Issue No. 97

The Rebuilding of Khartoum

When the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) finally recaptured Khartoum's Republican Palace in March from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), they inherited a burnt-out shell of a building. Months of grinding fighting in the surrounding neighbourhoods and repeated shelling had left it decimated, with blackened walls and gaping holes in the highly symbolic complex. But it was just a handful of-- albeit significant-- buildings in a devastated city. Even with the war's end improbable for some time to come, the Pyrrhic 'victory' of the Sudanese army over the paramilitaries, with most now pushed from the ruined capital, leaves immense questions about restoring and restituting Khartoum, once one of the finest cities in the region. 

Sudan is no stranger to war and conflict, with the state itself built on a predatory, extractive and mercenary-driven style of frontier capitalist governance dating back centuries. A pre-war diverse home to between 6 and 7 million people, Khartoum has long been the commercial centre of this model, with the Weberian concept of a state's sovereignty centred on a capital arguably not applicable in Sudan. Pre-dating them but fuelled by British and Egyptian occupations, this predatory dynamic endured into the latter half of the 20th century, allowing the comfortable Arab Riverain elite of the Omar al-Bashir regime to prosper. That permanently changed, however, in April 2023, with the eruption of the latest civil war.

In those initial weeks of fighting, Khartoum witnessed one of the largest exoduses of any city in living memory, with over 3.5 million estimated to have fled. Much of Khartoum and Omdurman, which sit on the confluences of the Blue and White Niles, were essentially rendered a ghost town. And those civilians who remained were considered legitimate targets for the belligerents, even while forced to eke out a living in an intense combat zone. Nearly wholly unreachable by humanitarian organisations, there were numerous reports of starvation-linked deaths in Khartoum. In December 2024, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification assessed that the state was at extremely high risk, with many residents at "catastrophic levels of hunger (IPC 5)"-- meaning they were unable to access sufficient food to survive. Thankfully, since the easing of active fighting in the city, facilitating food and emergency assistance has been made far easier.

In the initial months of the war, the RSF maintained the upper hand in the capital, deploying experienced Sahelian troops and mercenaries that had cut their teeth in Darfur and Yemen to seize the Republican Palace and key ministries. The progeny of the Janjaweed that pillaged Darfur two decades prior, the paramilitaries wasted no time getting to work in Khartoum, with much of the capital stripped of its worth in those early weeks. Truckloads of goods were loaded and shipped from the capital, trundling down the western and southern highways towards Sahelian markets. Anything of value was plundered, from generations of artisanal Sudanese gold to the contents of Khartoum's venerated museums. Since the war began, a common refrain is that no air conditioners have been left in Khartoum, a city which regularly touches 40 degrees and over in the hottest months.

But beyond the possessions, much of the city has been rendered nigh-unlivable by the fighting, with basic infrastructure decimated as well. Injections of foreign military aid from Iran, Türkiye, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, including drones, as well as the mass mobilisations of Islamist militias, allowed the Sudanese army to begin reclaiming territory last year from the RSF. Targeted strikes by the Sudanese military, as well as the RSF in the past two-and-a-half years, have devastated key infrastructure, particularly power and water stations. Months of intense fighting have left over 30,000 buildings destroyed, among them 29 government headquarters and dozens more public sites, according to military estimates. Today, over half the hospitals in Khartoum State have been rendered useless as well, another major concern with malnutrition and cholera ripping through the country. And though reliable death tolls are impossible to come by in the fog of war, many thousands of civilians have likely been killed in the indiscriminate shelling and strikes.

Historically, the fall of a capital would often mark the end of a war or insurgency, as it did in 1885 when Egyptian-held Khartoum fell to the besieging Mahdist forces. Though plenty of examples exist within the Horn of Africa of insurgencies simmering in the peripheries, this is the age of drones. Since the army's recapture of Khartoum, the RSF has repeatedly battered key military locations and infrastructure in the city-- and further afield in Port Sudan. On Tuesday, the RSF-- now nominally under the auspices of the 'Tasis' parallel government-- again struck several military locations, as well as the Al-Markhiyat electricity substation, triggering a blackout in the city.

Still, since Khartoum was retaken in March, there have been some tentative efforts to rebuild and restore parts of the city's infrastructure. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has just reopened offices in the capital, with other UN organisations expected to follow their lead and help facilitate the return of civilians. And they have in droves in recent months, returning from vast underfunded displacement camps to inspect their homes and what is left. Their return, however, should not somehow be considered a vote of confidence in the army to restore their livelihoods or rebuild Khartoum anew. 

After two-and-a-half years in displacement camps or crammed in their friends' and families' homes elsewhere in the country, many from Khartoum simply long to return and assess the conditions for themselves. Egypt has further been accused of making its camps so inhospitable that Sudanese refugees have been forced to return. In Khartoum, meanwhile, SAF-- and particularly its aligned Islamist militias-- have been charged with a raft of human rights violations, including executing perceived 'collaborators' living within RSF-held neighbourhoods. Indeed, the Islamist chokehold within the army continues apace, and there have been numerous reports of these militias operating and brutally policing returning civilians with impunity. Hundreds of civilians and activists looking to support others and support the city, distributing food from the Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), for insance, have been arbitrarily detained.

One should not expect an Edenic vision to replace the stratified and vastly unequal pre-war nature of the capital, particularly with the quantity of weapons and arrayed army groups swirling in the city. Further, the economic damage done to Khartoum, not least the loss of its tax base, hyperinflation, and banking damage, is likely to constrict its recovery for some time to come.

One estimate suggests that Khartoum's reconstruction costs could run as high as USD 300bn, a figure far smaller than the Marshall Plan, the US-funded rebuilding of Western Europe post-World War II. That does not even include costs for the dozens of other cities, towns, and villages across Sudan that have been razed or looted in the war. And the conflict is far from over, with no prospect of a durable peace settlement or a comprehensive peace track on the horizon. Hopes that the SAF's retaking of Khartoum might offer some space for negotiations quickly dissipated, with fighting remaining particularly intense in the Kordofans and for the city of El Fasher in North Darfur, the last state capital not in the hands of the RSF. In this context, reparations for civilians for the damage wrought on Khartoum are far from a priority for either the RSF or SAF. But with no end in sight and as returning Sudanese begin to try to piece their lives back together, Khartoum's ruins today appear as a monument to Sudan's failed, centuries-old state experiment rather than any decisive turning point in the war.

The Horn Edition Team