Looking Back: Sudan’s Capital, Ravaged by War

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0:17Today on State of the World, a look at Sudan's capital ravaged by war. You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. As we say goodbye to 2025, our international reporters are looking back at some of the stories they covered in the last year. NPR correspondent Emmanuel Akinwotu is based in Lagos, Nigeria. Emmanuel, what was your most memorable story of 2025? Well, it was an eventful year. So many things happened in my part of the world. But undoubtedly, the most striking story, the biggest story I've had to cover this year has been the war in Sudan.

1:00Earlier this year, we went to Sudan for the second time in two years. The war has been going on for over two and a half years now. But in March, the Sudanese army retook the capital Khartoum. It had been occupied by the paramilitary group that they were at war with since the war started. And when they took over the city, there were celebrations in the capital. And people who had fled and been displaced were contemplating returning again. And what we really wanted to do was to capture those kind of first shoots of rebuilding and people kind of come to terms with what they had suffered. Yeah, you got an early look just a few weeks after the capital was retaken.

1:39You got a look at it. Yeah, absolutely. And it was, you know, extremely heavy. It was really kind of hard to prepare for, firstly, just the level of destruction in Khatoum and also just the constant, relentless interactions that we were having with people in Sudan. You know, we had a member of our team was a Sudanese journalist, Amar Awad, who was born and raised in the capital state region. And especially by working with him, it was such a much more intimate window really into what people were grappling with. He was meeting relatives, family members, cousins, bumping into them and different parts of our reporting who he hadn't seen since the war started.

2:24We even managed to go to his family home that had also been destroyed. And we met so many people who had so many horrific stories, people who'd been tortured, people who'd been sexually abused, people who'd lost some family members, all their family members, people who were just picking up the pieces really. And then there was also a sense of just seeing the absolute resilience that people were forced to summon in themselves. You know, walking past these kind of absolutely eerie, battered streets where you're just seeing people walk up to their homes for the first time, try and open the shutters or go clearing broken glass, trying to assess what belongings haven't been looted, what they still have.

3:09You know, it was just really poignant and at various points inspiring and heart rendering and heartbreaking. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's listen to your reporting from April of 2025 in Hartoum, Sudan.

3:25Against a backdrop of destruction, sounds of life and revival in Khotun. Groups of children ride their bikes through eerie, deserted streets.

3:37They race and skid on the sandy concrete, riding past empty buildings and storefronts left in ruins. A stand selling Sudanese tea and coffee has reopened for the first time in two years. The owner lays out plastic chairs and serves the first few customers. And nearby, staff at a bakery sweep glass from the storefront, shattered by gunfire. There's a shortage of water and no electricity. But then the generator bursts into life. And the bakery reopens again. These are the scenes emerging from a city hollowed out by the war. It's more than a month since Khartoum was recaptured by the Sudanese army, after two years of brutal occupation by the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.

4:29Just a few years ago, this was one of Africa's most populous cities, with Bougainvillea draped over sand-coloured walls, restaurants lining the riverbanks, the city filled with monuments and architecture rooted in various eras of Sudan's history. But much of Khartoum is a scene of destruction.

4:51We walk across broken concrete and glass at the centuries-old presidential palace, occupied by the RSF, until the last days of the battle for Khartoum. The hall is battered and broken, its facade burnt to a matchstick. Almost nothing has been spared, not even the country's treasures. Sudan's National Museum held rich records of the country's ancient civilization. Okay, welcome. Welcome. At the museum, I met Moussa Elfador, an archaeological researcher working here for 27 years. As we walk through the gates, the scale of the damage is overwhelming. This is so bad. I'm so sorry.

5:37I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's okay. The gardens are charred black, the museum walls blown open. Towering statues of Nubian kings at the entrance are punctured by bullet holes, the arms hacked off. Inside, the cabinets are empty, the floors covered in debris. Precious evidence of Sudan's ancient history was ransacked. The museum held close to 100 ,000 artefacts that spanned more than 4 ,500 years. It stored mummies and artefacts from the Islamic, Christian and Meroritic eras. These walls are small antiquities. It belonged to the Marawatic period at that time. But most of it was looted by the RSF. Even electric cables were ripped from the walls and stripped for copper.

6:23Everywhere they dig and take it. And also all the air conditioning, they take the machine inside and take it. In several offices, fighters even defecated in the room. Most of the artefacts that they didn't take with them, they burnt or destroyed. Only the library was left mostly intact.

6:49As we drive through Khartoum, with music playing from the car stereo, the sheer scale of the theft and damage unfolds at every turn. It feels like the RSF swarmed through the capital city like locusts through a field. They stripped almost every building and home they controlled of anything of value. And the same brutality inflicted on the city was also inflicted on its people. The RSF turned schools, hospitals and homes into detention centres. Untold numbers of people were tortured and killed, as told through the survivors, like 24-year-old Munir Jalabi at a military hospital in Khartoum.

7:33His body is skeletal, his bones bulging through his skin.

7:40He was arrested by the RSF over a year ago while he was buying food at a market.

7:49Jalabi was kept in a cell packed with people who were whipped and beaten. They were only fed a small glass of lentils and water each day, if at all. The bodies of those who died would be left in the cell for days.

8:05Jalabi's mother, Afaf Abu Bakar, is sitting by her side. She said she didn't recognize her son when she first saw him here three weeks ago.

8:17She thought he'd died until she got the call that her son was at the hospital. We continue our journey across Khartoum through areas kicking back into life. And every so often we stop when our driver or our producer Amar Awad spots family or friends they've lost touch with during the war.

8:41Awad greets his old school friend who refused to leave Khatoum. He says the community suffered under Arasev occupation and that they're thankful to be alive. A major clean-up operation is now underway. teams of tractors clear the rubble and debris across the city street after street

9:07yet their work only scratches the surface it will take several years and billions of dollars to rebuild khartoum but not everything can be replaced or rebuilt only mourned and cherished in memories That was NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu reporting from Khartoum, Sudan in April of 2025.

9:31That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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