Reframing the Nation: Army Media, Memory, and Militarised Legitimacy in Sudan’s War

Authors: Willow Berridge

Since the start of the war in Sudan in 2023, the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) has used Arabic-language media to portray itself as Sudan’s only legitimate national institution—non-Islamist, inclusive, and the last safeguard against fragmentation. This policy brief explores how that projection is constructed, and how it draws on selective historical memory and co-opted revolutionary rhetoric to consolidate military legitimacy. This brief assesses the contribution of the SAF’s Facebook pages – including its official page, and the specific page for the affiliated Al-Quwwat al-Musallaha newspaper – to its propaganda campaign during its current conflict with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It focuses in particular on the ways in which the military uses its social media presence to appeal to a broad range of social categories in Sudan, whether through its calls for mobilisation, its narrative of political developments, or its reports from the battlefield. It pays detailed attention to the way the army has sought to present itself as the guarantor of the Sudan’s national interests, and the ways in which it has used history to legitimise itself. This brief shows that SAF propaganda rebrands the military not by abandoning the past, but by curating it – mobilising nostalgia, nationalism, and selective silence to present itself as Sudan’s last remaining centre of gravity.