CNN, February 2019.

69. Amnesty International, ‘Yemen: UAE recklessly supplying militias with windfall of Western arms’, Amnesty International, 6 February 2019, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/02/yemen-uae-recklessly-supplying-militias-with-windfall-of-western-arms/.

70. Borzou Daragahi, ‘Yemeni rebels claim seized UAE ship was transporting weapons’, The Independent, 4 January 2022.

71. Ibrahim Jalal, ‘The UAE may have withdrawn from Yemen, but its influence remains strong’, Middle East Institute, 25 February 2020.

72. Emily B. Hager and Mark Mazzetti, ‘Emirates Secretly Sends Colombian Mercenaries to Yemen Fight’, The New York Times, 25 November 2015.

73. Saltanat Berdikeeva, ‘UAE Lures Foreign Mercenaries to Fight Proxy Wars’, Inside Arabia, 18 February 2020, https://insidearabia.com/uae-lures-foreign-mercenaries-to-fight-proxy-wars/.

74. David Brennan, David, ‘Yemenis Demand U.S. Arrest American Mercenaries Accused of “Blatant” War Crimes’. Newsweek, 12 February 2020; Aram Roston, ‘A Middle East Monarchy Hired American Ex-Soldiers To Kill Its Political Enemies. This Could Be The Future Of War’. Buzz Feed, 16 October 2018.

75. Andreas Krieg, ‘The UAE’s “dogs of war”: boosting a small state’s regional power projection’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, July 2021: 11.

76. Eleonora Ardemagni, ‘The UAE’s Military Training-Focused Foreign Policy’, Carnegie Sada Blog, 22 October 2020. https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/83033.

77. Molly Dunigan, Ben Connable. ‘Russian Mercenaries in Great-Power Competition: Strategic Supermen or Weak Link?’, The RAND Blog, 9 March 2021. https://www.rand.org/blog/2021/03/russian-mercenaries-in-great-power-competition-strategic.html.

78. Tarek Megerisi, ‘While You Weren’t Looking, General Haftar Has Been Taking Over Libya’, Foreign Policy, 1 April 2019.

79. Nima Elbagir, Salma Abdelaziz, Mohamed Abo El Gheit and Laura Smith-Spark, ‘Exclusive Report: Sold to an ally, lost to an enemy’, CNN, February 2019.

80. Amnesty International, ‘Timeline: UAE’s role in southern Yemen’s secret prisons’, Amnesty International, 12 July 2018, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/07/timeline-uaes-role-in-southern-yemens-secret-prisons/.

81. Eleonora Ardemagni, ‘UAE-Backed Militias Maximize Yemen’s Fragmentation’, IAI Commentaries 17 | 11 –.

August 2017: 2