The UAE has been steadily working to build its own regional network of allied forces and local partners across key theatres such as Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan. This ambition has increasingly brought Abu Dhabi into competition with entrenched local power brokers and regional heavyweights. In Sudan, in particular, this dynamic has sharpened frictions with Egypt, whose strategic equities are directly exposed.
The Libyan National Army (LNA), led by Khalifa Haftar and his son Saddam, has supported the UAE’s posture by facilitating the movement of supplies to Emirati-aligned forces involved in Sudan’s civil war. At the same time, the LNA leadership remains acutely aware that these activities are unfolding amid rising regional tensions that carry both risks and opportunities.
By leveraging its channels with both the UAE and Egypt, while expanding its military footprint along the Egypt–Sudan border area, the LNA is seeking to maximise its strategic relevance. Its objective is not merely to act as a conduit, but to translate proximity and access into leverage, positioning itself as a regional actor that is prepared to recalibrate alignments and past commitments if circumstances demand.
Border tensions
A growing body of commentary has portrayed the Egypt–Libya–Sudan triangle as the early stage of a new regional confrontation, one that could see Cairo and the LNA drift toward open rivalry, with eastern Libya’s borderlands emerging as a proxy battleground amid reports of growing tensions between Cairo and the LNA.
This framing is dramatic, but ultimately misleading. What is unfolding is less a rupture of alliances than a calculated, transactional contest over influence, access, and bargaining power, one in which the Libyan National Army is quietly manoeuvring to position itself as a broker within a conflict it neither initiated nor fully controls.
At the centre of the tension is not Tripoli or Benghazi. It is Cairo and Abu Dhabi.
Egypt and the UAE share many interests, but Sudan has become a point of divergence. Cairo backs General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Sudanese Armed Forces as the only viable state structure on its southern border. Abu Dhabi, by contrast, has invested deeply in Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces, betting on a militia-based power centre that can be shaped, supplied and influenced more directly.
That rivalry is what has dragged Libya into the frame.
The LNA has allowed itself to be used as a logistical and political bridge to the RSF. But this is not ideological alignment. It is cold, interest-based opportunism. The LNA has learned from its experience with Russia how to turn access into leverage: allow allies to use its territory, routes and networks, then extract maximum benefit in return.
