War speech… Ups and downs
Report: Mashaer Idriss
All indications are that, in the event of a serious escalation, war rhetoric is in fact inseparable from the fact that the war circles themselves are expanding and prolonging. Their parties therefore endeavour to fuel conflict by continuously promoting pro-war and pro-belligerent rhetoric in an attempt to co-opt the mass movement and dissuade public opinion in each partys favour, while the actual information is absent from the field, especially since the circumstance does not allow professional media to play their part in conveying the facts.
Sudanese Sovereign Council member Yasser al-Atta on Tuesday drew harsh criticism of the United Arab Emirates, accusing it of providing military supplies to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) leading a war against the Sudanese military for more than seven months.
Yasser al-Attas statement, which serves as the assistant commander of the Sudanese army, is the first official statement by a government official regarding the role played by the UAE in the war in the Sudan.
Social media activist Talal Nader said groups have been active among the warring parties in promoting hate speech, violent extremism, entrenching the principle of violence and mutual accusations, advocating for the rejuvenation of the mass movement as well as attempting to weigh the pace of negotiation and geopolitical attitudes to Sudans ongoing war.
The facts underscored that war discourse on social media was even more dangerous because it did not recognize traditional media impact centres, such as the official platforms of the two forces and the platforms of media organizations, and was therefore dependent on an environment that allowed the spread of content that represented different power centres within the warring groups themselves and their respective constituencies.
Talal reported that it had reached the stage of transmitting some tragic scenes of battles by members of the two forces themselves, while some force commanders were preoccupied with political perceptions that reinforced the state of war and further complicated the landscape.
He went on to say, "War discourse on social media platforms, which has become one of the most important battlegrounds of daily fighting because they provide an arena for influence and misinformation through professional tactics that run network teams from both sides of the war and some of their supporters and work to guide and mislead the media and experts who work in hiding to weigh quiet on the other."
"This has been further complicated by the very nature of this open media space, which has allowed individuals from the teams to manage their wars without restrictions or conditions and to promote false and misleading content."
He referred to the activity of Sudanese and international media observatories, since early in the Sudan conflict, in detecting on a daily and permanent basis the volume of misleading and false content circulating about the Sudanese war on the Internet. His investigations had established that there were thousands of specialized and targeted platforms working to support both sides of the war in promoting this speech.
"Conversely, the open social media space has allowed the Sudanese people, who have been directly affected by the war, to voice and say their words, and has shown a great role to" inform the citizen "in shaping anti-war rhetoric and pro-peace rhetoric and for people to play a pivotal role in exposing lies, conveying facts and documenting violations against civilians and exposing the scale of damage on the ground.
Such efforts were not sufficiently visible amidst unlimited disinformation streams using advanced techniques to reflect the interests of a controlling minority in the current conflict and silence marginalized majority voices.
In a related context, the expert sees in the peace file, Dr. Abbas Al-Tijani, that there are objective circumstances that contributed to this escalation. The rise of war rhetoric increased the sharp political polarization after and during the period of the Framework Agreement. The Sudan-wide partition based on the Juba Peace Agreement in the multi-centre tracks, North, East, Darfur and Blue Nile created various and varying speeches related to peace discourse, but at the end reflected political rhetoric and attitudes.
"The multiplicity of speeches has contributed significantly to the rise in warmongering rhetoric and political propaganda of the parties to the conflict." "The war has affected the formation of public opinion in the Sudan, as well as all existing institutions, especially as they are central. This is why there is no other mediator for the parties to the conflict to communicate their political speeches and attitudes outside social media, specifically the Facebook platform, which is the most important platform that has greatly contributed to fuelling the conflict in the country and the political propaganda of the parties to the war.
Noting that such a speech in the long run might be devastating, he said that some Sudanese groups had begun to look for other platforms for communicating their speeches, through protected messaging applications to sharp debates in House dogs, or WhatsApp.
I cannot say that social media sites played a negative role, but the use of political propaganda was significant because of the absence of traditional press institutions due to the war in Khartoum. He added
One social media followers, Rabih Suleiman, said that Sudans social media had contributed mainly to the Sudanese war.
He added that the current war in the country is heavily managed and influential (social media sites), but now that 8 months after the war the war speech is in a state of decline, perhaps this leads us to an important question, who leads the media or (who directs the social media) and identifies it to say so or leave it like that?. "After the news of the war filled the social media, why did it disappear? Has the war stopped? "
Addressing a military mob at the Wadi Sedna military base north of Omdurman, Yasser al-Atta said that information received by the General Intelligence, Military Intelligence and Foreign Diplomacy Service (GIA) indicated that the UAE had transported military support to the Janjaweed via Entebbe Airport in Oganda and Central Africa before the dismantling of the Russian WGroup.
He noted that the UAE aircraft were landing at Umm Jaras airport with two Chadian government windows. "We respect the Chadian people, a brotherly people with whom we have blood, religion and language, but within them some mercenary and traitor agents of the African peoples, the agents of modern colonialism.
