Inside Khartoum: Sudan’s ravaged capital where paramilitaries looted history

A burnt-out armoured car fitted with an anti-aircraft gun rusts away inside what used to be the lobby of Khartoum’s wrecked Meridien hotel. 

Khartoum hospital, a colonial-style building dating back to the British era, is out of action.

Tower blocks and government buildings across the Sudanese capital are blackened and burned. 

Palace Road, in the historic heart of the city, was once one of Khartoum’s busiest thoroughfares. 

Now it’s almost empty, no cars, and in places the loudest sound is birdsong.

At the end of the road the Republican Palace, upon whose steps General Gordon was killed, was damaged in fighting.

More than a century after the Mahdist army overran Gordon's defences, RSF fighters reportedly massacred members of the presidential guard at the same location.

Embassies have been torched and the central bank - where the Sudanese army managed to head off a raid on the country’s gold reserves - is in disrepair. 

The commercial sector was looted and burnt in the war. No shops are open. Hospitals have been wrecked, and their equipment stolen.

This destruction is the appalling legacy of the civil war ignited when Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) - a paramilitary group whose origins can be traced to the Janjaweed militias accused of genocide in Darfur 20 years ago - began battling the military. 

Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president during that conflict in Darfur, regularised the militias into the RSF, seeking to establish another power base that could rival his country’s powerful military and security services.

Ultimately, however, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, better known as Hemedti, and the commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, ousted Bashir in 2019.

After then removing Sudan’s nascent civilian government in 2021, the pair ruled together until tensions over plans to fold the RSF into the regular military exploded into violence.

Escape and return

On the morning of 15 April 2023, Khartoum woke to sounds of war.

For weeks, the RSF had been deploying around key areas of the city, so when war broke out, the paramilitaries were well placed to seize much of the capital.

The RSF fighters established a reign of terror characterised by ruthless malevolence. Their atrocities are all too well-documented: Rape. Abduction. Torture. Theft. Sexual slavery. Mass killing. 

Many of Khartoum’s approximately 7 million residents fled.

The wealthy went abroad, mainly to Egypt, Libya and Chad. The poor made long, perilous treks to safe areas where they flung themselves on the mercy of relatives, or stayed in camps for displaced people.

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Government ministers moved to the comparative safety of Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.

Khartoum and its sister cities across the White and Blue Niles, Omdurman and Bahri, became the epicentre of the war.

Slowly, however, the Sudanese military made progress and in May declared there was no longer any RSF presence in Khartoum and its eponymous surrounding state.

Much of the damage to the city seems to have been inflicted during those battles last spring.

The Sudanese military, which has been accused of war crimes over allegedly indiscriminate air strikes in urban areas, says RSF fighters made improvised bases in Khartoum’s hotels, hospitals and homes.

People are now returning to their homes, many of which have been looted and their contents destroyed.

Ministers in Port Sudan have told Middle East Eye they are sending out advance parties in preparation for authorities to permanently return.

When they do arrive, they will find a city much of whose soul has been stripped away.

'The RSF destroyed our culture'

For years, the history of Sudan has been celebrated and cherished in one place: the National Museum, a haven of tranquillity and scholarship adjacent to the Blue Nile.

Its artefacts cover an incredible range of history, from the mysterious biblical kingdom of Kush, through the ancient city of Meroe on the east bank of the Nile, up till the arrival of Islam.

It also contains remarkable relics rescued when Egypt’s Aswan Dam flooded swathes of ancient sites along the Nile more than half a century ago.

The museum is still standing - though pitted with bullet marks - but the contents have largely been looted. 

The huge room which housed the most significant collection of Nubian artefacts in the world is all but empty apart from dust, broken windows and piles of rubble. 

Archaeologist Rehab Khider, leader of the commission to assess the damage, told MEE that when she returned to the museum six months ago, “we even found very valuable archaeological pieces scattered all over the road outside”. 

More than 2,000 priceless artefacts had been stolen, she said.

RSF fighters had lived inside the museum itself, Khider told MEE, along with their families.

In their greed, she revealed that “they even shot the mummies”. She suggested they were searching for gold and had wrecked more than 25 of the fragile and ancient preserved corpses. 

Asked how she felt at the sight of such destruction, Khider said: “I am so proud for our identity, but the RSF just came here and destroyed our culture.”

At the entrance to the museum, MEE found a pile of smashed glass, broken pottery and old bones.

Inspection showed that we were looking at the remains of a display cabinet containing an ancient grave found near the fourth cataract of the Nile, which had been lovingly reconstructed at the museum before being desecrated by the RSF.

Outside the museum is a carefully restored temple built by the great Egyptian queen Hatshepsut more than 3,000 years ago and brought to Khartoum from Buhen in northern Sudan during the construction of the Aswan Dam.

Somebody had shot and damaged even this sacred site.

'The RSF do not just want to kill the Sudanese people, they want to erase our country too'

- Khalid Ali Aleisir, Sudanese culture minister

The same contempt for Sudanese history was on display in Sudan’s national radio station, based in Omdurman and dating back to the outbreak of World War Two in 1939. 

A representative of Sudan’s national broadcaster told MEE that “they targeted the library and burnt part of it when leaving”.

He said that “a huge amount of Sudanese heritage, including interviews, songs, documentaries” had been destroyed in the process. The newsroom was gutted by fire.

The RSF is not just a menace to the future of Sudan. It is destroying its past.

Culture Minister Khalid Ali Aleisir told journalists that the “RSF do not just want to kill the Sudanese people, they want to erase our country too”.

Echoing the words of SAF second-in-command Yasser al-Atta, who earlier this week told MEE that the RSF and its patron the UAE were trying to drive various tribes from their lands, Aleisir accused the paramilitaries of planning “to create a new Sudan”.

Sudan, he added, is a “diverse, multicultural society” with more than 500 tribes, and it needed protection.

Many challenges lie ahead but maybe Sudanese can take comfort from one precious remnant that the RSF was unable to destroy.

The massive statue of King Taharqa, known as the “Black Pharoah” and ruler of a great kingdom stretching from modern-day Khartoum to the borders of Palestine, remains in place.

Encased in a steel box, it seems that he was too massive and heavy to move or destroy.

Taharqa is a magnificent reminder of Sudan's glorious past, and perhaps in these terrible times he can also portend a happier future.