For over a year, Sudan has been the home to a civil war that’s left at least 20,000 dead, 33,000 injured and millions displaced. The two sides involved in the conflict are the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and according to the internet, members of the latter group have been using crystal meth as they fight.


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A Redditor known as Background_Ad7522, who claims to be a member of the SAF, began sharing photos and videos on r/Meth that show him taking drugs and weapons off of dead SAF soldiers and dropping explosive barrels on RSF forces “while coming down” from meth. “15 dollars worth of high quality locally made tina in my country,” the self-proclaimed SAF bomber wrote as the caption of a photo of what certainly looks like meth.



The alleged SAF pilot also wrote that he had seen several people fall to their deaths during flights and that nobody seems to care because “people have become so desensitized to death.”


“[I]t’s weird how just 10 months are enough to desensitize you to such horrors but I’ll carry this with me to the grave I know that,” the man shared, perhaps giving some insight into why he’s turned to the drug in the first place.


Of course, this being Reddit, some commenters immediately questioned the validity of these posts. In particular, they noted that Background_Ad7522’s account had been deleted and pointed to several other indicators that this whole thing may be someone making shit up for clicks (e.g., the details of the photos didn’t match up to the reality of Sudan during the fighting).


“This is fake,” one doubter wrote. “The pictures of the gun and grenade looks taken by a phone with a bad camera, unlike the photo of the meth which looks taken by a phone with a good camera.”


That said, others argued that this might be an attempt to make the SAF look bad by highlighting their drug use, with those in support of the Sudanese Armed Forces believing this could be RSF supporters painting their opponents as drugged-up warmongers. The war of misinformation is far older than the internet but many users’ fast and loose relationship with facts makes it easier than ever for blatant lies and half-truths to spread like wildfire.


“I wouldn’t call an attempt to spam a subreddit that is clearly on the side of SAF with 3 or more posts about how the soldiers are doing this and that as just interesting, your intention doesn’t matter because whether it is what you want or not you’re making them look bad or at least it looks like that is your goal regardless of you claiming otherwise,” one user wrote on r/Sudan in response to someone posting about the “soldier” online.


It’s worth noting that meth has a longstanding history with wars fought all across the globe. The Nazis used Pervitin, a methamphetamine-based drug that was basically crystal meth, to help keep their Blitzkrieg strategy from slowing down, while U.S. military forces have been fueled by drugs for the last 80-ish years, and that meth reliance hasn’t slowed down in the modern day.



Still, many feel the posts are legit, based mostly on the photo of the grenade and of the airplane, both of which would be hard to fake. And it’s been mentioned that people posting things online despite being in a warzone has become much more common in the past decade, so it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for this soldier to have decided to overshare on Reddit (many think this is why he deleted his account, as he may have realized he could get into trouble if the wrong people spotted his posts).


For now, the truth remains elusive and barring some kind of revelation that puts any doubts to rest one way or another, we may never really know if this meth-loving soldier is still out there fighting.