عربتي وين؟ means “where is my car?”. It is a free, scam-free public registry of vehicles looted or lost in the Sudan war, live at mycarsd.online. One Sudanese family built it while searching for their own car. This page sets out what it would take to run it for every family, and what each level of funding adds.
«عربتي وين؟» سجلٌّ عام مجاني للعربات المنهوبة والمفقودة في حرب السودان، على الرابط mycarsd.online. يجمع كشوفات العربات التي تنشرها لجان الشرطة والمتطوعون والمجموعات العامة، نصاً وصوراً، ويحوّلها إلى سجل واحد لكل عربة يمكن البحث فيه برقم الشاسي أو اللوحة بالأرقام العربية أو الإنجليزية. من لا يجد عربته يسجّل رقمها، ويُفحص الرقم كل ساعة مقابل كل منشور جديد، ويُبلَّغ صاحبه إن ظهر. كل صفحة تُرشد إلى الطرق الرسمية المجانية (البلاغ الإلكتروني في sudanpolice.net وإدارة المرور) وتحذّر من النصب: لا يوجد رقم واتساب رسمي، ولا رسوم للاسترداد، ولا ترسل رقم شاسيك في الخاص لأحد.
المشروع بناه أفراد أسرة سودانية واحدة أثناء بحثهم عن عربتهم، ويعمل حتى اليوم بلا تمويل على حاسوب منزلي واحد. هذه الصفحة تبيّن ما يلزم لتشغيله لكل الأسر: أولاً خادم دائم وتنبيهات آلية (٣٠٠٠ دولار)، ثم معالجة يومية وروبوتات واتساب وتيليجرام (١٠ آلاف)، ثم منسّق مجتمعي ودليل الأحواش الرسمية (٢٥ ألفاً)، ثم مؤسسة مسجَّلة تتعاون مع شرطة السودان وإدارة المرور (٦٠ ألفاً). المبادئ لا تتغير بالمال: مجاني دائماً، التنبيه برقم مطابق لا بالشكل، لا تواصل مع البائعين، والأرقام تُنشر بصدق بما فيها صفر استردادات حتى الآن.
When Khartoum emptied in 2023, cars were taken by the hundreds of thousands. They are now found in police yards, photographed by field volunteers, listed by recovery committees and offered for sale in dealer groups, in lists that are posted as photos of handwritten pages, scattered across dozens of Facebook groups and Telegram channels. A family that still holds its chassis number has nowhere to type it.
Into that gap came extortion. Fake “recovery committees” ask for the chassis number in private, demand fees, hijack WhatsApp accounts through the six-digit code, then vanish. The registry answers both problems: one place to search, and a clear route to the official free channels, with a scam warning beside every contact number it shows.
The demand is documented by the state. Sudan Police’s electronic reporting platform logged 107,656 reports in June 2026 alone, 78,464 of them missing vehicles, according to the police spokesman’s public statement. Khartoum State committees hold more than 8,000 collected vehicles at 38 sites. Owners are told to come and search by chassis number.
A Sudanese family, as volunteers, with a personal AI subscription and under US$200 of direct costs since August 2026. There is no legal entity yet. The code is published under the Apache 2.0 licence so the project can be audited, contributed to, and run by others; the policies it follows are public (privacy, safeguarding) and do not change with money.
Measured from the project database; figures refresh from stats.json on each visit and in full at /stats. We never quote raw sighting rows as vehicles, because the same list is reposted to many groups.
Each rung includes everything below it. Amounts are twelve-month figures built from unit costs the project has measured: about US$0.006 to read one post, US$1.50 to transcribe a thousand photos, about US$40 a month for an always-on server. A machine-readable copy is at funding.json.
Free tiers, one volunteer, a personal AI subscription, and under US$200 in direct costs since August.
The registry stops depending on one laptop, and a family is told when its number appears.
Every list is searchable the day it is posted, and people can search from the apps they already use.
Someone whose job is to verify leads, relay them safely and answer families in their own dialect.
A registered non-profit that can sign agreements with the authorities and survive its founders.
The same problem exists in every war. The pipeline becomes a template other communities can run.
| Line | Basis | US$ / year |
|---|---|---|
| Always-on server, monitoring, backups | about US$40 a month | 480 |
| Processing to keep pace with intake | 90,000 posts a month at a measured US$0.006 each | 6,500 |
| Photo transcription | about 60,000 photos a month at US$1.50 per thousand | 1,080 |
| Messaging bots and notifications | WhatsApp Business API, SMS gateway | 1,200 |
| Hosting, domain, security review | 300 | |
| Community lead, part time | twelve months | 9,600 – 14,400 |
| Engineer, half time | twelve months | 24,000 – 36,000 |
| Fiscal sponsor or registration, accounts | typically 10% of funds | — |
| Minimum programme, no salaries | ≈ 9,500 | |
| Staffed programme | ≈ 50,000 – 60,000 |
It will not recover a specific car, and it will never charge a family or contact a seller. The registry tells a family where a number has appeared and sends them to the police, the Traffic Department and the official yards. Approaching a holder directly is how families get extorted, and the project will not do it or help anyone do it.
We also do not promise matches. A chassis search can fail when a looted car has been given a wrecked car’s stamped parts, which is the standard laundering method. That is why photo matching and official data sharing are on the ladder.
Send us your lists directly and we will credit you on every record and give your members a search link. This replaces scraping.
We are seeking a fiscal sponsor and a Sudanese civil-society partner to co-apply. A one-page concept note and the budget above are ready on request.
The code is open source under Apache 2.0. Arabic-digit search, list parsing and messaging bots are the first open issues.
Help us write the claim guide and open a data-sharing conversation with the Traffic Department and the police reporting platform.
Yes, always. There is no fee to search, to register a standing watch, or to receive a lead. Official vehicle recovery in Sudan is also free; anyone asking for money to release a car is not the police.
No. It tells you where your chassis or plate number has appeared in public posts and sends you to the official channels: the free report at sudanpolice.net/reg/car_stealing and the Traffic Department in person. It never contacts sellers or holders.
Never, and we ask families not to either. Approaching a holder directly is how families get extorted and how a car disappears again. The identifier and an official report are what settle it.
If you register a watch: the number you typed, your contact and your note, used only to tell you when the number appears. Never published. The site records search queries in analytics; see the privacy page. Photos and text read from photographed documents are never published.
Every identifier must be present in the source post’s text or in the OCR of its photos, or it is deleted. Alerts need an exact chassis or plate match; resemblance is never enough. Each record links to the original post so you can check it yourself.
We are seeking a fiscal sponsor, a Sudanese civil-society co-applicant, data partnerships with recovery groups and field platforms, and grants between US$3,000 and US$60,000. The funding ladder above states what each level adds. Contact details are below.
Project contact: firasfmohammed@outlook.com
For families: the official free report is at sudanpolice.net/reg/car_stealing; we do not take reports on behalf of the police and we have no WhatsApp number. For organisations: say who you are and which rung of the ladder or which partnership you are writing about, and we will reply with the concept note and budget.