Sudan’s two top generals are fighting for power with all the weapons at their disposal: tanks, airplanes, grenade launchers – and the Internet.
On one side is army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, on the other his former deputy general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – also better known as Hemedti – who leads the paramilitary RSF.
Around five million residents of the capital Khartoum are in the firing line, many have taken shelter in their homes and receive information about what is happening from social media.
“Both sides have flooded the media with false information,” says Raghdan Orsud of the organization Beam Reports, which monitors the flow of information in Sudan.
Comprehensive flow
Mohamed Suliman at Boston Northeastern University draws the same conclusion. It is about “distorted facts” in an extensive feed on Twitter and Facebook, and the information being spread is about “deepening the sense of horror”.
The RSF, an abbreviation of the English Rapid Support Force, has its roots in part in the dreaded Janjawid militia that ravaged Darfur province. The RSF uses much the same ruthless tactics in the cyber battles.
— The RSF surpasses the army’s more old-fashioned tactics, says Suliman, who, however, cannot see a clear winner in this war.
The paramilitary group often uses English. An example is when RSF broadcast a large number of messages in very good English that it was fighting “extreme Islamists who are carrying out a brutal offensive against innocent people”, reports the French news agency AFP.
In addition, accounts are hijacked to increase the spread, according to experts from the Atlantic Council think tank with headquarters in Washington DC. They have tracked at least 900 accounts on Twitter that were likely taken over illegally. In doing so, RSF can “artificially amplify” the messages being sent out, such as one in which RSF leader Dagalo is portrayed as a hero who can rid the country of traitors.
Spoofed video
The army has responded with similar tricks, although Sudan’s military tends to rely on older types of information distribution, as with the fake video where large amounts of cash were said to be seized from Dagalo’s home.
The propaganda campaigns are professionally conducted, which indicates expert support abroad.
The cyber war is taking place mainly in Sudan and its diaspora, but according to AFP, RSF also paid roughly SEK 60 million to a Canadian lobbying firm in 2019 for help.
But the latest actor to help the RSF is the Russian paramilitary Wagner group, which is suspected of having extensive business with the militia in, among other things, gold mines in Sudan. According to the so-called troika group – consisting of Great Britain, the United States and Norway – the Wagner group is also spreading misinformation on social media in Sudan.