Sudan generals’ multipronged war, with tanks, ‘twisted facts’ and Twitter
- Beam Reports, which investigates disinformation in Sudan, says army chief Burhan and deputy-turned rival Daglo are ‘flooding media with false information’
- Expert help, misleading posts, lies, old footage, fake videos and even a video game are reported to be involved, as well as physical weapons on the ground
When a power struggle between Sudan’s top generals erupted into bloodshed, battle-hardened commanders unleashed every weapon in their arsenal – fighter jets, tanks and also social media.
Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy-turned-rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo have been “flooding the media with false information”, said Raghdan Orsud of Beam Reports, which investigates disinformation in Sudan.
For five million people in Sudan’s capital Khartoum, trapped inside their homes as street fighting has raged, including around the state TV headquarters, Twitter and Facebook quickly became key sources of information.
Both rival forces have since issued “twisted facts” in online media campaigns aimed at deepening the “state of fear”, said Mohamed Suliman, disinformation researcher at Boston’s Northeastern University.
The fighting has seen Daglo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – a force tens of thousands strong, formed from the Janjaweed militia that led years of extreme violence in the Darfur region – take on the regular army.
While neither side has seemingly seized the advantage so far, in the war of words the paramilitaries are “outpacing” the army’s “old tactics”, Suliman said.
Both sides have a history of using social media to push their message in their battles for control.