A human rights group has accused the United Arab Emirates of being a major transit point for third-country mercenaries being sent to fight for the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.
The man who packs the crates does not think of himself as a geopolitical actor. He thinks of himself as a man who has been told to put the heavy boxes in the bottom and the light ones on top, and who is worried that if he does not do this correctly, the supervisor will notice, and the supervisor is a man who enjoys noticing things that are not quite right. He is not thinking about the Rapid Support Forces. He is not thinking about the United Arab Emirates. He is thinking about the fact that the manifest says “agricultural equipment” and the box contains something that looks suspiciously like a component for a drone, and that the customs officer at the other end of the chain is a man who has been told to look for weapons but has been given a list of prohibited items that is so long it requires a second list to explain the first list.
This is the machinery of denial. It is not a conspiracy; conspiracies require people to talk to each other, and talking is dangerous. This is a system of plausible deniability, which is the bureaucratic equivalent of a smoke screen, except that the smoke is made of paperwork and the screen is made of lawyers. The United Arab Emirates denies involvement. The human rights groups accuse them of involvement. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle, in the space between what is said and what is done, in the gap between the official statement and the manifest.
The UAE is a state that has built its modern identity on the idea of being a neutral hub, a place where money and goods can move without friction. This is a useful idea. It is also a fragile one. To maintain the appearance of neutrality, one must be very careful about what one allows to pass through one’s airports and ports. One must have rules. One must have inspections. One must have a system that is so complex that it is impossible for any single person to understand how it works, and therefore impossible for any single person to be held responsible for what it allows to happen.
The accusation is that the UAE is a transit point for mercenaries. The denial is that it is not. The reality is that the UAE is a transit point for everything, and that the definition of “mercenary” is a matter of perspective. If you are a soldier, you are a soldier. If you are a private security contractor, you are a businessman. If you are a man who is paid to fight for a cause that is not your own, you are a mercenary. The distinction is important, because soldiers are protected by international law, businessmen are protected by contract law, and mercenaries are protected by nothing.
The system is designed to protect the state, not the people. The state needs to be able to say that it is not involved, because involvement is messy. Involvement means responsibility. Responsibility means that you have to answer for what happens. And what happens in Sudan is not pretty. It is a civil war, which is a war between people who used to live in the same villages, who used to trade with each other, who used to share the same water sources. It is a war that is fueled by resources, by power, by the desire to control the narrative.
The ordinary person in this story is the man who packs the crates. He is not a hero. He is not a villain. He is a man who is trying to do his job, and who is caught in the middle of a system that is designed to protect itself. He is the night-soil man of the geopolitical world, the person who cleans up the mess that the grand narratives leave behind. He is the one who knows that the manifest is a lie, but who also knows that if he says so, he will lose his job.
The footnote is this: the system is not broken. It is working exactly as intended. It is designed to allow the flow of goods and money while denying responsibility for the consequences. It is designed to protect the state from the messiness of reality. And it is working. The question is not whether the system is broken, but whether it is moral. And the answer is no.
The comedy is in the specificity. The joke is not that the UAE is involved in the conflict. The joke is that the system is so complex that it is impossible to prove that it is involved. The joke is that the man who packs the crates is more honest than the state that denies involvement. The joke is that the truth is in the details, and the details are buried in the paperwork.
The anger is in the realization that this is not unique. This is how systems work. They evolve to serve themselves. They become their own purpose. They grind down the decent people who are simply trying to live their lives. And they do it with a smile, and a denial, and a manifest that says “agricultural equipment.”
The ordinary person is the one who suffers. The grand narrative is built on their labour. And the system is designed to forget them.