It is no longer news that Sudan, a country in northeastern Africa, is grappling with rolling internet blackouts as a result of escalating conflict between the military and paramilitary groups.
What began as a simple conflict has transformed into a full-scale humanitarian crisis resulting in countless injuries, thousands of lives lost, and destruction of national property.
A disruption in communications networks, blamed on distrust of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has left a war-weary population in the dark, extremely nervous, unable to pay bills and unable to communicate with the outside world. They are unable to communicate with each other and are unable to receive foreign aid. .
For context, the RSF has been exchanging firepower with Sudan’s (main) army since April last year, displacing around 8 million people and pushing the country to the brink of starvation.
Metrics shared by internet monitoring group Netblocks show The country is said to be experiencing a near-total communications blackout as mobile network providers (Sudani, MTN, Zain) are largely offline.
According to some reports, RSF has been relying on Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, to circumvent this situation since last August. Videos and photos of groups using the kit have been published on social media, but they have not yet been officially verified.
But RSF isn’t the only company adopting Starlink. These devices are increasingly being used by Sudanese who have found a way to import them through the back door of South Sudan and Chad, which are said to be under RSF control.
In the space of a few months, Starlink kits have become critical wartime infrastructure, with dishes on the rooftops of countless cities and villages, as internet users seek to circumvent traditional communications that have recently proven unreliable. It’s been found.
El Basma, a vendor supplying Starlink kits to the Darfur region in western Sudan, told local news outlet Radio Dabanga that equipment is mainly shipped from the United Arab Emirates via South Sudan to a distribution hub in the capital Nyala. He said that he was being treated. of South Darfur.
Starlink has not yet registered a legal business in Sudan and is excluded from South Sudan and Chad. It is therefore no surprise that these kits are being imported from jurisdictions in the Middle East where the service is licensed, such as the Gaza Strip.
In August 2023, the notorious hacktivist group Anonymous Sudan launched a cyberattack on X (formerly Twitter) to pressure Elon Musk to speed up the launch of Starlink in the country. Additionally, the Sudanese government has not yet cracked down on the unlicensed presence of this service.
Nyala’s Starlink sellers also source from Niger and Nigeria, but these goods are given the green light by the communications watchdog and are transported through Chad before finally entering the country. This process will affect the price of the kit, which has an official price of $599, but will sell for up to SDG 2.2 million ($3,660).
United Nations Relief Coordinator Martins Griffiths condemned the ongoing shutdown., calling it unacceptable and calling for immediate redress. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that 25 million Sudanese people will need assistance due to the current 10-month civil war crisis.
Digital rights advocacy group AccessNow has also criticized the repeated developments and, through its KeepItOn coalition, is calling for internet censorship to be lifted as soon as possible.
“As conflict intensifies and the security situation worsens, Sudanese people must stay connected to each other and the world. “It is essential to share information about and enable access to emergency services and humanitarian assistance; and for the reporting and documentation of casualties and human rights violations,” the communiqué reads.
