Siddig Ibrahim

Digital Warfare Around El Fasher: Alaraby TV Investigation Exposes a Coordinated Campaign Promoting the UAE-Backed Rapid Support Militia As the fighting expanded in Darfur in the far west of Sudan and reached deep inside the city of El Fasher, another battle of equal intensity erupted far from the frontlines. According to an open-source investigation by Alaraby TV, a large network of anonymous accounts and electronic committees launched a coordinated effort in the digital space to promote what they claimed was the liberation of the city by the Rapid Support Militia. The investigation examined more than twenty two thousand accounts beginning on the twenty fourth of October and analyzed seventy two thousand posts. The engagement curve rose sharply in parallel with the fall of El Fasher on the twenty sixth of the same month and peaked in early November. Only thirteen percent of all interactions were original content while sixty three percent came from reposts and twenty three percent from replies. The pattern revealed a heavy reliance on amplification rather than the production of genuine material, which Alaraby analysts considered an early indicator of organized activity. A wide segment of the accounts were newly created, while others had been reactivated after wiping nearly all previous posts. To isolate the accounts most closely aligned with coordinated committee behavior, the team narrowed the sample to those with zero to ten followers. The number reached three thousand one hundred and fifty nine. Sudan dominated the geographic distribution with sixty six percent of the posts, followed by countries hosting large Sudanese communities such as Uganda, Egypt, the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the United Kingdom, Oman, and Nigeria. This distribution suggests that the campaign targeted both Sudanese inside the country and Sudanese in the diaspora where narratives are easily recycled. The engagement did not resemble normal user activity. The accounts shared similarities in appearance, visual identity, creation dates, and daily behavior. Many were created only months ago and most had fewer than two hundred followers. Some appeared older in name yet were reactivated after deleting all earlier posts, in a pattern that resembled identity recycling. The investigation found that the peak of account creation came in May, indicating a manufactured wave designed to amplify the narrative of liberating El Fasher. The accounts moved inside specific Sudanese discussion groups on the X platform such as Moghtarib Sudani, Sudan, and Permanent Media for the Rapid Support, which indicated a deliberate attempt to infiltrate conversations and create artificial credibility. Many accounts operated across several platforms at the same time, including X, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, using identical visual styles in a way that strongly pointed to a single operating entity. Examples included the account Reemas Ahmed, active on Facebook and TikTok with matching names and images, as well as an X account that was shut down for suspicious behavior and then recreated identically. Another example, Galila Mohamadi, promoted the Rapid Support and was active on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and also X, which later removed it. Facebook data indicated that it was operated from Egypt using the image of a Sudanese woman taken from the internet. The investigation also uncovered several accounts built around fabricated female Sudanese identities with matching details on Facebook, X, and TikTok. Many were created simultaneously in April and used images generated by artificial intelligence. Another model case, Batool Mohammed, used a profile image that reverse searches showed had been used by dozens of unrelated accounts on X and TikTok. The network frequently relied on a unified Sudanese mask, dark skin tones, familiar facial features, and common female names. Reverse searches revealed that several images were stolen from models, activists, or winners of university competitions. Artificial intelligence generated images were also present, supporting the conclusion that the network manufactured entire visual identities for disinformation. One example involved a profile picture originally belonging to a Miss University of Africa Sudan winner, widely available online, which disproved any link to the account using it. Another image belonged to activist, basketball player, and poet Asmaa Al-Badawi, yet was used by a recently created account promoting the Rapid Support, despite having circulated previously as a stock image of a veiled model. The network did more than repost propaganda. It operated in synchrony, publishing identical text and video material, and pushing the same clip from one user across dozens of accounts with hashtags such as Ta'sis Forces and Sudanese deserve peace. All of this occurred within tightly aligned time frames. The accounts also fell silent at the same time before reappearing with intense activity on the twenty seventh of October, signaling an operating rhythm similar to shift work. Alaraby’s team also observed that X shut down a notable number of accounts involved in the amplification, something that usually happens only when coordinated policy violations are suspected. Some accounts even acknowledged these shutdowns, offering further evidence of the nature of the campaign. Its keywords centered on terms such as Sudan, El Fasher, and Save Sudan, paired with hashtags crafted to portray the fall of El Fasher as liberation rather than occupation. The hashtags attempted to redefine the militia as a rescue force protecting civilians from the Islamic Movement and what they called the Kizan Army, while portraying the internationally recognized Sudanese Armed Forces as a terrorist or criminal militia. The term Ta'sis appeared repeatedly to present a new political military entity as an alternative to the state and its army, both of which were labeled the Port Sudan Authority in an effort to strip them of legitimacy and continuity and to depict them as temporary or isolated from the real Sudan. While the fall of El Fasher was a major blow to the government of General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the violations that accompanied it revealed a bloody face of the Rapid Support Militia. The electronic committees worked urgently to rehabilitate that image through coordinated digital campaigns. Their activity, as documented by Alaraby’s investigation, also reflected the deep anxiety inside the militia’s leadership about the horrific perception that has taken root among many Sudanese. It is worth noting that many of the terms used in this coordinated campaign, particularly the repeated reference to the Port Sudan Authority, match the language commonly used by official bodies in the UAE. The overlap is striking. The same vocabulary that appears in Emirati statements appears inside anonymous networks promoting the Rapid Support Militia. This alignment raises serious questions about the origins of the campaign and suggests that the narrative pushed through these digital accounts may have been shaped by actors far beyond those who appeared to publish it. #Sudan #RSFisTerroristOrganization #UAEKillsSudanesePeople #UAESponsorsTerrorism