Military troopers patrol a market space in Khartoum.
AFP by way of Getty Photos/AFP
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AFP by way of Getty Photos/AFP
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — “I felt the air was lighter, I felt very joyful. I felt a lot of emotions, I was overwhelmed on that morning.”
That is how Khartoum resident Duaa Tariq described feeling when the Sudanese capital was liberated from nearly two years of brutal paramilitary occupation over per week in the past.
Tariq, who gave beginning to her first little one whereas Khartoum was below siege, has performed an lively position within the Emergency Response Rooms, a group group that was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize final 12 months for his or her life-saving work through the civil conflict. All through this time NPR has stayed in contact together with her.
The paramilitary Fast Assist Forces (RSF) had dominated the capital for many of the conflict, with the Sudanese military pressured to arrange a wartime hub at Port Sudan on the Crimson Beach.
Duaa Tariq
By way of Duaa Tariq
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By way of Duaa Tariq
However final week, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) lastly broke the impasse and regained management of town and armed forces head Basic Abdel Fattah al-Burhan returned to the Presidential Palace.
The battle in Sudan broke out in April 2023 amid an influence battle between Basic Burhan’s SAF and the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, generally known as Hemedti. Thus far, the conflict has killed as many as 150,000 folks (though the determine is prone to be a lot increased) and displaced some 15 million, creating the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster.
Tariq, an activist in her early thirties, mentioned that within the days because the military retook town from the RSF, she’s loved doing the small, strange issues that had been not possible when Khartoum was a battle zone.
“I rode a bicycle and I went grocery shopping without hiding the money in my chest. I was laughing in the streets, I played music,” she tells NPR. “I took my phone with me on the way out as there were no soldiers to loot it. I did simple things, but it felt so different.”
“There’s a lot of people in the streets now. We’re smelling perfumes, people are wearing perfumes now, wearing very nice clothes,” she provides. “We hear the joy and sounds of the children.”
Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan,chairman of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereign Council and commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces SAF, visits the Presidential Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, on March 26, 2025. Al-Burhan declared from contained in the Presidential Palace in Khartoum that “Khartoum is free.”
Tariq Mohamed/Xinhua Information Company/Tariq Mohamed/Xinhua Information Company
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Tariq Mohamed/Xinhua Information Company/Tariq Mohamed/Xinhua Information Company
Khartoum, a once-charming and vibrant metropolis on the confluence of the banks of the White and Blue Niles, is now a shadow of its former self, after years of shelling decreased a lot of it to rubble. After the military retook town, it additionally discovered that the nationwide museum, which housed priceless antiquities from the Nubian kingdom, had been looted by the RSF on a large scale.
Whereas retaking Khartoum is a symbolic and strategic victory for the military, the broader conflict is much from over. Elsewhere within the gold-rich nation, the RSF stays in management, together with in Darfur area within the west of the nation the place it has been accused by the US of committing genocide.
“We must wonder whether the RSF as they retreat westward will connect with the forces already there and whether they will attempt to make Darfur a fiefdom,” Eric Reeves, a U.S. scholar who has researched Sudan, advised NPR.
On the similar time, the Sudanese Armed Forces, who’ve additionally been accused of conflict crimes, are “anything but good guys,” he careworn. He added that whereas the successes in Khartoum had been essential, “that’s the center and Sudan has always been defined by center-periphery conflicts.”
Already there have been accusations of Sudanese military atrocities in Khartoum. UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk issued an announcement on Thursday condemning “the credible reports of numerous incidents of summary executions of civilians in several areas of Khartoum, on apparent suspicions that they were collaborating with the Rapid Support Forces.” He has referred to as for a full investigation.
“We’re at a new stage of the war,” Ahmed Soliman, Horn of Africa researcher at British suppose tank Chatham Home advised NPR. Soliman mentioned the RSF will now must “regroup and consolidate and then we will see what the new phase of the conflict looks like and whether the army itself sees it as a moment to try and defeat the RSF in its stronghold in Darfur.”
“Or whether or not it returns to more tried and tested routes, which is to promote insurgency and use allied militia forces … to fight conflicts in the peripheries in Darfur,” he continued.
The RSF has additionally mentioned it intends to kind a parallel authorities, which the African Union has warned might threat partitioning the nation.
Again within the capital Khartoum, Tariq is having fun with this second of pleasure. “The place looks festive. It’s completely destroyed, but the people are festive.” However she, like others, is aware of there’s a lot to rebuild.
However what resonates most for her are all the chums she’ll by no means see once more now that the conflict in Khartoum — however not the nation — is mainly over.
“We lost a lot of volunteers within our emergency response rooms and we lost so many people, family members, loved ones, friends, neighbors. I (can’t) forget the faces of the people I knew,” she says.
