The drones soar over the vast deserts along the Sudanese border, guiding weapons convoys that smuggle illicit arms to fighters accused of widespread atrocities and ethnic cleansing.

They hover over a besieged city at the center of Sudan’s terrible famine, supporting a ruthless paramilitary force that has bombed hospitals, looted food shipments and torched thousands of homes, aid groups say.

Yet the drones are flying out of a base where the United Arab Emirates says it is running a humanitarian effort for the Sudanese people — part of what it calls its “urgent priority” to save innocent lives and stave off starvation in Africa’s largest war.

The Emirates is playing a deadly double game in Sudan, a country shredded by one of the world’s most catastrophic civil wars.

Eager to cement its role as a regional kingmaker, the wealthy Gulf petrostate is expanding its covert campaign to back a winner in Sudan, funneling money, weapons and, now, powerful drones to fighters rampaging across the country, according to officials, internal diplomatic memos and satellite images analyzed by The New York Times.

All the while, the Emirates is presenting itself as a champion of peace, diplomacy and international aid. It is even using one of the world’s most famous relief symbols — the Red Crescent, the counterpart of the Red Cross — as a cover for its secret operation to fly drones into Sudan and smuggle weapons to fighters, satellite images show and American officials say.