One year of war in Sudan: Khartoum in my heart

Our author writes about the fact that Sudan's rulers have destroyed her home town. But she is not giving up hope.

Sudanese journalist Lujain Alsedeg, now in exile in Cairo   Foto: private

The German translation of this piece written exclusively for TAZ is here

A year ago, and after spending eleven days in a warzone, I decided to leave the city I grew up in. Since then, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have continued their brutal fight, destroying Khartoum.

Before the war, Khartoum was home to everything I held dear in my life, the place where my father was buried and most of my family resides, everything we owned as a family was within the borders of Sudan’s capital, and despite the harsh political and economic circumstances, our collective belief as sudanese citizens in the safety of khartoum never wavered.

Before the war, Khartoum was home to everything I held dear in my life, the place where my father was buried and most of my family resides, everything we owned as a family was within the borders of Sudan’s capital.

Because for a long time, living in Sudan meant understanding the complicated reality of how warlords battled over Khartoum’s power and resources outside Khartoum. The capital was treated as the civilized face of the country and to maintain the image, conflicts had to be settled elsewhere.

During my school years, „elsewhere“ meant Darfur and South Sudan. News of rebel groups fighting the government was a distant memory. Local news alienated South and Western Sudanese from the rest of the country, portraying them as savages and thieves. This narrative has roots in colonial times, when English and Turkish authorities fueled tribalism and racism by favoring northerners with wealth and status. The result was a country torn by civil conflicts and vast differences in development, access to resources and education between the different regions.

John Garang's death instantly divided the capital

But Khartoum status as the civilized haven in Sudan was tested before the recent conflicts, one of the first attempts to jeopardize the „safety“ of Khartoum that I witnessed while still in school was when the leader of People's Liberation Army John Garang was killed in a helicopter crash, a couple of months after signing the Naivasha peace Agreement in 2005. Following his death 36 people were killed in riots, where Northerners and Southern Sudanese attacked each other in the capital, the shock of Garang’s death instantly divided the capital to Southern vs Northern, a divide that was already happening in the South but was buried under layers of socioeconomic divide in the capital.

My memory of the violence after John Garang’s death is different from the rest of my family, and most of the people in my community, because my school was one of the few institutions in Sudan that encouraged coexistence between muslim and christian communities in Khartoum, despite being founded as a missionary school during the colonial rule over Sudan.

Sister’s School was transformed by Sudanese teachers into a space that does not tolerate discrimination, all of us were treated equally inside the school premises, and while the rest of the country had either muslim schools for northerns and christian schools for southerns, my school provided education for both, and when the violence erupted outside, we were comforting each other. Our small community of students and teachers were personally affected by the news but the shock never transformed into violence or tensions, we continued to coexist peacefully during and after the riots.

Another attempt to disrupt the fragile peace in Khartoum was in 2008, when the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), launched an armed attack on Omdurman, one of the three towns that form greater Khartoum, more than 220 people were killed during the battles that lasted 48 hours, the attack ended with JEM admitting defeat and retreating outside Khartoum. This time the city took longer to recover and harsher punishments were imposed on the perpetrators, including death sentences.

Despite these events, Khartoum remained the ultimate local destination in the minds of Sudanese people, the only place worth investing in and home for more than 6 million people.

Shattered dreams and oppressive conditions

There were also civil attempts to disrupt Khartoum’s indifference to the grievances outside the capital, in 2011 people started to mobilize and protest against the Bashir’s regime, which ruled the country since 1989. These demonstrations continued until 2013 despite the violent crackdowns, and eventually receded for a while amid promises of reforms within the ruling party and government.

But the promises were never fulfilled, and the Secession of South Sudan in 2011 added to political and economic struggles in the country. So in December 2018, when the inflation rate reached its peak at that time, another round of protests started in the capital city of Blue Nile, Al-Damazin, and soon after Khartoum joined.

Up until December 2018, I had a complex relationship with Khartoum, the love I had for the streets I grew up in was mixed with hate over shattered dreams and oppressive conditions. While my school days were sheltered from first hand experiences of injustices, in university I was exposed to the experiences of my peers from all around Sudan, I listened to their stories about life in refugee camps and in the middle of warzones, and I joined in the protests against the centralized state, despite benefiting from it as someone who grew up in Khartoum, I could see at that point how it harmed the rest of country, how the little resources that Sudan had, were wasted on a selected few who had the power and connections.

And the hate turned into hope, participating in the protests ignited a sense of responsibility inside me, I could suddenly channel the frustration and anger into actions.

A city no longer indifferent

By the time of the April sit-in and the toppling of Al-Bashir dictatorship, participating in the protests sparked a sense of ownership over Khartoum, our streets were now filled with memories of participating in a glorious revolution, where hundreds of people remained peaceful till their last breath in the face of brutal regime, I belonged to a city that was no longer indifferent but aware of its own privilege, and actively working towards changing it. And for the first time, I was proud of my city.

The pride was not shaken even by the 2021 coup, we knew that changing our country was not an easy feat, and we took to the streets again, this time mobilizing on the neighborhood levels and trying to create a grassroots structure that can replace the corrupt military rule and the complicit political parties.

We were prepared to fight the long fight, using peaceful tools like civil disobedience and weekly demonstrations.

For two years after the coup, and despite the violent crackdown on protests that led to more than 100 protestors killed by security forces, the de facto leader failed to create a full functioning government to run the country. No one was winning in the fight between the people in the streets and the people in power, and the country seemed to be stuck in a state of halt.

Underneath the apparent state of halt, tensions were boiling between SAF and RSF, despite participating in the 2021 coup, the leaders of the two armed forces had disagreement over the little power that was left in the country.

Believing in a way back

On 15 April 2023, I witnessed Khartoum turning into a battlefield, in the face of violence and heavy armory, our stock of peaceful resistance tools and skills were no longer useful.

Leaving was the only thing we could do.

Since then, Khartoum witnessed as both warring parties claimed victory over the other, when in reality, there was nothing left to be won. The destruction spared nothing physically, economically, socially and culturally – as buildings are bombarded and homes looted.

The only thing that was not destroyed was a belief we carried in our suitcases while leaving, a belief in a way back.

Today, the war in my city is one year old, our home in Khartoum was destroyed and looted after we left. And the apartment I rented with my family in Cairo never felt like home. We still have daily conversations about what will happen when the war ends, we disagree over how we will know that the war ended, there is no authority left in Sudan that can be trusted, there is no guarantee that even if the war stopped for a while that it will not resurface again with old or new faces of conflict.

The leader of the RSF famously said before that „if you are not fighting, you don’t have an opinion“, and SAF leader recently echoed this sentiment by declaring that only the people who were „resilient“ in the face of aggression will rule the country, implying that leaving or not choosing a side in the war will be used as an excuse to exclude people in the future. The attempts to shatter our dreams of returning home have already started.

But I still believe in a way back, and I don’t think it will happen after a big peace declaration, or a grand gesture by one of the warring parties. I am simply waiting for an opening. A chance for ordinary people to exist peacefully without participating in the conflicts and violence, a chance to rebuild our homes and our city, and I would seize it in a heartbeat.