The little one troopers smiling as they head to sure loss of life preventing in Sudan’s genocidal civil struggle after being lured to affix authorities forces by social media movies

The crowd of boys grin as they thrust their rifles skyward. Some are no older than twelve. 

Their arms are thin. Their weapons are large. The boys brandish them with glee; their barrels flash in the sun.

An adult leads them in chant. His deep voice cuts through their pre-pubescent squeals. ‘We stand with the SAF,’ he roars. ‘We stand with the SAF,’ they squawk back in unison.

Shot on a phone and thrown onto social media, the clip is of newly mobilised child fighters aligned with Sudan’s government Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

These are Sudan’s child soldiers.

The adult in the video seems like a teacher leading a class. He beams at the children, almost conducting them. He thrusts a fist into the air: the children gaze at him adoringly.

But the truth is that he’s doing nothing more than leading them to almost certain death.

Here, the SAF’s war is not hidden. It is paraded. Sold as a mix of pride and power.

The latest Sudanese civil war broke out in April 2023, after years of strain between two armed camps: the SAF and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). 

What started as a power grab rotted into full civil war. Cities were smashed. Neighbourhoods burned. People fled. Hunger followed close behind.

Both sides have blood on their hands.

The RSF’s crimes are plain: mass killing, mass rape, mass theft.

The SAF calls itself a national army. But it was shaped under decades of Islamist rule, where faith and force were bound tight and dissent was crushed. 

That system did not vanish when former President Omar al-Bashir fell. It lives on in the officers and allied militias now fighting this war, and staining the country with their own litany of crimes against humanity.

As the conflict drags on and bodies run short, the army reaches for the easiest ones to take. Children.

The latest UN monitoring on ‘Children and Armed Conflict,’ found several groups responsible for grave violations against children, including ‘recruitment and use of children’ in fighting. 

The same reporting verified 209 cases of child recruitment and use in Sudan in 2023 alone, a sharp increase from previous years. 

TikTok has the proof. In one video I saw, three visibly underage boys in SAF uniform grin into the camera, singing a morale-boosting song normally reserved for frontline troops. 

In another, a youth mouths along to a traditional Sudanese melody now repurposed as recruitment theatre. 

A chilling clip shows two armed youths – once again linked either to the SAF or its ally, the Islamist Al-Baraa bin Malik Brigade – chanting a Sudanese Islamic Movement jihadi poem while hurling racial slurs at their enemies.

There is worse.

Another clip shows a small boy strapped into a barber’s chair. He is visibly disabled and cannot be more than six or seven. 

An adult voice off camera feeds him words. A walkie-talkie is pressed into his hands. He makes an attempt to mouth pro-SAF slogans back, beaming as he raises his finger in the air, clearly unaware of what he’s saying.

Even the weakest are dragged in. Even those who cannot carry a rifle can still serve.

Then there are the photos, sent to me by a Sudanese source. In one, a boy lolls inside a military truck. A belt of live ammunition lies hangs around his neck; a heavy weapon rests beside him. 

He stares at the camera with a flat, empty look – not scared, not excited. Just there.

In another, a line of boys stand in the desert, shoulder to shoulder, dressed in loose camouflage. An officer faces them, barking orders. They stand stiff, eyes front. These are children being taught how to kill.

Elsewhere, a teenage boy poses alone, rifle slung over his shoulder like a badge. He half-smiles. The gun makes him something he was not before. He looks proud, as if now, finally, he matters.

Then there is the pickup truck. Three young fighters sit on the back, legs dangling. A heavy machine gun looms behind them. Teenagers on the frontlines of a genocide.

And in Sudan it is successful. The SAF and others gain many recruits from these photographs and footage.

In them, the war feels light. It looks like fun. Noise and laughter hide the danger. A rifle raised in the air does not yet smell of blood.

But behind the clips are checkpoints, ambushes, shellfire. Boys who carry guns are sent where men fall. 

Some will be used as fighters, others as runners, lookouts, porters. All are placed in death’s sights. Few are spared.

The law is clear: using children in war is a crime. The SAF’s generals know them, and ignore them. The evidence is not buried in reports or files. It is openly posted, shared, and viewed.

Wars that feed on children do not end cleanly. They do not stop when the shooting fades. A boy who learns to shoot for the camera does not slip back into childhood. The war sinks in. It shapes him, until it kills him.

But for now, the boys in the video – rifles raised high – are shouting with joy.