Liberation of Khartoum: a bittersweet moment for Sudan

“Khartoum is free,” declared Abdel Fattah al-Burhan from Sudan’s presidential palace, hours after the army had captured the city’s airport from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). “It’s over. Khartoum is free. Free. Free,” al-Burhan continued in a clip circulating on social media, which showed the Sudanese general walking through the palace with his soldiers. The announcement that Khartoum has been liberated concluded an eventful week in the Sudanese capital. On Monday, the army also took control of the presidential palace, an event that was as politically and militarily significant as it was symbolically important in its nearly two-year war with the RSF. 

From the earliest days of the civil war in April 2023, the RSF held the palace and its immediate surroundings, including various government ministries and parts of the city centre, which were key commercial areas. This division of the capital between the belligerents reflected the extent to which authority had become contested in Sudan. This state of affairs added to the dubious legitimacy of the RSF’s claim to be a serious actor in Sudan, as well as Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s – known as Hemedti – even more dubious claim to be an important political figure rather than rather than a twisted answer to the Russian siloviki –  a kind of Sudanese Prigozhin whose mutiny almost worked.

 A team of journalists from the New York Times who visited the palace after the army had retaken it described “piles of bloodstained rubble on the palace steps.” The carnage spread beyond the palace, with trees leading up to it “stripped bare”; mosques “peppered with gunfire”; Khartoum University (one of Africa’s best) looted; and government ministries “burnt to a shell”—a fitting epitaph to all that the RSF have brought to Sudan since Omar al-Bashir's regime created them in the early 2000s. In a post on X, British-Sudanese Guardian columnist, Nesrine Malik, said the RSF left “starvation, murder, and the biggest looting of an African capital city in modern history” in its wake. There was certainly a fair bit of schadenfreude as drone footage emerged aired by Al Jazeera Arabic that showed RSF fighters fleeing the city.

Declan Walsh, the New York Times Africa bureau chief who visited the palace, spoke to a special forces officer in the army who gave a macabre response when asked about the scale of the damage: “We will never leave our country to the mercenaries”. And they didn’t. 

The Sudanese army appeared to have been on the back foot for much of the conflict, as the more mobile forces of the RSF took control of most of Darfur and then began spreading southeast. By December 2023, it had taken control of Wad Madani, the country’s second most important city and the capital of the Gezira state, which had been hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled Khartoum. Hemedti subsequently went on a tour of neighbouring African countries, being received as if he were a head of state. Everyone seemed to begin the hedging process. But last September, while Burhan was in New York for the UN general assembly, the Sudanese army launched a daring counteroffensive from Khartoum’s twin city, Omdurman, in the capital. Eight months on, we now talk of a liberated Khartoum, with many hoping the RSF can be cut down to size. 

The defeat of the RSF is also being viewed by many as another blow to the UAE’s disruptive strategy for the Red Sea and North-East Africa region more broadly. Abu Dhabi has backed sub-state and non-state actors across the crescent that runs from eastern Libya through the Horn of Africa and into Yemen, building up influence with them and later relying on them as surrogates for its influence. The Economist’s Middle East correspondent, Gregg Carlstrom, posted on X: “Another foreign-policy scheme ends in ignominy for the UAE, much like its efforts to help Khalifa Haftar capture Tripoli and to convince everyone to normalize ties with Bashar al-Assad”. It isn’t clear what Abu Dhabi’s end game was with Sudan; on whether they just hoped to settle with a broken state where their ideological opponents (Sudan’s Islamists) are weakened and the gold continuing to flow into the Emirates would be enough, or if they actually believed Hemedti would emerge as a serious candidate for the country’s leadership. Anas al-Gomati, director of the Libyan think-tank the Sadeq Institute, provided a more complex picture of how the UAE operates between Libya and Sudan, describing its operations in an interview with Geeska as a “high-stakes game of geopolitical Jenga,” where “each player – whether in Khartoum, Benghazi, or Abu Dhabi – is both a critical support and a potential point of collapse.” Hemedti’s power grew by offering the UAE mercenaries for its war in Yemen, after which his star rose in the region. He eventually developed a mutually beneficial relationship with Haftar in eastern Libya, who similarly waged a violent war against the authorities in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, who, in turn, supported his attempt to usurp power in Sudan. That has now been thwarted with the recapture of the presidential palace by the army and the capital city.

As pointed out by Khalil Charles, the British veteran Sudan journalist, the palace has long been a symbol of sovereignty in the country, whose rulers have always sought to place themselves there. The palace was initially built by the Ottoman Empire after it spread its influence from Egypt south along the Nile. When the Mahdist state fell at the end of the 1880s, the British occupied the palace before eventually ceding it to Ismail al-Azhari, who declared the country an independent state in 1956. “However, the palace would not only be a witness to independence,” he notes, “it would also be the scene of coups and bloody events that changed the course of Sudan’s history.” 

In its brief 70-year history as an independent state, Sudan has topped Africa’s list for the most successful coups and coup attempts, with 18. That means, on average, a coup or coup attempt every three years.

In its brief 70-year history as an independent state, Sudan has topped Africa’s list for the most successful coups and coup attempts, with 18. That means, on average, a coup or coup attempt every three years. The most recent one, when the army collaborated with the RSF to oust the inert and ineffective government of economist Abdullah Hamdok, laid the groundwork for the situation in which the country has been trapped for nearly two years. The people of Sudan initially fought back, protesting against the ousting of Hamdok and the slim possibility of civilian rule that his interim period was meant to represent. But 100 people were killed in those demonstrations in October 2021 which were eventually quelled. That left Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese army and the country’s de facto leader, to face off with Hemedti, the leader of the RSF.

The dispute started over a timetable according to which the RSF, ostensibly an armed group operating outside the purview of the state – and increasingly wealthy and powerful through connections with the UAE and gold mining – was meant to be integrated into the state’s formal security institutions. That didn’t work out, and an atmosphere of intense distrust descended into open fighting in the middle of April 2023. “It may well be a fight to the end, and neither will come out unscathed,” Kholood Khair, a Sudan analyst, told the Guardian on the day the fighting started, and her prediction has proved correct, except it wasn’t just the army and the RSF who wouldn’t come out unscathed but the entire country too. 

The scale of the devastation is both difficult to account for and staggeringly high, according to the figures we already have. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has called Sudan the “largest and most devastating displacement, humanitarian, and protection crisis in the world,” with more than 10 million people internally displaced, 4 million of whom are children. A further 2 million are believed to have fled to neighbouring countries. The displacement crisis has exacerbated challenges with food security, with multiple agencies declaring famine in parts of Sudan. In Darfur’s Zamzam camp at the start of February 2024, authorities said a child was dying of hunger or disease every two hours.

The RSF’s actions in Darfur against the Masalit community have been denounced by the Biden administration as a genocide as harrowing clips have emerged of their fighters summarily executing civilians and burning villages with glee, posting videos to the internet themselves.

Estimating casualties has been an equally slippery exercise for the organisations and agencies that have attempted to do so. The UN has, for example, adopted the conservative estimate of around 20,000 people, but a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine stated that, in Khartoum state alone, more than 60,000 people were killed. The authors of the report said: “We believe our estimate is very conservative”. In January 2024, a report by UN experts stated that, in the Darfur city of Geneina, 15,000 were killed by the RSF. The RSF’s actions in Darfur against the Masalit community have been denounced by the Biden administration as a genocide as harrowing clips have emerged of their fighters summarily executing civilians and burning villages with glee, posting videos to the internet themselves. US special envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, put the casualty figure much higher, in congressional testimony, suggesting it could be well over 150,000. 

Nesrine Malik has correctly lamented the fact that those who refer to Sudan as a “forgotten war” often don’t explain why this is the case. She acknowledges that, while most of the press is focused on Israel's genocidal war in Gaza, there are also very few international reporters inside Sudan to relay information to their respective media houses. However, “the rest, I suspect, is down to what to most will seem unremarkable: this is just another African country succumbing to intractable conflict.”

Those who did engage with the conflict did so cynically. David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, for example, made a widely publicised trip to Chad’s border with Sudan at the start of February to raise awareness of the humanitarian challenges there. His move was viewed in some quarters as an attempt to take pressure off his government for its inaction in Gaza, which Kholood Khair has called “humanitarian gaslighting.” She called it a deflecting strategy “to discuss Sudan to the detriment of Gaza, but not make any commitments” to either. Zarah Sultana, an MP from Lammy’s Labour party, asked him if he cared so much about Sudan, what he would do to stop the UAE, a close UK security partner, from continuing to supply arms to the RSF. Again, Lammy, who made a fuss about Russia’s role in the war during a Security Council meeting, had nothing strong to say, simply explaining that everyone needed to be around the table.

When Sudan isn’t used to boost the credentials of politicians who want to cosplay as humanitarian heroes, others simply appear totally out of touch with what is happening on the ground. Even as the international community denounced the RSF for declaring a “parallel government” in Sudan, as late this month, with the army routing the genocidal militia group, the EU and US were still calling for a ceasefire and talks. Burhan took the US sanctions (which were justified) for rejecting the talks on the chin. But the calls to stop the fighting and leave the RSF, clearly on the back foot, in charge of the capital were obviously ill-timed. Cameron Hudson, a former CIA analyst who now closely follows Sudan, said, “I view this as an implicit siding with the RSF, who are clearly on their back foot, and as an attempt to undercut SAF's momentum,” in a post on social media.

Hudson believes the capture of the presidential palace and the broader liberation of Khartoum signal a new phase in Sudan’s war, in which the army undoubtedly has the upper hand. It is now better armed with drones from Turkey and Iran and fighter jets from Russia and China and has succeeded at recruiting more fighters than its enemy. The big questions are whether the army will allow the RSF to remain in Darfur or if it will go after them there, risking a conflict that stretches its supply lines in territory where the RSF is likely to prove much more effective. Hudson says that would require a full-scale ground invasion which would almost certainly have a significant humanitarian toll in the region most badly impacted by this war. “What we will get is more carpet bombing and mass killing of civilians,” Hudson posted on X. “Whatever goodwill exists for them now will dissipate the more they look like the SAF of NCP days conducting air wars to pacify entire regions.” 

Hudson believes the capture of the presidential palace and the broader liberation of Khartoum signal a new phase in Sudan’s war, in which the army undoubtedly has the upper hand.

And it is here that the bittersweetness of this important victory for the army lies. Many Sudanese who support their military in this life-and-death struggle for their state do so out of expediency, not ideological zeal. The options are a rotten army, which is at least an official state institution, and a vicious and vengeful ragtag militia which is accused of genocide and is backed by the unscrupulous leaders of the UAE. This is an easy choice but not a happy one. Just yesterday, the world was horrified to learn that an army airstrike on the northern Darfur city of al-Fasher is believed to have killed hundreds and was described by the Emergency Lawyers Group as a “horrific massacre”. In other cases, the army has weaponised aid. 

In addition to the problems associated with the party that is due to rid the country of the RSF (having created the organisation in the mid-2000s in the first place), the state of the country after two years of war is another issue. Footage emerging from Khartoum showed buildings completely destroyed, neighbourhoods ruined and messy, and people reduced to thin skeletons as they struggled to move. The amount of time required to rebuild, given the constraints Sudan faces financially, could mean it will take decades for the country to return to where it was in the early 2000s without significant support. Who would that support come from? Omar al-Bashir left Sudan a sanctioned regime with few friends who truly trust it. Europe wants to rearm for a possible war against Russia (or China if you’re Kaja Kallas); Saudi Arabia wants to build a futuristic city; Turkey will be focused on stabilising the newly liberated Syria as Israel advances in the southeast; I doubt Burhan will call Mohammed bin Zayed now; and neither Russia nor China have shown great capacity (or willingness) to undertake the types of projects required to get a country like Sudan back on its feet. 

The final and most serious problem is that the capture of Khartoum doesn’t mean the war in Sudan is over. “After seeing the end of the battle here in Khartoum, we’re likely to see more and more fighting this time around the western region of Darfur and southwest Sudan,” Hiba Morgan, Al Jazeera’s Sudan correspondent said in a report from Khartoum. 

Sudan is a vast country, and whilst the riverine regions around the Nile have generally been peaceful and quite prosperous, Darfur has been locked in intermittent conflict since the early 2000s and even further back. Even if these regions stabilise the suffering for those in the east is unlikely to abate. Those days the Sudanese army and the RSF, then known as the Janjaweed, were on the same side brutally putting down a rebellion by the region’s non-Arab population. The government's actions during the period between 2003 and 2005 also led Colin Powell, George Bush's former secretary of state, to accuse Khartoum of genocide. Estimates vary, but during the worst of the fighting, 400,000 people were killed, and hundreds of thousands more were displaced—many of whom remain displaced to this day. The International Criminal Court, back in the days when it only went after Africans, even charged Omar al-Bashir with genocide. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, one of the ICC’s prosectors likened the refugee camps of Darfur to a “gigantic Auschwitz”. Antony Blinken’s accusation that the RSF has committed genocide in Darfur would mark the second time this has occurred in the past two decades; but at least the Sudanese army now recognises how dangerous the group it created has become. From Khamis Abbakar, the West Darfur governor, down to women and children, the RSF is taking no prisoners. 

All signs suggest that the fighting is likely to continue there if the army follows its adversary into his stronghold, and so the suffering of the people will persist. Just last week, 15,000 more people joined the growing displaced population in Darfur, fleeing the town of al-Malha near the North Darfur capital, al-Fasher, after it was captured by the RSF. More broadly, in the state, the UN reports that 600,000 additional people have been displaced since April 2024, and nearly a million are seeking refuge in al-Fasher, the last government stronghold, which the RSF frequently targets with mortars and artillery. Six areas in the state are completely cut off and are at risk of famine. 

The Sudanese people are right to celebrate this important moment, which many will hope heralds a potential path to end the fighting in the country. Much needed humanitarian aid can flow into the city and recovery efforts can start. But once the euphoria dissipates, a new set of very serious challenges awaits. Sudan’s army chief said, “it’s over” when he entered the palace. It is however, far from “over”.