Who is fighting Sudan: the United Arab Emirates’ war on Sudan in the media

Abstract Sudan’s war is often framed as a war between two generals, it is not only an attempt to paint the war as a struggle over power by two generals, but also an approach to shape the discourse around the Sudan war by localizing the problem and disengaging the war from the global shift in power relations. Attempts by local voices and the international media to tell the real story of how Sudan is primarily a war that is largely financed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a rising imperial power, which invests heavily in its soft power to whitewash its reputation while supporting the creation of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Sudan have proved futile. This article examines how the UAE’s soft power through cultural, humanitarian, media and people’s diplomacy was used to maneuver, manipulate and challenge the accurate depiction of Sudan’s war.