More than 60 per cent of the goods in Sudan's National Museum had been looted by mid-September 2025. The museum held over 100,000 artefacts spanning the Stone Ages, Nubian and Christian times, and the Islamic period. It was, in essence, a national living room. From June 2023 until March 2025, the RSF used it as an ad hoc military base and mine, a setup that offered protection and a steady financial stream through the black market.
Against that backdrop of deliberate cultural destruction, a small archival project is working to make sure one community's story survives. Sudanahye, a Sudanese-Armenian archive launched just after the war began in April 2023, 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.
A Country's Memory Under Fire
The war spread block by block. Families were forced from homes that held generations of memories. The RSF ransacked and pillaged properties, at times defecating on children's beds. After the RSF took control of Khartoum, it made the destruction of culture more deliberate and more extensive.
The Los Angeles Times reported that at least 76 heritage sites and 20 museums across Sudan had suffered ransacking. The Armenian Church in RSF-occupied Khartoum was among the heritage sites affected.
Rebuilding What Was Lost, One Photo at a Time
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 and reconcile the violent portrayals of Sudan in the media with the warmer stories he heard 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.'"
The community's roots run deep. Sudanahye dates the first known Armenian settlement in Sudan to the 1840s. More Armenians arrived after the Hamidian Massacres in the late 1890s, then again after the British conquest in 1899 and the establishment of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, and once more after the 1915 genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. By the 1930s, Armenian families were spread across Sudan, with Khartoum at the centre. At its peak, the population reached about 1,000.
The archive draws on historical documents from 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 community life and interactions with other groups. Oral histories carry the emotion.
"One of the reasons why the Sudanese-Armenian community history must be preserved is because it is like a constituent part of the experience of exile that Armenians experienced," said Christopher Tounsel, University of Washington's Director of African Studies.
Sudanese people Boghosian interviewed told him they value the country's former tolerance of diversity, which allowed an Armenian to call themself Sudanese. Many hope that tolerance returns. Boghosian hopes it extends to other places that could welcome Sudanese refugees. He also encourages his predominantly Armenian audience to recognize the current suffering of Sudanese people so it isn't forgotten.
Culture, Accountability and the Law
Tounsel framed the stakes in blunt terms. "Cultural artifacts allow communities to claim a particular contribution and place in the world," he said. Colonialism, he noted, was often justified by claims that people had no history and needed to be "civilized and cultured." People able to claim a history can assert they are "at the bare minimum your social equals" and "fully human."
He said accountability can establish an international precedent and uphold agreements including the UNESCO World Heritage List and the 1954 Hague Convention. Their authority means little, he said, if violations bring no repercussions.
The evidentiary value of archives is already showing up in court. Project Save Director Arto Vaun said the organization had recently heard from human rights attorneys seeking photographs dating as far back as 100 years to support cases at the Hague concerning the 2020-2023 ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. "That history never stops," Vaun said.
Project Save is the oldest archive focused solely on preserving photography of the global Armenian experience. In March, Boghosian collaborated with it during a U.S. tour that took him to Boston and New York. Its recent venture, Archive Alive, uses multimedia exhibits to spotlight grassroots initiatives, connect groups and bring archival materials under a common institution. Sudanahye was one of the first projects featured.
A Diaspora Reimagined
Boghosian also worked with the Garod Collective, a New York-based community group that hosts Armenian cultural events. Together they held a workshop on how they might build a diaspora from scratch today, and whether culture could be honoured beyond the traditional "big three" institutions: church, school and social club.
The Collective's founders, Cynthia Nahhas and Nanor Vosgueritchian, pressed the question. "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.
She said the Collective lets her connect to her culture in a modern way, through workshops that translate queer songs into Armenian. Since its founding last April, the group has held an Armenian Mapping Workshop, a writing workshop, afternoons of backgammon, musical performances and a barbecue.
"Investing in diaspora is not about dilution, it's about an identity that's evolving," Tounsel said. "It's not becoming less of what it was. It's becoming more of something new."
Boghosian has held events in Cairo, London, Berlin and Amsterdam. Last month, he held his first event in Armenia. His work often highlights intersectionality and aims to bridge divisions between communities.
Why This Matters:
When armed groups loot museums and occupy heritage sites, they erase more than objects. They erase the evidence that a people existed and belonged. In Sudan, with 76 heritage sites and 20 museums ransacked, much of the formal record is gone or at risk, and displaced families can't easily rebuild it. Community-driven archives step into that gap, preserving photographs, oral histories and documents that can double as evidence in international legal cases. The facts here suggest that protection of cultural heritage depends on enforcement. Tounsel's warning that the UNESCO list and the 1954 Hague Convention lose their authority without repercussions puts the burden on international institutions to act. Meanwhile, ordinary people are doing the work those institutions haven't.