# taz.de -- 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. | |
Bild: Sudanese journalist Lujain Alsedeg, now in exile in Cairo | |
The [1][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. | |
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. | |
15 Apr 2024 | |
## LINKS | |
[1] /Ein-Jahr-Krieg-in-Sudan/!6001608 | |
## AUTOREN | |
Lujain Alsedeg | |
## TAGS | |
Schwerpunkt Krieg in Sudan | |
Sudan | |
Hoffnung | |
Schwerpunkt Krieg in Sudan | |
Schwerpunkt Flucht | |
Afrika im Wettbewerb globaler Mächte | |
Weltflüchtlingstag | |
Schwerpunkt Krieg in Sudan | |
## ARTIKEL ZUM THEMA | |
Internationale Sudan-Konferenz: Endlich Geld. Und jetzt? | |
Der Zugang zu humanitärer Hilfe im Sudan dürfte praktisch unmöglich sein. | |
Die Regierung behindert schon jetzt die internationalen Hilfswerke. | |
Geberkonferenz für Sudan: Regierungen sagen Millionen zu | |
Eine Geberkonferenz in Paris sichert umfangreiche Zusagen für die | |
Sudan-Hilfsappelle der UN zu. Aber wie der Krieg zu beenden ist, bleibt | |
unklar. | |
Politisches Klima im Sudan: Komitees der Hoffnung | |
Jahrzehntelang litten die Menschen im Sudan unter einer Diktatur. Jetzt | |
kämpfen sie für eine demokratische Regierung und eine neue Gesellschaft. | |
Flucht aus Sudan: Wir leben noch | |
Unsere Autorin ist aus ihrer Heimat Sudan nach Ägypten geflohen – gerade | |
noch rechtzeitig. Ein Teil ihrer Familie blieb zurück. Protokoll einer | |
Odyssee. | |
Krieg in Sudan: Mein Abschied von Khartum | |
Als die Kämpfe näher kamen, war es Zeit zu gehen. Zurück bleibt der Traum | |
von einem besseren Sudan. Chronik einer Flucht. |