The UAE-Based Colombian Colonel Powering Sudan’s War
- Ahmed Fathi
- Jan 2
- 4 min read
By: Ahmed Fathi
New York, NY: — U.S. Treasury sanctions have cast a spotlight on Álvaro Andrés Quijano Becerra, a retired Colombian Army colonel now identified by Colombian investigative media as the man in a widely circulated photograph and described by U.S. officials as a central figure behind a transnational mercenary pipeline that empowered Sudan’s notorious Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
On Dec. 9, 2025, the Treasury Department placed Quijano and a network of associates and companies on the U.S. sanctions list, accusing them of recruiting and deploying hundreds of former Colombian soldiers to fight for the RSF in Sudan’s brutal civil war. Treasury described Quijano as “based in the United Arab Emirates”, a detail that has drawn growing scrutiny amid broader allegations of external support networks operating around the conflict.
Colombian outlet Teleantioquia, citing investigative site La Silla Vacía, identified Quijano as the individual shown in a photograph that has since circulated widely on social media and news platforms. The image depicts a smiling, middle-aged man wearing military attire alongside uniformed personnel — a visual that now anchors a case long built on documents, testimony, and financial records rather than faces.
A recruiter turned kingpin
According to the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Quijano played a central coordinating role in recruiting former Colombian military personnel and arranging their deployment to Sudan beginning in late 2024. Those recruits, officials said, served as infantry fighters, artillerymen, drone operators, vehicle operators and instructors for the RSF, a paramilitary force accused by the United States and human rights groups of mass killings, ethnic violence and sexual atrocities.
In January 2025, the U.S. State Department determined that members of the RSF committed genocide.
Treasury alleged that Quijano’s operation went beyond ad-hoc recruitment. Instead, it functioned through a corporate-style structure designed to make participation in a foreign war look like overseas employment.
At the center of that structure was International Services Agency (A4SI), a Bogotá-based employment agency Quijano co-founded. A4SI advertised combat roles through websites, group chats and recruitment meetings, according to Treasury. His wife, Claudia Viviana Oliveros Forero, managed the company.
To reduce legal exposure and blur lines of responsibility, Treasury said A4SI relied on a Panama-based intermediary, Global Staffing S.A., later renamed Talent Bridge S.A., to sign contracts and receive funds. Payroll and foreign-exchange transactions were allegedly handled by Maine Global Corp S.A.S., another Colombian firm tied to U.S.-linked wire transfers totaling millions of dollars.
“This was not a handful of rogue fighters,” said a U.S. official familiar with the investigation. “It was an organized pipeline.”
The UAE connection
One of the most sensitive elements of the case is Quijano’s reported base of operations.
Treasury explicitly stated that Quijano was based in the United Arab Emirates, an unusual level of geographic detail in a sanctions announcement. While U.S. officials did not accuse the UAE government or Emirati companies of directing or financing the mercenary network, the designation positions the Gulf state as an operational environment from which the recruitment effort was coordinated.
Analysts say the UAE’s role as a global aviation, logistics and business hub — connecting Latin America, Africa and Europe — has made it attractive to private military contractors and recruiters operating across borders. Previous investigations have documented how foreign security personnel have been trained, contracted or coordinated from the Gulf for conflicts in Yemen, Libya and the Horn of Africa.
In Sudan’s case, U.N. experts have separately reported on alleged external supply routes and logistical support for the RSF, allegations that various governments have denied. Quijano’s UAE base, combined with those findings, has intensified debate over how modern conflicts are sustained by transnational networks that often sit outside formal state structures.
Colombian fallout
In Colombia, the revelations have reverberated through military and political circles. Local media outlets, including Teleantioquia and La Silla Vacía, have detailed how dozens — and eventually hundreds — of former soldiers were lured by promises of high pay for overseas “security” work, only to find themselves fighting in one of Africa’s bloodiest wars.
The identification of Quijano in the photograph has added a human face to those accounts. Teleantioquia’s report explicitly named him as the retired colonel shown in the image, marking one of the first times a Colombian newsroom has publicly attached a visual identity to the alleged architect of the recruitment network.
Legal experts note that such identification carries editorial responsibility, particularly given the gravity of the accusations.
Sanctions and consequences
Under U.S. sanctions, all property and interests in property belonging to Quijano and the other designated individuals and entities that are in the United States, or under U.S. control, are frozen. U.S. persons are generally prohibited from doing business with them, and companies owned 50 percent or more by sanctioned parties are also blocked.
Treasury said the action was intended to disrupt the flow of fighters to Sudan and send a warning to others who might seek to profit from the war.
“The goal of sanctions is not punishment for its own sake,” Treasury officials said, “but to bring about a change in behavior.”
What remains unproven
Despite the detailed allegations, key questions remain unresolved.
Treasury’s announcement does not claim that the UAE state directed Quijano’s activities or knowingly supported the network. Nor has any court adjudicated the accusations outlined in the sanctions notice. Quijano has not publicly responded to the allegations.
Still, the convergence of sanctions, investigative reporting and now a professionally attributed image has sharpened the narrative.
Once an obscure retired officer, Álvaro Andrés Quijano Becerra has emerged as a symbol of how private recruiters, corporate fronts and global hubs can combine to fuel modern wars — and how conflicts like Sudan’s are no longer confined by borders but powered by networks that span continents.