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Middle East|The Sheikh Who Conquered Soccer and Coddles Warlords
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/world/middleeast/emirates-manchester-city-soccer-sudan.html
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Weeks before Sudan flamed into a calamitous civil war, one of the richest men in the Middle East, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, welcomed an architect of the chaos to his sumptuous Persian Gulf palace.
The sheikh, a younger brother to the powerful ruler of the United Arab Emirates, is recognized in the West as a collector of superyachts and racehorses, and is perhaps best known as the owner of Manchester City, the hugely successful English soccer team. Last year, his team in New York won approval to build a $780 million soccer stadium in Queens, the first in the city.
Yet there he was, in February 2023, openly entertaining a notorious commander from the deserts of western Sudan — someone who had seized power in a coup, built a fortune on illicit gold and was accused of widespread atrocities.
The two men knew each other well. Sheikh Mansour had hosted the Sudanese commander, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, two years earlier at an arms fair in the Emirates, where they toured exhibits of rockets and drones.
General Mohamed Hamdan
Sheikh Mansour
Ramzan Kadyrov
Sudanese commander
Vice president of
United Arab Emirates
Leader of Chechnya
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General Mohamed Hamdan Sudanese commander
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Sheikh Mansour Vice president of U.A.E.
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Ramzan Kadyrov Leader of Chechnya
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And when Sudan’s conflict exploded, in April 2023, Sheikh Mansour helped the general wage war.
Charities controlled by Sheikh Mansour set up a hospital, saying they were treating civilians. But that humanitarian effort was also a cover for the secret Emirati effort to smuggle drones and other powerful weapons to General Hamdan’s group, the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., according to American and U.N. officials.
