Sudan: Two Years After Leaving, I Returned to a Khartoum I Barely Recognised

Khartoum — A reporter’s journey home reveals a city scarred by war.

My heart was thumping as I passed through army checkpoints earlier this month, staring out at animal carcasses strewn along the roadside and at pockmarked and battle-scarred buildings that I once knew as people’s shops and homes.

Two years ago, I left my city – Khartoum, the heart of Sudan – alongside millions of others. War had erupted between the army and the paramilitary-turned-rebel Rapid Support Forces, tearing the city apart. Now, I was returning. But to what I wasn’t sure.

Like many others, I made the decision to return once news came through in March that the army had taken full control of Khartoum from the RSF. I was hesitant about going back, but desperate to know what had become of my neighbourhood and home.

The videos other returnees were sharing on social media in the weeks ahead of my trip had prepared me for the worst: Many found their houses trashed and stripped bare by looting RSF fighters, and their neighbourhoods lacking even basic services.

As a reporter who has covered every moment of this conflict – albeit from exile in Egypt – I knew what to expect. I had been speaking regularly with those who stayed behind in the capital, and had lived this nightmare for more than two years.

Still, as I headed from eastern Khartoum towards my neighbourhood of Al Amarat – an affluent, middle-class district close to the city’s main airport – I felt a confusing mix of surprise, shock, and anger at what I was seeing.

Tanks and overturned cars can be seen along the side of roads across Khartoum after a two-year battle for the Sudanese capital. (Mohammed Amin/TNH)

I used to walk and drive through these streets every day and I loved them. Now, they felt like ghost streets. I passed my children’s school, which was still standing, but partially damaged. That sight struck me hard.

Entire buildings had been obliterated by heavy weaponry, and in some areas that saw the most intense clashes, the wreckage was still visible: destroyed tanks, twisted gun mounts, and lots of unexploded ordnance.

The streets were littered with destroyed cars and the remnants of local markets. There were few signs of life – just the occasional Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) checkpoint, where soldiers would stop us, inspect the car, and wave us through.

The stench of death hung in the air – human bodies, recently recovered by returning authorities from abandoned buildings, mixed with the rot of dead animals. Nature had also begun to reclaim the city. Trees and shrubs had grown wild and unchecked.

Finally, I entered Al Amarat and stood in front of my seven-storey tower block, once again with a mix of emotions – anger, sadness, and disappointment at the state of my city, but happiness that my building was still standing.

From the street, I could make out the AC unit clinging to the window of my apartment. But as I climbed the stairs and stepped inside, I realised it had succumbed to the fate of so many others: It had been occupied by RSF fighters.

Life under occupation

My journey home started from the far eastern city of Port Sudan, where authorities relocated to after abandoning Khartoum as the RSF took over in the early days of the war – one that has produced the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.

I rented a car with a driver and set off at 4am, reaching Khartoum by 5pm. The journey was long, with many checkpoints along the way. I had a journalist permit to travel outside of Port Sudan, stamped by military intelligence, so I was allowed through.

There were others returning along the same roads – carrying luggage and new furniture loaded onto small trucks, knowing that everything in Khartoum had been looted. But to be honest, there weren’t as many people as I had expected.

Those I spoke to along the road were hopeful about returning – and relieved that the RSF had finally been kicked out. But once in Khartoum, the mood shifted. Most were disappointed by the reality on the ground: no electricity, no internet, no markets, and not enough food.

The government has launched a major campaign urging people to return to their homes, but many quickly realised they couldn’t stay – the city’s current condition makes it too difficult for them to rebuild their lives.

Some said they would return to the places they had fled to at the start of the war, while others crossed the bridge from Khartoum to Omdurman – liberated earlier and in somewhat better shape.

Before reaching Al Amarat, I stayed the night with a friend in an eastern district called Al Haj Yousif. A chemical engineer by profession, he had remained in Khartoum throughout the RSF occupation, and gave a vivid portrait of what life had been like.

He described how, like others who stayed, he adapted to the harsh reality – but fear of the RSF was constant, with civilians regularly abused. (You can read human rights reports on mass killings and rapes conducted by the RSF in Khartoum for more detail).

My friend described how the RSF profited from the war – not just by looting, but through controlling essential supplies. They allowed goods through for bakeries and vegetable vendors, but affiliated traders sold these items at high prices.

He also spoke about Starlink shops – makeshift internet cafes where people rented access to the satellite service for a dollar or more per hour. But there was no privacy.

The RSF could inspect phones at any time and listen in on conversations.

Even when people received money through mobile transfers, they had to exchange it for cash at RSF-run shops, where the paramilitary group took a hefty cut – sometimes 20-30% of what people received from relatives.

Many people in my friend’s area ended up joining the SAF themselves, driven by the violations they witnessed and endured. This reflected a broader trend of RSF abuses pushing people towards the SAF, legitimising a historically unpopular force.

My friend told me that the last few days of the occupation – when the SAF was retaking territory – were the worst. The RSF carried out revenge attacks on civilians, targeting women, children, anyone. When the SAF took charge, it carried out abuses too.

The violence forced my friend to take refuge in a mosque run by a local emergency response room – the name of the neighbourhood-based mutual aid groups that kept millions afloat as international aid groups and the government disappeared.

A basement fire and looted homes

As I left Al Haj Yousif the next morning for Al Amarat, dark memories of the war’s outbreak – something I had anticipated through my years of intensive reporting – came flooding back into my mind.

I recalled the day we left our home two years ago, and the week I spent moving from one place to another in Khartoum, dodging bullets and bombs, until I finally found my way onto a bus. It was a journey I documented for The New Humanitarian at the time.

Thankfully, I found my neighbourhood in better shape than the other places I had driven through. It was dirty and damaged in various ways but still recognisable and still standing.

A few residents who had either stayed during the war or returned after the liberation attributed its relatively decent shape to the fact that RSF commanders had used it as a residential area, given its upmarket nature.

There were very few people on the streets, though I heard about a grassroots initiative being set up to restore water, electricity, and basic health services. Nothing has materialised yet, but there are plans to raise funds from Al Amarat residents.

After reaching my tower block, I decided to start my inspection in the basement. That was where we had hidden during the first days of the war. It was a grim start. The basement was a blackened husk, burned to ash.

The caretaker of a mosque next door told me that RSF soldiers had set fire to electrical cables to extract copper – a valuable commodity that they they send to paramilitary-controlled areas in the west of Sudan.

The damage was catastrophic. The fire had consumed everything in the basement: the housekeeper’s room, transformers, water tanks. The smell was acrid, and the smoke had travelled up through the pipes and reached people’s apartments.

With no power in the building, I climbed all seven storeys on foot to reach my top-floor flat. On every landing, I passed apartments – 37 in total – that had been looted. Some emitted a foul smell, and I chose not to enter, unsure of what I might find inside.

I reached my own flat – which had a strong door and locking system – and found a hole carved in the bottom just large enough for a person to crawl through. After a long struggle with the key, I managed to open the door. Inside, I found chaos.

Clothes were strewn on the floor and draws and cabinet doors left open after RSF fighters searched Mohammed’s home for valuables. (Mohammed Amin/TNH)

A stranger in my house

My furniture had been overturned, cabinets and drawers were open, and there were clothes everywhere – even my wife’s and children’s. It seemed that the RSF looters were looking for gold or dollars.

Only two televisions and a laptop belonging to one of my daughters were missing. Everything else – the refrigerator, washing machine, stove, AC – was still there. Perhaps they found these items too heavy to carry down seven flights of stairs.

The fire from the basement had left its mark, staining the walls and creating a bad smell throughout. Still, I felt lucky that we had not been looted as thoroughly as so many others I have seen on social media – or even the other flats in my building.

Things got stranger, however, as I continued walking around my apartment and began to find things that clearly didn’t belong to my family: a prayer bead, dirty dishes in the kitchen.

The housekeeper from the neighbouring mosque told me that an RSF member had been living here. And he hadn’t been alone. I found evidence of a woman, too. A dish with henna. Perfume. Make-up. Items that belonged to my wife were gone.

The housekeeper said the person who occupied the apartment may have been an RSF commander, but possibly also a sniper – given that my flat was on the top floor. The thought that my home could have been used to kill people was a gut punch.

As a freelance journalist, it took me years to save up enough money to buy this flat. I moved in in 2018 and had paid it off by December 2022 – just four months before the war erupted. Seeing it in this state was hard to process.

Like many others, after seeing my home, I decided I couldn’t stay for now and headed to Omdurman, one of Khartoum’s sister cities. There is some electricity there, the internet is more reliable, and markets are starting to move again. Soon, I’ll make my way back to Port Sudan, and then on to Egypt.

Khartoum has been liberated from the RSF, and for both those who stayed and fled, that is a huge relief. But what the paramilitary force did here is beyond words: They left destruction, fear, and trauma that will take years to heal.

My brief journey showed me there is much to do to make the city inhabitable. With the RSF still threatening new attacks and launching drone strikes, it will be some time before all those who left can truly call Khartoum home again – my family included.

By The New Humanitarian.