The RSF used Sudan’s National Museum as a military base and mine from June 2023 until March 2025, gaining protection and a steady financial stream through the black market while more than 100,000 artefacts remained inside. By mid-September 2025, looters had taken more than 60 per cent of the museum’s goods, according to the article.
The museum held artefacts from Sudan’s Stone Ages, Nubian and Christian times, and the Islamic period. The article calls it a national living room. The Los Angeles Times reported that looters ransacked at least 76 heritage sites and 20 museums across Sudan. The Armenian Church was among the heritage sites affected in RSF-occupied Khartoum.
Looting and the archive
Sudanahye, a Sudanese-Armenian archival project, launched just after the war began in April 2023. It is building a network across diasporas to preserve history, honour historical events, lend legitimacy to a people, track change and help hold war criminals accountable.
As the war spread block by block, families had to flee homes filled with generations of memories. The RSF ransacked and pillaged properties, at times defecating on children’s beds. After RSF forces took control of Khartoum, they made cultural destruction more deliberate and extensive.
Vahe Boghosian, a diasporan Armenian and historian from London, launched Sudanahye as the first multimedia heritage project on Sudanese-Armenian history. He wanted to prevent the erasure of his ancestry during the war and reconcile violent media portrayals of Sudan with warmer stories from relatives. “For me, growing up in the 2000s in London, my perceptions of Sudan were driven by the news cycle, by films ... and then you go and look at the Armenian photos, and it looks very different,” Boghosian said. “And then you hear the stories and you're like 'oh, it's even more different.”'
Sudanahye dates the first known Armenian settlement in Sudan to the 1840s. More Armenians came to Egypt and Sudan after the Hamidian Massacres in the late 1890s. Following the British conquest in 1899 and establishment of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, another wave immigrated, seeking wealth and remittances. A further wave came after the 1915 genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. By the 1930s, Armenian families lived across Sudan, with Khartoum at the centre; at its peak, the population reached about 1,000.
What the records preserve
Sudanahye includes historical documents from archives in Cairo, Arabkir and Durham, a growing collection of oral histories and a photo archive. Boghosian said the documents largely show business and some political records, rather than children’s or women’s perspectives. Photographs offer a broader view of Armenian community life and interactions with other communities, while oral histories convey emotion.
The project’s social media component gives particular attention to personal narratives and aims to distinguish shared memories from atrocities continuing in Sudan. Boghosian also encourages his predominantly Armenian audience to recognize the current suffering of Sudanese people so it isn't forgotten.
“Cultural artifacts allow communities to claim a particular contribution and place in the world,” said Christopher Tounsel, University of Washington's Director of African Studies. He said preserving Sudanese-Armenian history also preserves Sudan’s and the Nile’s centrality to world history, showing that Sudan hasn't existed in isolation from major world events.
Building diaspora beyond institutions
Boghosian and the Garod Collective, a New York-based community group that hosts Armenian cultural events, held a workshop on building a diaspora from scratch and whether people could honour culture beyond the traditional “big three” institutions: church, school and social club. The Collective’s founders, Cynthia Nahhas and Nanor Vosgueritchian, discussed alternatives.
“Is this the only way? What about things like what me and Nanor are doing -- we're not part of the big three, we're just two people throwing events in Brooklyn, what does that mean? Where is our value in this?” Nahhas asked. The Collective has held an Armenian Mapping Workshop, a writing workshop, afternoons of backgammon, musical performances and a barbecue.
Boghosian held events in Cairo, London, Berlin and Amsterdam, and last month held his first event in Armenia. In March, a separate U.S. tour took him to Boston and New York, where he collaborated with Project Save, the oldest archive focused solely on preserving photography of the global Armenian experience. Its Archive Alive venture uses multimedia exhibits to spotlight grassroots initiatives, connect groups, extend their reach and bring archival materials under a common institution.
Project Save Director Arto Vaun said human rights attorneys had recently asked the archive for photographs dating as far back as 100 years to support cases at the Hague concerning the 2020-2023 ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. Tounsel said people had often justified colonialism by claiming that others had no history and needed to be “civilized and cultured.” He said accountability can uphold agreements including the UNESCO World Heritage List and the 1954 Hague Convention, whose authority is nullified, he said, if violations bring no repercussions.