Abandoned in cold storage, the bodies of at least 20 Colombian mercenaries lie unclaimed in a Sudanese mortuary more than 6,000 miles from home.
By Mathew Charles
Some of those lying there for months might have known the risks of what they were getting into, but others thought they had safely signed up for mundane security work.
Instead, the men, some barely out of their teens, found themselves pitched as soldiers-for-hire into the front lines of one of the world’s most savage conflicts.
“They’ve kept them on ice,” one of their comrades, a Colombian who gives his name simply as Juan, tells The Telegraph from a military camp outside Nyala, in Sudan’s Darfur province.
“Some are from my intake.”
In recent weeks reports have emerged of Colombians fighting and dying with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) group, around the besieged Darfur city of El Fasher.
Video clips show pale-skinned men speaking Spanish, engaged in heavy street fighting in desert towns, or training local militiamen.
The presence of hundreds of South American mercenaries in the Sudanese desert has added another unexpected international element to a war which was already a ravenous free-for-all of foreign players.
But their presence has also highlighted a thriving new age of mercenaries, as squeamishness about using such troops diminishes, and those seeking guns for hire find more and more options to choose from.
Juan says he is one of at least 300 Colombian ex-soldiers drawn into Sudan’s cataclysm. He says many have been tricked by the promise of private security jobs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The pitch he was given by recruiters was appealing: a contract, around £1,900 ($2,600) each month tax free and flights paid.
Then the details begin to change.
“They tell you you’ll be protecting oil sites, hotels,” said Juan, who was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement before his arrival in Abu Dhabi with around 60 others back in March.
“Some know they’re heading for Sudan,” he said. “But I didn’t. I don’t think most of us did.”
After a day in Abu Dhabi, the recruits’ phones and passports were collected “for security”.
Juan was told he was being sent to Libya on a training course. After his arrival in Benghazi, he and his fellow recruits were driven across the desert into Sudan and RSF territory in Darfur.
It is not the only route, others travel via the Somali city of Bosaso, according to Juan, but the destination is always the same – the city of Nyala and a cluster of RSF training camps.
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The RSF is a paramilitary force commanded by Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who is one of two military rivals tearing Sudan apart.
His long-simmering competition for power with his boss, the de-facto president Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, flared into war in April 2023.
As the sides fought for territory, each turned to international allies for help, making the war a chaotic geopolitical brawl.
The UAE is widely accused of backing the RSF with arms and money to oppose what it views as a dangerous Islamist streak within Gen Burhan’s army.
The UAE strongly denies supporting the RSF. An official told the Telegraph: “We categorically reject any claims of providing any form of support to either warring party since the onset of the civil war, and condemn atrocities committed by both Port Sudan Authority and RSF.”
The official said the Emirati government had “consistently supported regional and international efforts to achieve an immediate ceasefire, protect civilians, and ensure accountability for violations committed by all warring parties”.
Once at Nyala, which the Sudanese army says is a key logistics hub for the UAE’s supply of the RSF, Colombian mercenaries run five-week training courses, or guard the airport.
Each RSF intake runs into the hundreds or sometimes a thousand or more, Juan says.
“Most of them are just boys or young teenagers,” he said.
Human rights monitors say child recruitment, which is a war crime, is widespread in Darfur and often coerced.
Colombian media have published images of children being trained by foreign mercenaries.
“It’s horrible to see” says Juan, “But what can I do? It’s the reality here.”
But officers in the Sudanese army told the Telegraph the Colombians were not just training, but also found on the front lines of Darfur and Kordofan.
They fought, but also appeared to provide specialist drone, communication and jamming skills.
They were also not the only mercenaries used by the RSF, which had also recruited hired guns from Ethiopia and South Sudan, the officers said.
One Sudanese army officer in Darfur, Ahmed Safeldin, said the Colombians had been of limited effectiveness and several had been killed.
“They don’t understand our tactics and they don’t know the geography or topography of Darfur. That’s why numbers of them have been killed. We have recovered official Colombian identity documents to prove it,” he said.
Mohamed Ali, another officer, said: “The Colombian mercenaries have been fighting with the RSF in Sudan since last year and are still here now. We killed them and took their documents to prove any legal case in the future.”
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Colombia’s long war against Farc guerillas and drug cartels has produced a deep pool of disciplined, combat-tested soldiers who retire young and must feed their families.
For more than a decade, Gulf money has absorbed that expertise into private security units. Colombian mercenaries have fought in Yemen, Ukraine and elsewhere, charging a fraction of what former soldiers from America or Britain might cost.
A 2019 paper by Sean McFate at the National Defense University in Washington DC said Latin American special forces veterans were one of five major recruiting networks in the mercenary world.
These networks, which also include the United States, the UK, the former Soviet republics, and alumni of the former Executive Outcomes company in Africa, hire among their own circles of trusted veterans.
The mercenary market was booming then, Mr McFate wrote, and if anything it has only expanded since.
“Private force is manifesting everywhere,” he said. “After 150 years underground, the market for force is returning in just a few decades and is growing at an alarming rate.”
Credit: Facebook / ابوسلطان الطهيفي
In the ancient and medieval world, mercenaries, sometimes called the second oldest profession, were commonplace on the battlefield.
Though distrusted and feared for switching sides, they allowed warring kingdoms and city states to avoid the ruinous costs of maintaining their own standing armies.
That began to change as sovereign nation states began to consolidate power and give national armies a monopoly on warfare.
By the 20th century, mercenaries had not disappeared, but they had become pariahs of the international order.
Mercenaries still got involved in far-flung civil wars and coups, but they were outsiders, like “Mad Mike” Hoare, the British-Irish military officer known for leading his “Wild Geese” in Africa.
That began to change with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War order. Unconventional wars and failing states began to increase and large state conventional conflicts seemed to have ended.
Multinational firms like Sandline International and Blackwater emerged, calling themselves security contractors, not mercenaries.
The market then exploded when America contracted out large chunks of training, logistics and security from its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to limit the number of United States military boots on the ground.
As competition increased, these contractors began cutting costs by hiring former soldiers from countries where wages were cheaper, or subcontracting to local outfits. With this, the trade began to globalise and the pool of guns for hire broadened.
In recent years Russia has led the market into another phase, with its notorious Wagner group emptying prisons to fight in Ukraine and also being used in Syria, Ukraine, Libya and several other African countries.
The result is that the strange tale of Sudan’s Colombians fits into what has been called a new golden age of mercenaries.
Yet if it is, it hardly feels like that for Colombians who say they are being exploited in Sudan.
The mother of one young Colombian soldier fighting in Sudan said he was only 19-years-old and had signed on straight out of national service for what he said was a security job protecting hotels in the UAE.
After sending one pay packet home, it later emerged he was in Sudan.
Recruiters, she says, have warned families not to make trouble.
“They told me if I went to the press, my son would not come home.”
Another mercenary in Darfur explained it was common for their salary to be paid late and docked of what he called operational fees.
“We don’t really know what that is,” he said. “But we know not to make a fuss.”
Getting out of Sudan is difficult. Anyone asking to go home is told to pay their own ticket or keep quiet and carry on, the source said. Flights out are scarce and costly; handlers tack on penalties and paperwork to slow any exit.
Last week, the Sudanese government told the United Nations security council that Emirati private security companies including the Abu Dhabi-based Global Security Services Group (GSSG) were behind recruitment. GSSG did not respond to Telegraph questions.
Meanwhile, in Bogotá, feeder companies tap up Colombia’s ex-soldiers.
A former retired colonel, Álvaro Quijano, and his wife, Claudia Viviana Oliveros, have been accused of involvement in the recruitment of ex-military personnel by former business associates, as well as by the mercenaries themselves. Both deny any involvement or connection to the UAE.
Officials in Bogotá now talk about tightening laws on mercenaries, pursuing recruiters and helping families repatriate remains.
The practicalities are ugly. The network is transnational by design, and the conflict zone it feeds is chaotic by definition. Even confirming identities takes weeks.
One consul told the mother of the twenty-year-old to gather everything she had: voice notes, a scan of the contract, the number of the handlers in Bogotá and in the Gulf.
“I’m trying to gather all this information,” she said. “But my son is just too scared to give it to me.”
