The UAE and French Intelligence Forge Secret Alliance: Recruiting Thousands of Mercenaries
French intelligence sources disclosed that the UAE has secretly recruited thousands of mercenaries in cooperation with French intelligence to use them in aggressive and criminal missions outside the country.
The French intelligence website (intelligenceonline) said that a French commando is building a foreign legion inside the UAE.
The online website indicated that a retired French military general is assembling a group of 3,000 individuals as mercenaries in Abu Dhabi, with discreet communications circulating among French veterans regarding recruitment.”
In recent years, Abu Dhabi has generated significant interest regarding the recruitment and use of mercenaries in the region. Over the past decade, it has also established brigades outside the UAE Armed Forces, most of whose forces are foreigners, according to the website
France and the UAE share longstanding collaborations across diverse domains. In 2022, during the assault on Abu Dhabi by Iran-aligned Houthis, France expeditiously implemented the 1995 defense agreement, underscoring their robust alliance.
It is not clear whether the construction of the new corps falls within this agreement or not.
An intelligence report previously revealed that the UAE has recruited tens of thousands of mercenaries in Yemen and Libya since 2011 as part of its plots to gain influence and expansion.
The analysis released by Gray Dynamics, a private Intelligence Company focusing on apolitical assessments in security, geopolitics, defense, and espionage, indicated that since 2011, the UAE has consistently turned to employing mercenaries to conduct its military operations in Libya and Yemen.
The report said that the UAE’s small population of 2.7 million people makes it unable to recruit enough forces.
It pointed out that the UAE’s aversion to risking its soldiers in overseas deployments, particularly in regions where casualties without clear justification are not tolerated, led to the outsourcing of military personnel to fight in Yemen against the Houthi rebels. This included the recruitment of Colombians through a company headquartered in Abu Dhabi.
In this context, the website pointed out the involvement of the controversial former founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, and his role as a mercenary leader for the UAE, in addition to many different organizations and groups that practice employing mercenaries on a large scale.
The website disclosed that since 2011, the UAE government has engaged Reflex Response Security Consultants, established by Erik Prince after divesting his prior enterprise, the infamous Blackwater.Abu Dhabi gave him a budget of $529 million to create an army, employing former operators of the Colombian Special Forces, which played a large role in the Yemeni civil war.
Apart from the company associated with Erik Prince, the website observed several other firms that enlist mercenaries to engage in proxy wars across various global regions, notably Yemen, Libya, and Afghanistan. This includes the “Spear Operation Group,” led by Hungarian-Israeli Abraham Golon, which specializes in targeted assassinations.
Furthermore, the company ‘Black Shield Security’ is implicated in a scandal involving coercive recruitment by deceiving Sudanese migrants with misleading job offers. Also, the company ‘Bondswehr’ is accused in the scandal of the German Army mercenaries.
The website pointed out that the privatization and globalization of war have reached the Middle East, allowing sparsely populated wealthy states like the UAE to demonstrate power abroad and pursue their agendas, especially in Yemen and Libya.
The website disclosed that among the individuals engaged with the UAE in its overseas conflicts is Muhammad Dahlan, a former member of the Palestinian security services and ex-leader of the Fatah movement. Dahlan stated that the UAE enlisted him as a security advisor due to his strong connections with private military company factions.
It also explained that more than 15,000 Sudanese mercenaries are working in Yemen and Libya, expecting many of them to be children and that both the UAE and Black Shield Security are accused of violating the arms embargo imposed by the United Nations on Libya by sending weapons and Sudanese mercenaries to Haftar.
