A rare glimpse of life in wartime Sudan at the edge of Khartoum : NPR

OMDURMAN, Sudan — A drive from the sandy northern outskirts through Sudan’s once-vibrant city of Omdurman passes by shoots of normal life reemerging from the worst moments of war.

In bustling pockets of the city, which lies just across the Nile River from the capital of Khartoum, a stream of cars, trucks and carts hauled by donkeys fills busy streets. Customers shop at reopened supermarkets and grocery stores, and eat at restaurants and outdoor cafes selling tea and falafel, sheltered by trees.

But most of the journey across Omdurman reveals a city in ruins.

Felled battle tanks sit along the eerie streets. Souq Omdurman, a sprawling market, lies deserted, a carcass of charred store fronts and shattered windows.

The more than a century-old Sheikh GaribAllah Mosque sits defaced, its sky-gray walls pockmarked with bullet holes. Torched cars fill the razed compound, where every window has been shattered. NPR saw bullet casings and shell fragments around the site, as worshippers streamed in for Friday prayers.

Even the graves were dug up, according to the imam, Abdul Rahim. Fighters searched for the corpse of the mosque’s wealthy founder, to steal the gold and jewelry they believed he was buried with, Rahim said. “But they didn’t find the tomb, it’s still there.”

The call to prayer echoed through the battered streets of Old Omdurman, a neighborhood in the city, through emptied brightly colored homes, schools and hospitals. Shoes, toys, diaries, photographs and other intimate personal belongings lay in heaps of rubble, scattered out in the open.

Sudan’s collapse

Very little of Sudan has been left unscarred by a war for control of the country between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a powerful paramilitary group. The fighting erupted in residential and commercial streets of Khartoum in April last year and rapidly spread. It has triggered the collapse of one of Africa’s largest and most populous countries.

More than 14 million people have now been displaced, more than a fifth of Sudan’s population and the worst displacement crisis in the world, according to the International Organization of Migration. Half of Sudan’s population is starving and faces the imminent prospect of one of the worst famines in decades, according to the United Nations.

“Never in modern history have so many people faced starvation and famine as in Sudan today,” said a body of U.N. experts in October. Food inflation has soared to over 200%, according to some estimates, while fuel prices have risen by more than five times since the war began.

As many as 150,000 people may have been killed in Sudan’s war, according to the United States, while atrocities continue to mount, committed by both sides but overwhelmingly by the RSF. In one week alone in October, RSF fighters killed more than 500 people in central Sudan’s Gezira state. The region is the country’s breadbasket, but farming communities have been decimated, with farmers killed and displaced.

The immense scale of the crisis has overwhelmed hospitals and a medical system already brought to its knees. In Omdurman, some two-thirds of medical facilities have been destroyed or shut down, according to health officials. By the end of September, seven hospitals and medical centers were fully functioning, albeit with limited supplies. At times they lack medical gloves, syringes, medications, even anesthetics.

Dr. Tora Abdul leads a malnutrition ward at Al-Buluk, the only specialized pediatric hospital left in Khartoum state, supported by Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Inside, hundreds of frail and thin children fill six wards, lying on beds shared by two or more kids, or cradled in their parent’s arms. Many are too weak to eat or breathe without support.

“There’s no room, we keep expanding more and more but the need is too great,” he said. “We can’t do enough.” In just over an hour at the hospital, this NPR team saw a 1-year-old baby die of conditions linked to acute malnutrition. The mother and relatives were left inconsolable.

The lack of medical centers across Sudan means those in need have to travel far to receive care. “They’re traveling long distances to get here,” Abdul said. “Most people come in very late stages where we can’t do anything to help them.”

How Sudan got here

Five years ago, a revolution brought down the 30-year despotic rule of Omar al-Bashir’s regime and fueled the promise of a new civilian-led government. The uprising marked a turning point when Bashir was arrested by the SAF led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan. The military was then supported by the RSF, led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.

The two generals belatedly backed the revolution. But then, in the eyes of many in Sudan, they betrayed it.

A civilian-led transition government lasted just over a year before it was removed by the army and RSF, in a military coup. Burhan became chairman of a new transitional government and the de facto president, with Dagalo becoming his deputy. Both generals represented different parts of Sudan’s plutocratic class of military, political class and religious interests that wielded power. Both were aggrieved at the prospect of their political and economic influence being at risk.

But after the coup, a power struggle between them grew intense, with the RSF refusing to integrate into the military. The tensions simmered for months and then exploded, rapidly turning the country into a battleground.

Sudan’s army claimed its operation to end what it called an attempted takeover by the RSF would last weeks. Now, after 18 months of war, both sides still claim they can win, with the SAF bolstered by recent advances in northern Khartoum, Sennar and Gezira, in central and eastern Sudan.

Billboards across Omdurman are covered in triumphant military posters, praising the war effort. They promise a total victory that is likely impossible, according to Kholood Khair, a political analyst and founder of the Confluence Advisory, a research group formerly based in Khartoum.

“Both sides ramp up that narrative whenever one of them does particularly well on the battlefield, and these days it’s SAF,” she said. “But if you look at Sudan’s history and the history of the Sudanese Armed Forces, they’ve never historically won a war. And that’s because Sudan is too big. It has too many groups that are against the state.”

The hand of foreign countries

The role of international actors vying for control and influence has been a historic driver of Sudan’s instability and is now propelling the war. A litany of countries has become involved. Egypt, Iran and Russia have provided varied degrees of support to the SAF, which is increasingly recognized by international countries as Sudan’s de facto government, controlling what is left of state services. But the flow of arms from Russia and Iran led to U.S. sanctions against the SAF this month.

The RSF — also hit by U.S. sanctions — has received arms from the United Arab Emirates, say officials in Sudan, the U.N. and several international organizations.

The UAE strongly denies involvement and other accusations from Sudan that their interest is tied to ambitions to control Sudan’s ports along the Red Sea and extensive investments in Sudan’s gold mines. According to Sudanese military officials, 40% of the country’s gold reserves are controlled by the RSF, much of which is allegedly funneled to the UAE.

From his office in the wartime capital, Port Sudan, Sudanese Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim told NPR he thinks the U.S. and other Western countries are wrongly attempting to put the SAF and the RSF in the same category, saying this has been a key factor in several rounds of failed peace talks to end the war.

“They keep referring to the two sides, trying to divide the blame between the parties equally,” he said. “The army is the legitimate formal institution that has been in the country for over a hundred years. People know its practices, its history. People trust the army.”

While much of the focus has been on the UAE’s alleged role in Sudan’s war, little attention has been paid to the role of Chad, which shares a border to the west with Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.

“Chad’s role in Sudan’s war has largely gone without mention,” according to Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow in the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Even when it is discussed, Chad is portrayed as the benevolent host to hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees. While that is true, Chad has become the UAE’s handmaiden in Sudan,” he said, adding that it is likely to destabilize an increasingly fragile government in Chad, a key Western ally.

“It has opened up (Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno) to substantial internal opposition from within his own clan, many of whom support and are fighting alongside Sudan’s Zaghawa communities against the RSF. Déby’s direct and indirect support, via UAE, threatens his entire hold on power.”

A “liberated city”

Omdurman was at the cultural heart of Sudan, on the west bank of the Nile River. Its proud history manifested in the city’s monuments, mausoleums and universities. Now, shelling and airstrikes above the capital region, form a hellish soundscape, exploding in the backdrop of everyday life.

In May, the SAF said it “liberated” Omdurman following fierce clashes that ended several months of occupation by RSF fighters. Since then, hundreds of people arrive each day, disembarking from white buses on the edge of the city.

But the peace they find in Omdurman is only relative. Ground fighting has been reduced to the outskirts, but terror still echoes through the skies. Airstrikes launched by the SAF rain down on parts of Khartoum still held by the RSF, while the paramilitary group launches almost daily artillery shells over the Nile into Omdurman.

One day NPR witnessed 20 casualties being rushed into Al-Nao hospital as a result of RSF shelling. Three of the people died. The hospital itself has been targeted several times, which constitutes a war crime.

Dr. Jamal Mohamed, the 52-year-old director of the hospital, was in the emergency ward as the casualties arrived. He said the RSF was not just fighting the military but also the Sudanese people. “As you see, all of them are civilians. You don’t see soldiers here,” he said. “They’re fighting us, civilians, peaceful people. They are killing us.”

Omdurman and the wider Khartoum state region have become a key front in the war, with both sides fiercely vying for control. Some 60% of the fighting has taken place in Khartoum state, which both sides calculate is important to a military victory and a political one, offering greater international legitimacy. In recent weeks, the SAF has made sweeping advances into northern and central parts of Khartoum city, which was mostly controlled by the RSF. It sparked scenes of jubilation from residents who suffered horrors under RSF occupation.

“This campaign in Khartoum by the SAF to retake the city,” said Kholood Khair, “is in large part to do with proving that they can be the political and military power to rule the entire country.”

“We only have ourselves”

Several diplomatic efforts — some hosted by the U.S. — to bring an end to the war, or to increase the trickle of international aid into Sudan, have failed. Both the SAF and the RSF claim to be committed to increasing aid but both have been accused of blocking it.

Both sides are reluctant to allow aid to go to areas they do not control, an unofficial policy with increasingly fatal consequences, as deaths from starvation and conditions linked to acute malnutrition rise.

International attempts to dramatically increase the flow of aid into Darfur have not borne fruit, amid restrictions at the crossings controlled by the SAF, and the routine looting of aid by RSF fighters.

The U.S. special envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello, recently accused Sudanese authorities of preventing the flow of humanitarian aid.

“Last month (September) Sudan’s Humanitarian Aid Commission only allowed 10% of humanitarian supplies in Port Sudan to reach the people in desperate need of food and medicine,” he said in a statement posted on social media. “90% of the emergency relief has been blocked or delayed by the authorities in Port Sudan.”

But as hunger and desperation deepens in the country, so does the solidarity from ordinary people, in Sudan and across the diaspora. Community kitchens, providing free meals to those in need have proliferated across Omdurman and Sudan.

One of the largest is the Khartoum Aid Kitchen, which now supports 30,000 people in eight of Sudan’s 18 states, funded and coordinated by local and international volunteers. It’s just one of several local initiatives.

Another is called Friday Meals, started by Somaya Abdalwahab and Mustapha Ezaldeen. The couple ran a car dealership in Omdurman before the war but now the compound hosts a team of 50 volunteers, who cook large weekly batches of ful, spiced beans and bread — for up to 10,000 people.

Most of the funding is international donations from the Sudanese diaspora. “It shows the love of Sudanese people. It shows how much we support each other, care for each other,” Abdalwahab said. “We can see throughout the war that we cannot rely on outside help, we only have ourselves.”

“How can I start again?”

Returning home to Omdurman is a relief for the many who fled when the war began. But it also carries a heavy toll.

Sixty-five-year-old Mohammed Khair retired before the war, but now he’s starting again. He was born in Old Omdurman, and spent 10 years of his life working in the United States. When the war ripped through his street, he fled to relatives on the outskirts of Omdurman. But then he returned in May, to the terracotta colored bungalow, built by his family over a century ago.

Khair had built an extension, a small convenience store at the front to sell groceries. “It was my retirement plan, if you like,” he said.

But when he returned, the store had been looted. His house was trashed by RSF fighters who stayed there, trashing his belongings, he said. The outer walls of his home remain intact but the inside has been laid waste. The ceilings have caved in, his belongings stolen or broken. They left with his safe, storing all his cash savings, his 55-inch TV, his air conditioners, even his clothes.

“It never came to my mind that my house could be like this. Everything I saved for my old age has been destroyed,” he said, adding what’s most painful is having to accept that at 65, he has to start over.

“Everyday I think, how can I do that? How can I start again? I don’t have any job,” he said. “But still. I’m just trying to find a way … to start from the beginning, inshallah.”