Sudan looted-car registry: search by VIN or plate number, free

Arabati Wein (عربتي وين؟, "where is my car?") is a free public registry of vehicles looted or lost in the Sudan war since April 2023. It collects the public posts from dozens of Sudanese lost-vehicle groups and channels, extracts the chassis and plate numbers, and lets a family search them in one place. Built and run by a Sudanese family that lost its own car. No fees, no registration, no login.

What you get

Scam warning. There is no official WhatsApp number for vehicle recovery in Sudan. Never pay anyone to "release" a car, never send a chassis number in a private message to a "search platform", and never read a 6-digit verification code to anyone. Official recovery is free. Full details in Arabic: احذر النصب.

For the diaspora

Most people searching are abroad, in the Gulf, Egypt, Europe and North America, searching for a relative's car. You can search on their behalf with the number from the registration card, register the watch with their contact, and send them the step-by-step Arabic guide to the official channels. The site works on a phone and on slow connections.

For journalists, researchers and organisations

Live figures are published at /stats.html and machine-readable at /stats.json: distinct chassis numbers, identified vehicles, standing watches, leads relayed and confirmed recoveries. Please quote vehicles, not raw sighting rows. The project is open source (GitHub), unfunded, and seeking a fiscal sponsor and partners: see Support the project. An AI-readable summary is at /llms.txt.

Privacy, in one paragraph

The registry republishes only vehicle fields derived from posts that were already public, with a link back. Photos and text read from photographed documents are never published. Watch registrations are stored only to alert the registrant. Details: Privacy.

Open the registry